BONN AND ITS MAY ENEMIES WITHIN: SPY SCANDALS BARE ITS VULNERABILITY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504230005-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: December 10, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504230005-6 /
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ON liZE1 AE i 0 December 1985
Bonn and. Its Many Enemies Within:
Spy Scandals Bare Its Vulnerability
/( - d7 JAMES M. II~AlQ1AM
sp?!al to no lWw Yat Tlmu
BONN, Dec. 7 - An undulating wall
of cement, steel and barbed wire sepa-
rates West and East Germany, but for
Communist spies the frontier is the
most penetrable in a divided Europe.
Several thousand agents of the East
German Ministry for State Security
are thought to spy on ministries and in-
dustries West Germany, pursuing an
estimated three-fourths of the Warsaw
Pact's espionage on NATO's most im-
portant European member.
Sharing a common language and cul-
ture with West Germany, they operate
with little apparent fear of detection or
arrest by authorities.
In recent days, a dosed-door parlia-
mentary investigative commission
meeting in Bonn has exposed some of
the vulnerabilities of an open society in
East-West espionage.
secret Hans-Joachim testimony disclosed that
edge, a senior com-
terintelligence official who defected to
East Germany in August, had betrayed
two Western agents who had infiltrated
;the inner circle of the ruling Commu-
:nist establishment in East Berlin. This
'revelation was quickly passed to the
press, provoking what amounted to an
unusual confirgratlon of its veracity.
"This is why we didn't want to have
,an inquiry in the first place," said mi.
chael Butz, an Interior
spokesman. "Too much info
can be leaked."
,Spies Believed Planted
Among the Immigrants
The chain of spy scandals that has
agitated Bonn for the last five months
has highlighted the peculiarities of a
sundered Germany. It is one of the
.curiosities of Germany's postwar divi-
sion that the strivings of Bonn govern.
ments to keep alive the Idea of a united
Germany have made it easier for Com-
munist agents to conduct their work of
political, military and industrial espio,
page.
. Last year, the Government of Chan-
cellor Helmut Kohl congratulated itself
that some 40,000 East Germans had
been legally allowed to emigrate west-
ward. Yet West German counterintelli-
gence officers consider it inevitable
that a new generation of so-called "per-
spective agents" - whose work will
hot show results for a decade - has
been seeded among the immigrants.
"It is not that we have more spies
than the United States or France," said
a Bonn Cabinet minister. "It is just
that here suspicion extends over mil-
lions of people. In an American city you
might write down the names of all spy
suspects in a notebook. You can't do
that here."
"There are three million Germans
from the D.D.R. living in West Germa-
ny," said an American intelligence
Officer, using the German initials for
the German Democratic Republic.
"How are you supposed to keep track of
all of them?"
Bonn also presses East Berlin to take
steps that will make it easier and
cheaper for West Germans to visit
friends and relatives in the East. Yet
Yearly, according to intelligence offi-
cials, several hundred visiting West
Germans are crudely blackmailed by
East German operatives who try to
convert them to agents when they re?
turn home.
Through staged traffic accidents or
threatened reprisals against East Ger-
man relatives, the visitors are pres-
sured to sign compromising contracts.
Some refuse; others sign and denounce
their actions on their return, to the
West. But a few succumb.
The Ministry for State Security also
lures unsuspecting university students
through mfreelauce "research"
that slowly enmesh them in espionage-
And so-called Romeos have had as-
tounding success in wooing middle.
t e Bonn star secrets.ries into betraying
Behind the Treachery,
`A Bundle of Motives'
Georg Pohl, who heads a Bonn-based
association that advises businesses on
combating espionage, said "a bundle of
motives" draws West Germans into
spying for the East. He cited resent-
ment at missing a promotion, alcohol-
ism or other personal debilities that in-
vite blackmail,' and the elementary
wish to lead a more exciting life.
?The M.F.S. doesn't pay as much as
it should for what it gets," said Mr.
Pohl, using the German initials for the
i Ministry for State Security. "Money
isn't the main reason that people spy.
You don't make money through espio-
nA broad range of West German espio-
nage experts agreed that few of their
countrymen become spies out of idea
logical conviction. The 36-year-old Fed-
eral Republic has had nothing com-
parable to the cabal of Cambridge-edu-
cated British intellectuals who became
spies for the Soviet Union through a be-
lief in the superiority of Communism.
