West Germany the Counterspy Who Was a Spy

Hans Joachim Tiedge, 48, a top West German counterintelligence officer, had a drinking problem, and colleagues said he was still depressed over his wife's death three years ago. So no one in his office was surprised last Monday morning when Tiedge called in sick. But he did not respond to phone calls and, on Wednesday, his daughters reported him missing to the police. Even then, Tiedge's employers clung to the possibility that his personal problems might have driven him to suicide. It turned out to be wishful thinking. Last Friday at 10:25 a.m., under the heading of the official East German news agency A.D.N., the answer to the spy catcher's whereabouts rattled out on newspaper- office teletypes: "Hans Joachim Tiedge has crossed to the German Democratic Republic and asked for asylum."

Tiedge's defection to East Germany is probably only the beginning of West Germany's worst espionage scandal in a decade. For four years he directed the country's efforts to track, foil and capture East German spies. That background will be invaluable to spymasters in East Germany, who run an estimated 3,000 agents in West Germany alone. Says Hans Neusel, State Secretary for the Interior Ministry: "If Tiedge passes on all his knowledge, this will mean immense damage for West Germany's intelligence work." West German authorities believe that he may have helped East German spies evade detection. Police are still searching for three suspected East German agents, one of them the personal secretary to a West German government minister, who vanished earlier this month, possibly on Tiedge's cue.

Trying to limit the damage, the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl notified NATO allies of the security breach, while the Interior Ministry began an investigation. So far, politicians have refrained from blaming Kohl, and his government does not appear to be in immediate political danger. Gerhard Jahn, a member of parliament from the opposition Social Democratic Party, deplored the defection but added that he believed the government "doesn't want to hide anything."

For West Germans, the unanswered question was why Tiedge betrayed his country. By all accounts he was a diligent civil servant. He had served the Cologne-based spy-catching unit, formally called the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, for 19 years, the last four of them as head of the department dealing with East German spies. But after his wife died, his life began to go to pieces.