DECLINE OF HONOR

An absorbing, melodramatic memoir by the ""Third Man"" in the Lavon Affair of the 1950s, a.k.a. Paul Frank, under which name he penetrated Egyptian security on behalf of Israeli military intelligence, posing as a German businessman and gun-runner. A man with an adventurer's intolerance for bureaucratic intrigue, he found himself caught in chafing fights between intelligence branches, but went ahead on orders to sabotage Anglo-American installations in Egypt, a plan geared to disrupt Nasser's Western ties. Not only did the plan flop, but the author says he was duped into joining a scapegoat campaign against the civilian defense minister, Lavon. When he decided to reveal that General Dayan and others had ordered disastrous moves without Lavon's knowledge, he found himself in a squalid jail on treason charges, and served ten years uplifting the other inmates. Regardless of certain incredible details--the first secretary in the German consulate in Tel Aviv turns out to be a rabid ex-Nazi--the book is probably a variety of cover story, However, the account of a clique of Ben-Gurion's ""old boys"" ganging up on Lavon is elaborated with a circumstantiality that will attract scholars as well as the sizable thriller readership the book merits.