Aspectos Éticos

operations against the KGB. Felfe had been a rabid Nazi, but was

also virulendy anti-American and anti-British for the terrible de-

struction of his beloved birthplace, the city of Dresden, during

Allied fire-bombing raids in 1945. Aware of this interesting schiz-

ophrenia, Wolf and the KGB went to work on Felfe, who was

recruited as an asset. The next step was to have Felfe infiltrate

the BND, accomplished by providing Felfe with a lot of low-level

(but nevertheless impressive-looking) material on the KGB and

the HVA. Gehlen enlisted the ex-SD man, and Felfe was off and

running. In a brilliantly-managed operation, Felfe was fed a

steady diet of material from the east that enhanced his credentials

as a brilliant counterintelligence officer. In some cases, the KGB

and the HVA deliberately sacrificed some of their lesser agents

in West Germany to further bolster Felfe's credentials. The Felfe

operation reached its pinnacle in 1958, when he was named head

MARKUS WOLF 181

of the Soviet counterintelligence section of the BND and the agency's liaison with the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies.

The later exposure of Felfe* as a KGB/HVA asset destroyed Gehlen, who was forced to resign in the ensuing scandal. Wolf then moved to his next operation, which would become the crowning achievement of his career.

The idea, basically, was to infiltrate the office of German chancellor Willy Brandt. Not by means of a seduced secretary or other low-ranking asset, but a full-scale mole who could get close to Brandt and obtain access to all the material that came across the Chancellor's desk. Wolf studied the problem for some time, emerging with a plan that illustrated the kind of patience nec- essary for long-term mole operations.

Wolf learned that in his pre-World War II days in the anti- Nazi underground, Brandt had been treated by a Communist doctor, Max Guillaume, who later fled Germany, eventually set- tling in East Germany after the war. He remained a committed Communist and his son Guenther, Wolf learned, had also become a devoted Communist. Wolf approached both men and recruited them for what he described as a "long-term operation" in West Germany. The first move was for Guenther Guillaume to become a refugee; he "fled" across the border and wound up in a refugee camp. The next step: in 1956, Max Guillaume wrote a letter to his old friend, asking him to give the younger Guillaume a job. The father regretted the son's decision to flee westward, but un- derstood and respected the decision. Could Brandt help the son of an old friend?

Brandt arranged for the younger Guillaume to be plucked out of the refugee camp and hired as an administrative assistant in Brandt's political organization. Not much of a job, but as Wolf had calculated, officials in the organization were aware that Guil- laume had been given the job through connections with Brandt himself, a circumstance that tended to enhance Guillaume's ca- reer prospects. Guillaume helped things along by demonstrating a talent for organization and administration. In 1969, he was ap- pointed private secretary to Brandt, and was switched on. A 13- year-long operation had now finally paid off; Guillaume was in a

* Felfe was blown by Mikhail Goleniewski, a Polish UB agent and KGB asset, in 1961. Arrested on espionage charges, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison. In 1969, he was exchanged in a spy swap, went to East Germany, and disappeared.

182 THE SPYMASTERS

position to see every secret that crossed Brandt's desk (including the rather interesting information that the Chancellor had been on the CIA payroll since 1947).

The Guillaume operation ended in 1973, when it was de- tected by a British GCHQ decryption (Guillaume was sentenced to 13 years in prison), but the damage had been extensive: All of West Germany's diplomatic and military secrets flowed to the HVA for four years. Wolf, the man behind the operation, by this time had become something of a legend in the espionage world, with a record unmatched by any other intelligence agency. He had emasculated his chief opposition, the BND; infiltrated more than 3,000 assets into West Germany, with another several thou- sand sleepers; balked a number of attempts to infiltrate his own organization; and topped off all that by planting a mole inside the West German Chancellor's office.

Western counterintelligence was aware of Wolf, but since he had never served as an agent outside his own country, it was dif- ficult to get a handle on him. Not until 1979, when his protege (and presumed successor) Werner Stiller walked into West Berlin did any of Wolfs opponents begin to get a real sense of the man. The Stiller defection was to severely dampen Wolf's operations, and he retired in 1987. But he was not ready for the rocking chair yet. Still close with the KGB, he became involved in an operation to replace East Germany's ailing leader, Erich Honecker, with a faceless "moderate" whom Moscow assumed would be able to rescue the faltering East German regime. One of Wolf's few op- erational failures, it was to be his last operation.

In 1990, following the collapse of East Germany, Wolf fled to Moscow under KGB protection. That shield was removed when the Soviet Union itself collapsed, and Wolf went back to Germany, proclaiming that despite the shattering events of the previous two years, he was still an unrepentant Communist. But the new Ger- man government had a long memory, and arrested him for es- pionage. Out on $150,000 bail, he filed a series of motions chal- lenging Germany's right to try him, setting off complicated legal arguments that continue to this day. In 1993, he finally went to trial.

Whatever his espionage talents, Wolf seems to have no ap- preciation for irony. In his autobiography, written in 1992, he complained bitterly about the inequities of the German legal sys- tem that put him on trial for espionage, apparently unaware that he was undergoing due process that none of his East German countrymen ever enjoyed.