Eye Spy - May 2018

56 EYE SPY INTELLIGENCE MAGAZINE 115 2018

organisation would

fund his horse riding

project. This Lotz

used to befriend all

manner of people,

including elite

Egyptians who duly

showed him missile

sites and important

industrial buildings.

Besides collecting

useful intelligence on

such locations, he

also organised

attacks on scientists.

However, in 1965,

two years before the

Israeli attack on

Egypt, and as a

result of closer cooperation with East

Germany, Egypt detained around 30 West

German nationals on security grounds.

Amongst them was Lotz and his wife.

The Mossad secured the services of a top

solicitor at his trial, but it was to no avail. He

was sentenced to life in prison in 1965.

Ironically, he was released in 1968 as par t of

a prisoner of war exchange following the

Israel-Egypt conflict, better known as the ‘Six

Day War’.

Known in intelligence circles as the ‘Cham-

pagne Spy’ because of his lavish lifestyle, Lotz

described espionage as “the greatest game in

the world.”

1950. Wolfgang
      Lotz with his son
      Oded


1951. Israeli
      Defence Force
      soldiers pictured at
      a PoW camp in
      Cairo following
      their capture

N

CHESS AND SECRETS

atan Sharansky (born Anatoly

Shcharansky) was not a spy, but a

brilliant Jewish chess player. Born in

Donetsk in the Soviet Union, he graduated in

applied mathematics at the Moscow Institute

of Physics and Technology. In 1973 he applied

for a visa to visit Israel, but the KGB, fearful he

would impart technological and national

security secrets to Tel Aviv, refused him leave

to travel. In 1977, after becoming a human

rights advocate, he was arrested for spying on

behalf of America. One charge included

handing to the CIA, a list of 1,300 interned

people, who like himself, had been detained

because of their knowledge of ‘state secrets’.

Sharansky would spend the next nine years in

Soviet prisons during the 1970s and 1980s.

He was the first political prisoner released by

Mikhail Gorbachev on 11 February 1986, as

1986. Ben-Gurion Airport. Israel Prime Minister Shimon Peres welcomes
      home Sharansky following his release

par t of a larger exchange of detainees, due to

intense pressure from US President Ronald

Reagan. He was flown to Washington where

he thanked the president personally.

A decade later, he would go on to beat then

world chess champion, Russian Garry

Kasperov, in an exhibition tournament in Israel.

President Ronald Reagan with Natan

Sharansky at the White House

hat Russia continues to operate deep

cover agents around the world was

Tevidenced in the recent case of two

NEIGHBOURLY SPIES

‘German nationals’.

A Russian spy, jailed in Germany along with

her husband was released in 2014. The 48-

year-old woman, known only by the alias

‘Heidrun Anschlag’, was freed and depor ted to

Russia after serving only part of her prison

sentence. Her husband, ‘Andreas Anschlag’,

remains behind bars.

The married couple, who Eye Spy believes are

South African and the holders of Austrian

passpor ts, were arrested in October 2011 on

suspicion of operating as Russian spies in

Germany for more than two decades. They

reportedly earned £80,000 a year for their

The Anschlags pictured in court