SOUTH AFRICAN'S SPYING SEEN AS PAINFUL BLOW TO WEST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000202120001-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: June 11, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000202120001-5
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE - I
WASHINGTON POST
11 June 1984
South African~s Spying een as
By Thomas O'Toole
Wallington Post Staff Writer
A slowly unraveling episode of Soviet `espi-
onage involving a South African Navy commo-
dore jailed for treason is being characterized by
intelligence officials as one of the most painful
blows against the West in the last 20 years in
its "looking-glass" match with the Soviet
Union.
Commodore Dieter Felix Gerhardt was de-
tained by the FBI 18 months ago on a flight
from Syracuse, N.Y., to New York City and
immediately taken to Cape Town where he
and his wife, Ruth, were charged with treason.
After a secret trial, he was sentenced in De-
cember to life imprisonment, his wife to 10
years in prison.
At the time of his arrest, Gerhardt was com-
mandant of the Simonstown Naval Station in
South Africa where he had routine access to
the secret underground Silvermine communi-
cations center. The South Africans alleged that
he had worked for the KGB, the Soviet secret
intelligence service, since 1965.
"Gerhardt is no ordinary spy. He is, in fact,
the first flag officer of any country with ties to
NATO who has been turned by the Soviets
since the start of the Cold War," one ranking
U.S. intelligence ? official said.. "Gerhardt has
been a member of the Club' where there is a
lot ,of camaraderie and information exchange
to which he had access. There is no tellin
what this man might havepicked u over the
years 4or the Soviets.
During his naval.career, Gerhardt is said to
.have had access to most of NATO's electronic,
intelligence, almost, all of the surveillance in-;
formation pouring out of Silvermine and -se-
crets of ,NATO military and computer codes
and when and why these codes were changed.
Gerhardt also is said to have had access to
the newest weapons being put into service by
the British Royal Navy, pointing up a,relative-
ly new phenomenon of Cold War espionage:
when a potential enemy hurts one western
country, he can hurt all.
One U.S. naval intelligence official calls'
Gerhardt's "one of the most extraordinarv ca-
!one
reers in modern espionage histoor ."
What follows is a narrative of how Gerhard
t borne a viet spy how he rose through the
ranks of the South 'African Navy. Although
incomplete, the story has been, Pieced together
from interviews with current and former U.S.
naval intelligence officials. British_gnd uth
African intelligence authorities and sources
close to the National Security Agency, the CIA
and the FBI.
Gerhardt, born in 1936, entered the South
African Navy at 20 as a commissioned officer
and was posted to the Royal Navy's Engineer-
ing College at Plymouth, England, where he
showed skill in electronics and apparently was
first contacted by the KGB. The South Afri-
cans claim that he was "turned" by the Soviets
in 1965, a year or so before his marriage to
"Ruth," an alleged KGB agent whom he mar-
ried to help his cover.
Gerhardt served as South Africa's naval at-
tache in London and frequently visited naval
bases in Britain and the United States to learn
the latest developments in all phases of elec-
tronic sea warfare.
In the early 1970s, because of South Africa's
apartheid racial policy, NATO imposed an
arms boycott, the U.S. Navy stopped making
ports-of-call in South Africa and the British
limited their access to Simonstown Naval Sta-
tion.
Just before :becoming commandant of Si-
monstown in 1981, .Gerhardt served on the
',planning, 'and operations ;staff in Pretoria,
where he was privy to all South African mil-
itary communications, including those that
would reveal South African military operations
against Angola; whose Marxist government
openly had enlisted Soviet and Cuban military
paid.
roc~T~Y4~'
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000202120001-5