Lorrain was tried quickly and sent prison for espionage, although he was shortly afterwards released on medical grounds. He was later pardoned after the election of Georges Pompidou, handed back his medals and promptly retired. In his memoirs, Jean Rochet, the head of the counterintelligence agency at the time, referred to the priest's visit to Lorrain whilst he was in DST custody. He was particularly surprised when the Interior Minister, who had congratulated him the day before, afterwards rang and gave him a real thrashing! Almost as if he were being accused of arresting a guilty man!
Jean Rochet
72
I was entitled to an avalanche of harsh criticism: in his eyes, the investigation was incomplete. The questioning had not been pushed to the limit and now everything had to be taken over by those who had led the initial hearings. I was shocked to find myself before such a turnaround. What had happened in those few hours to warrant such a change in attitude? Was it the chancellery, who were less than proud at having buried Lorrain’s occupation file and were now desperate to avoid a public shaming? Had they managed to persuade him?Was it the Foreign Office who wanted to avoid any diplomatic complications? Or was it reasonable to think that it had been outside pressures placed on the minister, not necessarily personal ones, but more related to the organisation to which he belonged?There is a well know rule in politics, ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’, which has, on various occasions, been successful in blocking the true course of justice.
Chapter 13
Frauenknecht: The Mirage thief
The man is small. He has a round, smiling face and is dressed in ordinary clothes. Just an average man.Yet this is the key figure in an important espionage scandal; one that is very close to France and its interests. We only know the basic outline of the story and there are still many mysteries concealed within it.
This is the official version: In the early morning of Saturday, 20 September 1969, Hans Rotzinger, the deputy of the Basel canton and director of an import-export company, made a random inspection of one of his warehouses, near the German border. Upon his arrival he saw one of his German employees, Hans Strecker, sat outside the building in his Mercedes 220. His presence there is not really surprising, although he definitely seemed shocked when he saw his boss. Intrigued, Rotzinger began to inspect the warehouse. He discovered a small box marked with the inscription ‘top secret', inside of which were several pieces of coloured paper containing sketches and plans, also marked ‘secret'. As a good Swiss citizen, Rotzinger immediately alerted the authorities.
A few days later, the Swiss federal prosecutor, Hans Walder, announced that a Swiss engineer called Alfred Frauenknecht had been arrested and charged with selling twenty boxes of plans for the Mirage III-S jet engine to the Israelis, for the total of 860,000 Swiss Francs. The magistrate solemnly declared that this was the biggest case of espionage that had taken place in Switzerland since the end of the Second World War.
In an agreement with the firm Dassault and Snecma, a Swiss company called Sulzer had the license to manufacture the Mirage. In order to prevent any leaks, the Swiss had to ensure that total secrecy was maintained and commit to draconian surveillance measures. Frauenknecht had occupied a very sensitive position in the company.
Four days after the story broke, Colonel Zvi Allon, the military attache at the Israeli embassy in Rome, but accredited in Bern also, was declared persona non grata and asked to leave Switzerland. In fact, Allon had taken the initiative and already left the country, while his predecessor, Nechemia Kai'n, who according to the Swiss authorities was also implicated in the affair, was recalled to Tel Aviv.
Frauenknecht was imprisoned and soon put on trial, but he denied any acts of treason. If he had delivered the plans to Israel, he said, it was only to help the Jewish State, which was being threatened by its Arab neighbours. Another case of espionage for idealism, it would seem. However, this explanation does not cover all the curiosities of this particular case.
Ever since the establishment of their state, the Israelis have been obsessed by the question of defence. France had often provided assistance with this, particularly when it came to providing nuclear weapons. After the Six Day War, when General de Gaulle deemed Israel to be the aggressor, the French president decided to place an arms embargo on the Jewish state, after several civilian aeroplanes had been destroyed during the bombing of Beirut airport. The famous ‘Vedettes de Cherbourg',73 the gunboats that the Israelis would later recover in the most dramatic fashion with the placid compliance of the French authorities, were stranded in France. The Gaullist embargo also included fifty Mirage V planes that had been ordered but would not now be delivered, as well as 100 Mirage F1s intended to thoroughly modernise the Israeli Air Force.
This embargo was not quite as catastrophic as it seems: the Israelis also had to option of procuring fighter aircraft from the USA, for example. However, it did teach them a lesson not to rely on a single supplier. Unfortunately, the world is not full of high-performance combat aircraft manufacturers, especially as there was no possibility of doing a deal with the Soviets. Consequently, they had to manufacture their own, which for a small state such as Israel, was a considerable effort, not just economically, but also technologically.
Israeli pilots had always considered the Mirage to be the best fighter aircraft. It was a machine they knew well and had even had experience using it in mock-combat against the MIG 21, the favoured aircraft of most Arab nations.
