Scandal a prelude to W. Berlin election

Press, 30 December 1988, Page 28

Scandal a prelude to W. Berlin election

NZPA-Reuter West Berlin It has all the ingredients of a spy novel and just the right setting. West Berlin’s latest political scandal has turned the spotlight on the city’s security service and Interior Minister just weeks before a January 29 election and given what threatened to be a dull campaign an exciting new twist.

“It’s all there,” said one Western diplomat, “Allegations of bugs and agents, the political intrigue and it’s all happening in Berlin — the Cold War capital of espionage.”

The row surfaced when the opposition Social Democrats alleged last month that West Berlin’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution recruited former East German, Steffen Telschow, to quiz Erich Paetzold, an S.P.D. member of the city’s Parliament.

Aware the election was not far off, journalists and politicians of all hues pounced on the story. It grew apace.

The Left-wing newspaper, “Tageszeitung,” said the O.P.C. infiltrated its offices, bugged the building and intercepted mail. The S.P.D. said the service compiled special reports on members. The Left-wing Alternative Liste made similar charges. The Interior Senator (Minister), Wilhelm Kewenig, who controls the service, dismissed the whole affair as electioneering. The O.P.C. was “not a mixture of a play group and madhouse,” he said.

He denied the O.P.C. spied on the Tageszeitung. The service did keep files on West Berlin Communist Party members’ contacts with S.P.D. politicians. This was legitimate but could have been misinterpreted, he said. The Christian Demo-

crats (C.D.U.), senior partners in the ruling coalition with the liberal Free Democrats (F.D.P.), said opposition tactics over the scandal showed they lacked firm policies and could find little else to attack.

The S.P.D., under its West Berlin leader, Walter Momper, countered this by saying it would much rather be talking about the city’s high unemployment and severe housing shortages. But it refused to let go of the scandal and eventually the Government agreed to launch a rare parliamentary inquiry into the activities of the O.P.C. — a counterespionage and antisubversion agency with 330 employees. The O.P.C. chief, Dieter Wagner, told the investigating committee last week that Mr Telschow, a former East German political prisoner, had been recruited in September to observe the “alternative

scene” and had met Mr Paetzold.

But Mr Telschow was not asked to spy on the politician, Mr Wagner told a public session of the committee. Most of the hearings are being held in secret in a bug-proof room at city hall.

Mr Telschow told the committee French agents in West Berlin passed him to the O.P.C. after he got to the West in February. When the story broke the 24-year-old, who sported a head band and a casual leather jacket during the hearing, at first denied links with the O.P.C. But he told the “Tageszeitung” this month the West Berlin service had asked him to find out who Mr Paetzold’s source of information was in the O.P.C.

Most political analysts expect the C.D.U. and F.D.P. to retain power when the divided city’s 1.5 million voters go to the

polls on January 29. Most of the parties do not start their official campaigns until the first week of 1989.

The analysts do not see the scandal denting the image of the Governing Mayor, Eberhard Diepgen, too badly, partly because the subject is so esoteric.

But the analysts are not so sure about Mr Kewenig’s future, with some saying he could be dropped from a future C.D.U. Cabinet.

A lawyer and C.D.U. member, Mr Kewenig, aged 54, is no stranger to controversy in West Berlin’s political hothouse. During the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meeting in the city in September, which was marred by at times violent demonstrations, he sparked a row by saying police efforts sometimes took precedence over press freedom.