But a high-ranking West German in-
telligence officer observed that Switz-
erland, another nation where German
is spoken, was far more resistant to in-
filtration than his country. He pin-
pointed the division of Germany, its
94azi past and a feeble West German
national consciousness as reasons for
the countrys's vulnerability.
"We notice that if the D.D.R. is
rather successful here, compared to
Switzerland, it is because of the ab-
senc a of an identity with the state in the
Federal Republic," he said.
The defection of Mr. Tiedge, a 19.
year veteran of West Germany's coun-
terintelligenee agency, may be a case
After a detailed investigation, Barn's
Interior Ministry has oonchuded that
the Berlin-born Mr. Tiedge was not a
long-term "mole" planted in the Fed-
eral Office for the Defense of the Can-
stitution in Cologne. Rather, according
to an official privy to the investigation,
Mr. Tiedge, a 48-yearold widower,
made an impulsive decision to flee a
burden of mounting debts and responsi-
bility for three troubled teen-age
daughters who were drifting Into the
Cologne a sc6ne He had also Just
been denied
promodw
In a letter written from East Berlin,
the hard-drinking Mr. Tiedge said he
1had absconded because of "a hopeless
personal situation."
Did the Traitor Warn
Three Agents to Flee?
Even so, Mr. Tledge's abrupt defect
tion is generally considered the gravest
operativee blow to West German intelli-
gen since 1981 when Heinz Felts, an
officer in charge of gathering inteW-
gence on the Soviet Union, was re-
vealed to have been working for a dec-
ade for the K.G.B., the Soviet Intelli-
gence agency. Mr. Tiedge's knowledge
of West Germany's methods of coun-
tering Warsaw Pact spying will make
Communist offensive efforts here
much easier.
Interior Ministry investigators be-
lieve that Mr. Tiedge, who had been re-
sponsible for tracking East German
spies, warned three highly placed Com-
munist agents in Bonn to flee: Ursula
Richter, a 52-yearold secretary in an
organization of former refugees; Her-
bert Whiner, a senior official in a foun-
dation close to the liberal Free Demo-
cratic Party, and his wife, Herta-As-
trid Wiliner, a long-serving secretary
in the Chancellor's office.
The same officials assert that Mr
Tiedge was unaware that Sonja Lune-
burg, a secretary to Economics Minis-
ter Martin Bangemann, was a spy. In-
filtrated into the Federal Republic in
the 1900's under the identity of a West
German who had moved to the East,
the 80-year-old Miss Ltineburg set, off
the Bonn spy scandal by failing to re-
turn from vacation on Aug. 2.
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 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504230005-6
Since Miss Luneburg was not under
surveillance or suspicion, her dlnp-
pearance remains a mystery. East
German diplomats have privately told
high-ranidng members of the Kohl
Government that she did not work for
the Ministry for State Seedily. "DO.
Just be arse they say tit doesn't
mean It s the truth," ace intelligence
official said.
Investigators are Inclined to bellows
that Margaret. Bohe+? a secretary in
the offices of President Richard vm?
Weizoilcker, had been working for the
K.G.B. for 18 years. She was arrested
an Aug. 25 after having been observed
meeting in Copenhagen with a man
called Pram Becker, a Gorman-sposk-
ing agent who hod bass lover. err
cording to 015ciai&
The Soviet Union, Poland and
Cz echosiovakia have been known tore-
cruit agents from German-speaking
minorities In their own' count rlee fist
spying in West Germany,
Spying Scandal Bring'
Fall of a Chancellor
The Tiedge scandal has lllumiaated
what critics contend are
wealmen In
Week Germany's Intelligence Prods
dares. One has been a reluctance of
Bonn governments to take measures
that would seem to discriminate
against settlers from East Germany -
like Mr. Willner, a veteran of the Nazi
SS and the East German Communist
Party.
The immigrant issue came dramati-
cally into focus In 1974 when Chancellor
Willy Brandt was forced to resign after
an East German agent Gtinter Guil-
laume, an immigrant from East Ger-
many, was discovered in his entourage.
An investigative commission recom-
mended in. a post-mortem report that
resettled East Germane should be sub.
ject to more thorough security docks.
But Chancellor Helmut Scbimidt's left-
of-center Government refused to en-
dorse the recommendation, which re.
maimed a dead letter.
