Epilogue

The players who were brought together to make Operation Plumbat possible treat the events of 1968 gingerly, if at all.

The government of Israel is not prepared to discuss the Plumbat affair, contenting itself with a bland statement denying the event ‘in respect to its relation to Israel.’ As for the country’s possession of the bomb, that has always been and still denied. In January 1978 the press spokesman at the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC said, “There is no proof whatsoever. I can only repeat to you that Israel is not a nuclear power and that Israel will not be the first country in the Middle East to introduce nuclear arms into the region.” Dan Aerbel, still living in Israel, also denies involvement in the Plumbat Affair and particularly his confession to Inspector Ravlo: “The Norwegians,’ he says, ‘are full of fantasy.’

The Scheersberg A is still in business. In May 1976 she was sold yet again, this time to a Cypriot Shipping company which renamed her the Kerkyra.

In Italy, Francesco Sertorio of SAICA did, when the story first broke, attempt to explain his role, but his stories were confusing. Interviewed by freelance journalist Dalbert Hallenstein on 6 May 1977, he said he had expected the uranium to arrive in Genoa by ship. However, when Hallenstein spoke to him again later the same day he said he had not known that Genoa was the port or even if the uranium was supposed to arrive in Italy by ship at all. There were other contradictions and Hallenstein says that Sertorio was ‘very vague’. Unfortunately, it is now impossible to resolve these contradictions because Sertorio died of a heart attack in June 1977. His family are in no doubt that it was the stress of the Plumbat affair that killed him. His son Stefano says, ‘The affair was a dirty business. My father was exploited as a front.’

SGM continues to prosper in Brussels and has long since got rid of the rest of the uranium mountain at Olen. In 1977 there was, in Europe, a severe shortage of uranium oxide and Denis Dewez was complaining that he could not fill an order for one kilogram, let alone 200 tons.

Asmara Chemie is no more. It went bankrupt in 1974. An official liquidator immediately went to Asmara’s wooden shack near Hettenhain to take possession of the company’s records, contained in a steel filing cabinet. Before he could examine them, someone got into the building and opened the cabinet with a blowtorch. The liquidator has no idea what, if anything, was removed. He has found no records concerning the Plumbat affair.

Fortunately, Asmara’s bankruptcy did not inflict serious financial injury on its principals. Herbert Scharf retired, handing over ownership of his surviving company Scharf Chemie to Wilhelm Bargon. Bargon says that he knows nothing about any uranium and is certain that the transaction did not go through Asmara’s books. ‘I would have known,’ he says. Scharf himself insist that he, too, knows nothing about the uranium transaction. Ill with a heart condition, he refuses to answer any questions. He simply says: “Talk to Schulzen.”

Herbert Schulzen is very happy to talk, but not about Plumbat. He now owns his own company, Kolloid Chemie, with smart new premises near Wiesbaden, and he still lives in a pleasant house and drives expensive Citroens. Schulzen will entertain visiting journalists beside his swimming pool with glasses of Coca-Cola. The pool is equipped with a machine for making waves which are the only ripples Schulzen wants to create. When we asked him about his part in the Plumbat Affair he said: ‘I’d love to tell you the whole story, but higher political considerations prevent me from doing so.’

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