THE W. GERMANS: EYES TO THE EAST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000300380029-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 8, 2004
• Sequence Number: 29
• Publication Date: December 26, 1975
• Content Type: NSPR

WASHINGTON POST
26 December 1975
Approved For Relea.~e,20. 4/09/28 : CIA-RDP88-01314R0
As in -the Uriitecl States, I
~" i1'` wiretaps here must he by
c'nnrt ro?rlpr? Rut n No a,: in the
.. I V I1/LCII JLa I.CJ, L({CI c t11';
evcr les wiretaps s tha
o t the ast
vernment claimed it never
I.n.r n( n .1y ilia;
B Michael Getter
BONN--lt'est Germany's,
foreign ? intelligence.,sc:r-'
vice -set up almost 30-years
ago with the quiet help and-
money of the U.S. Central? Intelhgenc:e agent v is t
struggling to' overcome some
of the same kind of public
einbarrassments.,;that, its
American counterpart has
suffered,
The West Germans are not
in the same league as, the CIA,
Other Cloaks,
Other [daggers= V1
however. By-. and.large %the -
surfaced here occasionally .
'
over the years
have been
smaller and less dramatic;.':
than those that have recently
dealt hammer blows, to the
image of the American'in-
telligence service
The West German public
and Parliament appear-to-
have a higher tolerance of
questionable activities, by
their own intelligence agen-
cies. It i5 areaction explained -
in part., no doubt;, by- the
generally?conservative? tilt:; of
the.adult population here and
by" this country a:;:: unique
. geographical position oil the
front line-with t onimunist
East -Europe
" Nevertheless the, .Atlantic
:Uliai~ce may now ' be paying a
price for the -peculiar,
problems that both of these
-huge intelligence services?are
becoming noted for.'Although.
cooperation is officially good,
there is evidence that the
extra dimension'1 of
cooperation ?- . between
American and West--German..,
intelligence may `now be
missing.
Since the widespread
disclosure.of CIA misdeeds by
11
Congress and the press, ex- ! time-,- in. espionage . in.'
perienced allied, specialists i vesttgations and , then
say they are convinced the' released. The West German
West Germans are holding; press, with the exception of an
back from Washington some occasional burst of attention, of their most sensitive in- normally by the weekly 11
formation for fear of public newsmagazine Der Spiegel,
disclosure. does not focus much attention
These specialists also on West German intelligence
acknowledge that the: for;some of the-same reasons
A6% ~M&
U.S. Army-. and the Bonn proven, it was also estimated
government claimed that the that there vert many more i
use of the stationery wasa dossiers ancF that those-?
versation was authentic.-The J destroyed, despite Ehmke's
identified., Next spring, the BND will be
Catching spies' inside West'. 20 years old But its history
Germany is' the responsibility - really goes back to World War
of the West German-. Ii, when Gen. Richard Gehlen
equivalent of the FBI, rather. ran Hitler's eastern-. in-
than the BND. German in- telligence service. When Nazi
terior secur - Germany collapsed,.Gehlep,-
ity officials, in a report last, some of his staff,. his
year, said they uncovered reputation, and his files on the.:.
twice as many spies in 1974 as Russians survived and-were
they (lid in 1973, despite ' . eagerly scooped up by the US.;
Unofficially, it is claimed In the - Cold ' War 'at-
that
are being caught or head of all German foreign
uncovered by the German intelligence in 1946 with `the:-
Office for the Protection of the.. blessing of the U.S Army and
Constitution, But the general the,- fledgling CIA, officially
view of Western officials here : established the following year.:
remains that the West Ger- West German irilelligence
mans are still losing this battleheadquarters then,, as now,. is
against the East, Europeans, in Puilach in the heart of
in still .larger numbers of-" In. 1955,"'._; , Gehlen"s
Many. of the scandals that",'
the BND by a Cabinet decree
'
have surfaced here are linked
.
to this-special problem. of the Adenauer government
The most jolting examples. rather than bylaw.