"The problem for us is that we can-
not put all the people who come from
the D.D.R. under a blanket of mis-
trust," commented Gerhard Baum, a
former Interior Minister in ,the
Schmidt Cabinet and a leading figure in;
the Free Democratic Party.
East Germany's Counn mist rules,
by contrast, go to oxsraardlnary
lengths to seal on sonottivsly placed at-
ficials from any contacts with the
Went. Ranking members of the Minis-
try for State Security, for example, live
in luxurious gbstta and are watched 21,
hours a day.
"There is no member of the People's
Army who has a relative in the Federal
Republic," observed Heisbert Helleo-
broich, the former head of the Office
for the Defame of the Constitution.
?Tbey we the danger. They are Ger-
man. This makes them bard to pens.
ttate."
Low Morale Said to Hurt
Intelligence Services 0
According to various specialists, low
moral* in the West German Intelli-
a
e community the two
problem Traditionally,
main hntelllgsnoe services have not had
and governments have to how
late themselves from what have be.
come chronic problem areas.
Since the fending of the Federal Ra-
pubiid, every bead of the Office for the
Defbne of the Constitution has do.
parted because of scandal. Mr. HefeD.
broicb, who had been promoted to take
over the Federal Intelligence Service,
would have been the ftrg exception to
this rule, but he was diamiwd for hav-
ins allowed Mr. Tiedge, a clear sa
curity- risk, to keep his past.
Morale was not heightened, experts
maintain, by the Kohl Government't
impulse to play down the Tledge span.
dal to protect diplomatic re4tiaoa with
East Germany. As the affair was pealr,
ing, From Josef Strauss, the powerfal
Bavarian President, said at a news
conference in the East German city of
Leipzig that intelligence services
mostly reported nonsense.
Colleagues of Interior Minister Frie-
drich Zimmermann contend that an ex.
cessive concern for individual privacy
- embodied in legislation from the
Brandt-Schmidt era - has inhibited
camterespionage. One ministry offi-
cial noted that such scruples have pre
vented photographs from being at-
tached to the dossiers of secretaries
and others who undergo security
checks.
"So if you want to put somebody
under surveillance," this official said,
"you have to first go and get a photo.
graph of him so that the people watch.
ing him know who he is and what he
looks like.,,
This official also argued that the tromely strict West German lon the egislation of telephones and mail
Interception overly Iimits such activi-
ties. The law stipulates that if a tele-
phone tap does not lead to prosecution
the person concerned must be informed
of the action; rather than provoke civil
rights scandals, the official said, the
ministry errs qn the side of prudence.
New Chief Is Expected
`To Shake Things Up'
Some critics from friendly NATO
services contend that a bureaucratic
mentality pervades West German in-
telligence, and they welcome the ap-
pointment of the hard-driving Ran*.
Georg Wieck, a professional diplomat
with experience in the Soviet Union, to
head the Federal Intelligence Service.
"Pullach is a four-and-a-half-day-
week place," a NATO tots ligssce offi`
per complained, using the name of the
service's headquarters. "Yoe 'should '
try to get a phone call through there as
a Friday afternoon. Wieck will shake
things up" .
Western experts, regularly warn
against a tendency glamorize the
East German Ministry for State Se-
curity. But over the years the ministry
has enjoyed political backing, conti-
nuity in its leadership - Gen. Markus I
Wolf has led its intelligence-gathering
wingsiu~ 150O's - and status in
the
hierarchy.
"They have a stricter discipline than
the army or the police and live in their
own world segregated from the peo-
ple," commented From Loeser, a high-
ranking East German Communist who
defected In 1981. "The frishteo
is that over the years time has been a
tremendous growth of the machine of
the secret police You can visually on
that by the number of huge building
the secret police have built in East Ber-
lin."
In their contest with the West, the
East German services have suffered
setbacks - most spectacularly in 1979
when Werner Stiller, a top-ranking offi-
cer in the Ministry for State Security,
defected to West Berlin. But the minis-
try's cam mentality and. Marxist-
Laoioist indoctrtnation dearly enable
many East German officers to ward elf
the temptatiaos of the good life in the,
West
..There is such a thing as Ideological
motivation," an American intdlhgano..
officer warned. "You and I don't be-
lieve in it, but it exists."
d
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504230005-6