International Spy-ring scandal rocks Schmidt

Press, 14 December 1977, Page 8

International Spy-ring scandal rocks Schmidt

NZPA-Reuter Bonn The revelation that a spy ring gave East Germany hundreds of top-secret documents detailing West German and Western military 7 plans has rocked Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s Government.

Several newspapers have) described the spy scandal as| the biggest ir post-war Ger-! man history, and Opposition! politicans have called for| drastic consequences at high levels. In Brussels, a spokesman I for the North Altlantic Treaty Organisation said it was evaluating the damage! to the West’s security and! trying to offset the consequences. The key figure in the affair was a secretary in the; Defence Ministry, Mrs Re-| nate Lutz? who had access! to a safe containing the

documents, many of which had the highest security classification. They included the pl.ns for N.A.T.O.’s response in any military crisis and its evaluations of the strengths and weaknesses of Eastern Bloc forces. They also detailed the future development of the West German armed forces. Mrs Lutze copied the documents — some of them hundreds of pages long — on an office duplicati ig machine and arranged for them to be passed to East Germany, the newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine” has reported. The Defence Ministry has

said the newspaper’s information is substantially correct, adding that the affair was “exceptionally serious.” The Parliamentary Defence Committee has asked the Defence Minister (Mr George Leber) to appear at a special session today to brief it on the case. Mrs Lutze, aged 37, who | came to Bonn from East (Germany, was arrested in ijune, last year, in a swoop lon suspected spiesTwo other Defence Ministry employees, her husband. Lothar-Erwin, and Juergen Wiegel, were detained at the same time and will face trial with her, probably early Inext year.