Trouble for 333

Outside Cairo sprawls a rambling complex of buildings known as Military Factory 333. There President Gamal Abdel Nasser is trying to develop the powerful weapons system he needs to ensure military supremacy in the Middle East. From 333's workrooms last year came the first batch of missiles, a few 230-mile El-Zafir (Victory) types, and the 370-mile El-Kahir (Conqueror). Although their reliability is none too certain, the military leaders of nearby Israel have nervously noted Nasser's claims that Egypt's birds will have the range to blast important targets "just south of Beirut"--that is, in Israel itself.

Mysterious Misfortunes. Hence Israel's extraordinary interest in the key men who staff Factory 333. They are not Egyptians at all, but an estimated 200 German scientists and technicians, many of whom first learned their skills making V2s for Adolf Hitler. Ever since the Germans helped Nasser test-fire his first successful rockets last July, Israeli intelligence chiefs have been conducting a deadly underground war to force--or frighten--the German scientists away from the project.

Last month two Israeli agents were arrested in Switzerland after they allegedly put pressure on the son and daughter of Dr. Paul-Jens Goercke, a West German electronic-guidance expert employed at Military Factory 333. As Swiss police told it, the agents persuaded Heidi Goercke, 25, and her brother Hans, 21, to cross the frontier from Freiburg, Germany, and warned them that they must talk their father into coming home from Egypt or else he would face "serious" trouble. Eavesdropping on the conversation, forewarned Swiss detectives tossed the Israeli operatives into jail, charged them with coercion and operating illegally on behalf of a foreign state.

The incident recalled a whole chain of mysterious misfortunes that have befallen Germans linked to Egypt. Last summer the private plane of an Egyptian supplying arms and technicians blew up over northern Germany, killing his wife; in November two airmail parcels addressed to German Rocket Engineer Wolfgang Pilz blew up when opened in his office in Egypt, killing five Egyptians and disfiguring Pilz's German secretary. Then, on a road near the West German town of Loerrach. a would-be assassin fired a pistol shot at a professor engaged in electronics research for Egypt; the bullet missed and the would-be assassin escaped in a car. Biggest unsolved riddle is the whereabouts of Dr. Heinz Krug, 49, boss of a Munich firm that dealt in military hardware for Egypt. Last November, Krug vanished from his office in the company of a polite stranger and has not been seen since.

Backtrack in Bonn. To charges that Israel is behind the incidents, Israeli authorities insist that their agents employ only peaceful persuasion. Israel's Foreign Minister Golda Meir rose in the Knesset (Parliament) fortnight ago to brand Germans in Egypt an "evil crew.'' She demanded that West Germany order them to halt their work. Bonn retorted that the Germans in Egypt were private citizens with no official connections whatsoever; the government could hardly dictate their professions. But anxious to stay on good terms with the Israelis, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer last week agreed to reconsider the matter, ordered formation of a committee to decide whether some kind of controls--such as removal of passports--should be imposed on German citizens whose work abroad endangered the nation's good relations with another country.

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