were the disclosure in 1961 The general remained at the
that the BND's chief of Soviet top until 1968, always unseen
counterintelligence, Heinz by the, public. He retained a
Felfe. was a Russian spy, and ... certain mystique and prestige
the 1974 resignation of federal-, until 1969;,; when disclosures
chancellor Willy Brandt after'. began to appear' that his
it was discovered that one of organization had been'out-
his top aides-Gunther distanced by the East Ger
Guillaume-was an East mans. The Guillaume affair
German agent. There have - ,, would later produce tales
been
episodes. Gehlen and charges that the
was not aimed at the BN < Gehlen was succeeded as
telligence-but rather at West under Gehlen in ..Hitler's
German internal security.. 4 eastern intelligence operation
Information on Guillaume was and went on to a career in the
available for many years but West German army.
was in the wrong files.and {
never properly pieced . Because of the.< heavy
together. American involvement in the
The aftermath. of the i 'BND's- birth, it is not sur-
Guillaume affair produced prising that it has much in
most of what is on the public common with the CIA.
- deal, in foreign intelligence
Americans have never gotten
over their suspicions. that the
West German federal in-
telligence service--commonly
known by its initials B ND- is'
too vulnerable to infiltration
by Communist: agents, par-:
example took place last year
when; an embarrassing
telephone conversation bet-
ween two top politicians
showed up verbatim in the
magazine Stern, -
The transcript was on U.S._.
0300380029_1
Horst Ehmke, the former
chief of Brandt's chancellory,
told the West German
Parliament last year that an
iinvestigdtion had turned up at
least 54 dossiers of well-known
West German politicians and
public figures secretly put
together by the BND during
the 1950s and 1960s in apparent
violation of its charter to
collect information outside
West Germany's borders only.. J
Although it has. never been
ticularly from East Germany..=
Thus the CIA is-also un-"
derstood to be holding back to
some extent. on the West'
Germans.
The fear of being
copromised is also said,'to
extend to?? the U.S.; National:.'.
Security'
few of?its.:latest' super-secret .4
code-breaking: and com
munications projects
BND which officially, admits
to more than`5,000 persons on ;:.
aggressiveness,, by the huge.'%
East;Germans having fled to
the ,_"= test< since 1949, with'
assimilation: no- problem for
the would-be spy among them,
the Bonn government has had
its-hands full. over the years
just,: trying to , protect itself'
it has:been widely but,
unoffi Tally 'estimated that
between 10.000 and t5-non':
East Germans- and Poles but.
open and democratic society
at any one time.. i
Efforts to uncover the
hordes', of .foreign spies '
operating in- West. Germany
causeoccasional . in
fringements of the civil. Fights
of the innocent. How much is.
hard to measure.
There are occasionally
reports of persons being
-arrested, held for quite some
TA
 only 'but have vogue Imes in
their 'charters' bout protec-
ting such intelligence in their
own country. Both not only
collect but assess what they
err'lect, unlike the British who
.id to leave the analysis to
-rother group. Until recently,
,h did not have very clear or
,. r ong lines of political control
by their governmentsc
There are also.-vast dif-
ferences primarily=- growing.
out- of West Germany's
position facing Communist
spies and armies. Unlike the
CIA's global reach, the West,' German service is- heavily-,,
concentrated' on!,-. Eastern
*ls urope. ieest Germany's
idULIUlA WL 3laa auaup W.ll~h1.L1 l.Fl'UJN .UUd'1'
number of so-called sources in
2,- December 19'l j
the massive East-West spy
P !t~saMLlfsoac 1ftle s es~eOt~4/09/28 : CIA-RDP88-01314ROO0300380029-1
now t a
the BND has an ex
traordinarily difficult target
to penetrate. No intelligence
service is really any better]
than its ability to infiltrate
agents or attract dissidents or
a lackluster West' German
intelligence product. may
the -same language and:I
cultural advantage in East
Germany as the .East Ger
in the,. Third. World.. may mans in West Germany. But
eventually foster