Pig Spy Trial

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30178, 9 July 1963, Page 13

Pig Spy Trial

One of West Germany’s biggest spy trials will open before the Supreme Court in Karlsruhe today. Heinz Felfe, aged 45, a senior official of West German Intelligence, is accused of having been in Russian pay for 10 years.

He is alleged to have photographed hundreds of secret West German and Allied documents for Soviet Intelligence and betrayed numerous Western agents. Hans Clemens, aged 61, another West German Initelligenc official alleged to have been Felfe’s confederate, and Erwin Tibel. aged 60. a Cologne lawyer and alleged courier between Felfe and the Russians, are also charged with high treason. Felfe was arrested in November, 1961, after, it is said, he displayed too detailed a knowledge of the espionage activities of a convicted spy, Peter Fuhrmann. A wartime S.S. lieutenant

in the Nazi intelligence, Felfe rose in the West German intelligence apparatus of General Gehlen which worked unde, the United States Central Intelligence Agency until becoming an official of West German Intelligence in the mid 19505. Reuter said Felfe was arrested a week after a Soviet radio message addressed to him was decoded by West German authorities. The prosecution alleges that for 10 years Felfe gave the Russians important information about the operational methods, organisation and sources of the West German Intelligence Service, and handed over copies of topsecret documents.

The Russians paid him “far more” money than he received as salary from the Germans, the indictment says. West German newspapers have mentioned sums up to about £20,000. Felfe’s aides, Clemens and Tibel. were also members of the Nazi security police during the war.

The Cologne newspaper, “Deutsche Zeitung,” said that before Felfe got his job with the Government’s Federal Intelligence Service in 1951 he had worked for a short period with British Intelligence.