Spy Service

In the dangerous underground game of Cold War espionage, the Communists have a built-in advantage: an estimated 10 million party members in over 60 different countries, all of them potential agents. The West has many more potential friends --the oppressed inside the Communist empire--but since most of them are inaccessible or terrorized by the police, Western strategists rely most heavily on professional intelligence outfits--the U.S.'s CIA, Britain's Military Intelligence, France's Deuxieme Bureau, etc. Last week West Germany covertly confirmed what had long been widely suspected: Bonn, too, has its own apparatus of anti-Communist spies. Buero Gehlen, as the Germans call it, is now to become an official arm of the West German government.

Anonymous Prussian. Mere mention of the name Gehlen is enough to make U.S. intelligence chiefs in Germany clam up and try to look blank. For years both Washington and Bonn refused to confirm that the organization existed. But since the Communists themselves took to blaming "Gehlen agents" for acts of sabotage throughout Eastern Europe, enough facts have leaked out to suggest that Buero Gehlen not only exists, but that it may be one of the best intelligence networks in the business.

Something like 4,000 Gehlen agents, some of whom served as German spies in World War II, are at work in Europe and Russia. Some range as far afield as Cairo, Istanbul and Madrid. Their chief, former Brigadier General Reinhard Gehlen, 52, is a slight, tight-lipped Prussian with a passion for anonymity. A Wehrmacht regular, Gehlen rose in World War II to become head of the "Enemy Army-East," the super-secret intelligence staff that evaluated the reports of a vast network of German agents ranging the Eastern front from Leningrad to the Caucasus. Because his realistic appraisals of Soviet strength clashed with Hitler's wish-thinking, Gehlen often drew the Fuehrer's fire. Once, the story goes, Hitler read a Gehlen paper and exploded angrily: "What fool dug out this nonsense?" But events proved Gehlen's gloomy reports right.

No Picture. When the Red army smashed into the Reich, Gehlen fled west, taking his files with him. He made three copies of each of his records and deposited them at three different addresses. Later, when the Cold War came, U.S. intelligence officers found the Gehlen files invaluable. Gehlen was flown to Washington and returned to Germany with the secret understanding that he would rebuild his intelligence apparatus and set it to work for both the U.S. and Western Germany. Reportedly, his terms included that he never would have to operate against the "German interest," and he himself would be the judge of that interest.

Washington does not admit that the U.S. has financed Gehlen's activities (the preferred phrase is that he enjoys a "favorable relationship" with U.S. intelligence agencies). Buero Gehlen's headquarters, a clump of houses surrounded by barbed wire, is south of Munich and not far from Dachau. Outside the main offices the Stars & Stripes fly alongside the flag of West Germany. Gehlen himself stays out of sight. He is married and has four children; he loves fast cars and still has a student's fascination for tricky paraphernalia, obsolete codes and invisible inks. The only available photograph of Gehlen was taken when he was a colonel, twelve years ago.

Agents & Double Agents. Gehlen's agents, like their master, shun publicity. For security reasons, few of them know more than two or three other members of the organization. Their successes go unheralded (except by the squawks of pain from the Communists), but for their failures they may pay with their lives. In East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia, the Communists claim to have captured scores of so-called "American-paid Gehlen agents."

In the shadowy, secretive world of Reinhard Gehlen, it is often hard to distinguish legend from fact. Some Gehlen agents are ex-Communists as well as ex-Nazis; others have been double agents. But there is little doubt that the newly sovereign West German Federal Republic will inherit one of the most efficient intelligence organizations in the world.

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