Heinz Felfe

Heinz Paul Johann Felfe (18 March 1918 – 8 May 2008) was a German spy.

At various times he worked for the intelligence services of Nazi Germany, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and West Germany. It is still not clear when he started working for Soviet intelligence, but it is known that between 1951 and 1961 he was a highly effective double agent, supplying important intelligence received in the course of his work for West German Intelligence to the Soviet Union. Two years later, in January 1933, the NSDAP (Nazi Party) took power in Germany, and in 1936, the year of his eighteenth birthday, Heinz Felfe became one of Germany's (by then) nearly four million Nazi party members

National socialist years 1936 was also the year in which Heinz Felfe joined the SS / Schutzstaffel (membership number 286,288). as part of a broader strategy to undermine the British currency internationally. Towards the end of the war he was promoted to the rank of SS-Obersturmführer (roughly equivalent to a First lieutenant) and, in December 1944, transferred to the Netherlands According to a credible 1969 press report much of his energy while in the Netherlands implied a personal rivalry with his father, a Dresden-based Criminal Investigation Officer of evidently overbearing character, who was by origin a member of Germany's Sorbian ethnic minority. and Bonn

Soviet intelligence At some point between 1949

West German intelligence Barely two months after his formal recruitment by Soviet Intelligence, Wilhelm Krichbaum recruited Heinz Felfe into the Gehlen Organization in November 1951. Within the West German service, Felfe rose rapidly to the relatively senior rank of Regierungsrat. Felfe also stated that he had provided the west with a detailed plan of the KGB headquarters in Karlshorst on the south side of Berlin, something which Gehlen loved to show high-ranking intelligence chiefs from his country's western allies.

As head of the department responsible for Soviet counter-intelligence, one of Felfe's longest running projects involved his leadership of "Panoptikum", an operation to uncover a "mole" believed to be operating at a high level within the West German Intelligence Service.

In the end, the target of "Panoptikum" would turn out to be Heinz Felfe.

After his arrest in 1961, the court found that during ten years as an active double agent Felfe had photographed more than 15,000 secret documents and transmitted countless messages by radio, or using one of his personal contacts. From the West German perspective, however, his treachery inflicted serious damage. He betrayed the leadership of the Federal Intelligence Service. The same day the West German intelligence services received a message from their US counterparts, "Congratulations. You found your Felfe: we're still looking for ours" ("Glückwunsch -- Ihr habt Euren Felfe entdeckt, wir unseren noch nicht."). but the available indications are that the CIC never shared their doubts with the CIA which was in some ways a rival operation. In the end it was a Soviet defector, a KGB major called Anatoliy Golitsyn, who in October 1961 provided the decisive information that led to Felfe. Looking back there were those who judged the intelligence that Felfe obtained too good to be true. On the other hand, right up till his unmasking in November 1961 Felfe retained the stubborn backing of the agency's powerful chief, Reinhard Gehlen, who is on record with his appreciation of the quality of Felfe's intelligence. There are also suggestions in retrospective intelligence analyses that the sheer extent to which West German intelligence was penetrated by the Soviets during the 1950s may have meant that there were more senior people in it ready to protect Felfe than will ever become public. Clemens received a 10-years sentence for treason.

On 22 July 1963 the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe found the three men guilty of spying for the Soviet Union. Their jail terms were set at 3, 11 and 14 years. The 14 year sentence went to Felfe. who had been convicted in the Soviet Union for spying because they had allegedly been caught writing down the license plate numbers of Soviet military vehicles on behalf of the CIA.

The exchange took place at Herleshausen, by then one of the few border check points still open along the inner German border that divided East and West Germany. It came about only following massive pressure from the German Democratic Republic which threatened to break off the secret political prisoner ransom scheme that the two Germanys had been quietly operating since 1964. It happened in the face of strong opposition from Gerhard Wessel, who in 1968 had taken over from Gehlen as head of West German Intelligence. The number of political detainees exchanged for him and the extent of the pressure the Soviets were willing to apply through their East German proxies in support of Felfe's release testify to his importance in the eyes of Soviet intelligence.

Following his release Felfe worked briefly for the KGB before returning to East Berlin where, in 1972, he became a Professor for Criminalistics at East Berlin's Humboldt University.

The memoir Heinz Felfe published his memoir in 1986 under the title In the Service of the enemy: Ten years as Moscow's man in the Federal Intelligence Service. The manuscript had been reviewed by Felfe's former employers in the KGB, and during a press interview he gave the estimate that perhaps 10-15% of what he had written had been removed at their request, while their acceptance of certain other passages had surprised him.

Evaluation Public disclosure of Felfe's activities damaged the reputation of the West German Intelligence Service, The intelligence services lost the confidence of the political establishment domestically and of the intelligence services of other countries, notably the United States, which now became much more cautious about information sharing. Even more damaging was the destruction of trust within the Bundesnachrichtendienst itself.

According to Heribert Hellenbroich (head of BND) on public TV, Felfe displayed a healthy measure of chutzpah while being an instructor to nascent spies of BND: During his explanation of secret communication via shortwave radio from KGB / Moscow to their European spies, he used actual radio traffic (encrypted number sequences in spoken German language voice) that in fact contained orders that Felfe himself was to carry out on behalf of the Soviets.

In March 2008 Heinz Felfe received congratulations from the Russian FSB (successor to the Soviet KGB) on the occasion of his 90th birthday.