Double agent Heinz Felfe: Moscow's mole at the BND

The finale was staged cinematic. First, Heinz Felfe, head of the counterintelligence Soviet Union in the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), received an award: in a velvet-padded casket, he received the medal "Heiliger Georg" for ten years of loyal service. The badge was, as BND President Reinhard Gehlen explained, "a symbol of our work against Bolshevism."

Then the access took place: Three police officers stormed into the room and arrested the just-honored BND employee - for espionage for the Soviet secret service KGB. The outraged Felfe quickly tried to swallow a Minox film that contained secret information for Moscow, but a police officer was able to prevent the destruction of the evidence in spirit.

Thus ended on November 6, 1961 in Gehlen's residence on the BND site in Pullach near Munich, the career of the double agent Heinz Felfe. For ten years he had been extremely successful as a "mole" of the KGB in the BND and in its predecessor, the "Organization Gehlen" (OG). Since Felfe always had an overview of what activities of the KGB had been unmasked in the Federal Republic, he was able to warn his clients of impending arrests. Due to Felfes betrayal, the BND also failed to conduct successful counter-espionage operations.

It was the biggest defeat in the history of the BND. Sources had to be shut down, operations stopped. Gehlen was embarrassed, the German counter-espionage a heap of rubble. Felfes guilt, stated the Federal Court in 1963 in his judgment, "weighs already in view of the extraordinarily large extent of his long betrayal activity and the high importance of the material supplied by him overweight." Also Felfes "personal danger" had been great, "mainly because of his important official position, his high intelligence and his unscrupulousness." Sneakily, he had "crept in" and "unscrupulously" broken the civil servants' gossip. The court sentenced Felfe to 14 years' imprisonment and received 140,000 marks in wages from the KGB.

Unsuccessful MI6 spy

The crawl had been made easy for Felfe. Because the OG, emerged from the Wehrmacht department "Foreign Army East" commanded by General Gehlen during the Second World War, like to recruited old comrades from the SS and their secret "Sicherheitsdienst" (SD) comrades like Heinz Felfe.

In a biography published in September 2019, the BND chief historian Bodo Hechelhammer describes how the convinced Nazi Felfe, once the SD SD representative and employee of the Reich Security Main Office, became the top KGB agent.

After the war, Felipe, who was born in Dresden in 1918, first worked as an informer for the British secret service MI6, on whose behalf he spied on communist functionaries and members of the KPD in Bonn. His findings sold Felfe also to the precursor of the West German constitutional protection. When the MI6 shut him down in 1950, because he no longer provided useful information, Felfe sought a permanent job in the civil service, including the Federal Criminal Police Office. But his applications were unsuccessful.

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In his plight, Felfe asked an acquaintance from SD times for help: the former SS Hauptsturmführer Hans Clemens, who was already working as a double agent for KGB and OG. On September 1, 1951, Clemens arranged a meeting Felfes with KGB officers in East Berlin, where Felge committed to cooperation.

At the same time, Clemens helped Felfe to enter the upper floor. This succeeded over the former SS-Oberführer Wilhelm Krichbaum, formerly chief of the responsible for numerous war crimes secret field police. Krichbaum recruited personnel for the OG, preferably from former members of NS organizations. On 15 November 1951, Felfe began his service in the Karlsruhe field office of the OG.

Only four weeks later they discovered in the Pullacher OG headquarters negative file entries on Felfe, who made him appear suspicious as a communist supporter or employee of an Eastern service. Eloquently succeeded Felfe, to refute the evidence. Clarity on Felfe's past could have brought a query to MI6 or the "Berlin Document Center", where the NS personal files were kept. But since outsiders should not learn where Felfe had hired as a secret employee, asked the OG in these places not after.

Early warnings

In September 1952, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution warned the OG before Felfe: He was "morally flawed" and considered "politically unreliable". The file memo marked Gehlen as "seen" from. So he knew early on the suspicions against Felfe, but held his protective hand over him.

One year later, Felfe moved to the Pullacher headquarters. Soon a new mistrust of Felfe came up. One colleague noticed that intelligence operations went nowhere as soon as Felfe heard about it. But he was able to talk himself out again and again that his colleagues had prejudices against him.

The KGB supplied Felfe with game material as well as with genuine and important information that further elevated him in favor of Gehlen and the Chancellery. While such conspicuously effective counterintelligence aroused suspicion, no one had the idea that the KGB wanted to promote Felfe's career in the OG that way.

In September 1956, Felfe was invited by the CIA, together with seven colleagues of the now emerged from the OG BND travel the United States. During discussions at the CIA headquarters, the KGB spy got to know first hand the organizational structure and working methods of the US secret service. A CIA damage report later revealed that Felfe had betrayed around 100 CIA employees to the KGB, including 25 with plain names.

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Bodo V. Hechelhammer
Spy without Borders: Heinz Felfe - agent in seven secret services

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A Polish double agent informed the CIA in March 1959 that according to a KGB report, two participants in the BND group had been Soviet agents. Since the CIA assumed that the KGB mole was still rummaging in Pullach, she did not pass on the information to the BND, so as not to jeopardize its source.

Only after the Polish informant had left for the West did the CIA inform the BND of his statements. In early 1961 Gehlen was submitted a list of BND travelers from 1956. The BND chief typed, as an eyewitness reported, immediately on Felfe. The alleged second KGB spy among US visitors has never been found.

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Gehlen used an investigation team. Among other things, Felfes phone was monitored. The eavesdroppers listened as Felfe and Clemens talked about orders from their Soviet leader. So the investigators also learned that Clemens would send a KGB radio message by registered mail to Felfes Munich residential address. The mail was intercepted - evidence of Felfe's treachery that led to his arrest.

At the same time as Felfe, Hans Clemens was arrested in his apartment in Cologne. He was sentenced by the Federal Court to ten years in prison.

Felfe served his sentence in Straubing Prison. Already a year after his conviction, the KGB tried to get rid of his mole in an agent exchange. After tough negotiations, Felfe was released on 14 February 1969 at the inner German border crossing Herleshausen in the GDR. In return, 21 were sentenced in the GDR West spies and three imprisoned in the Soviet Union West German students.

The GDR state security helped Felfe to continue his once aborted law studies at the East Berlin Humboldt University pro forma and graduate as a graduate criminologist. In 1972 Felfe was appointed professor of criminology.

Felfe enjoyed a privileged life in the GDR. The Stasi got him a house, cars and even a wife. On behalf of the KGB he wrote his memoirs, which were published under the title "In the service of the opponent" in 1986 in the Federal Republic. Only two years later they appeared, adapted politically by the Stasi, also in the GDR.

Heinz Felfe, the "agent in seven secret services", had, according to his biographer Hechelhammer, "adapted to the times" like a chameleon and fulfilled "the expectations of his respective environment". He died in 2008 shortly after his 90th birthday.