German intelligence

Felfe joined the Intelligence service (Der Sicherheitsdienst) in 1943. In August 1943 he was posted to Switzerland where, as head of the agency's important Swiss unit, his responsibilities included disseminating forged British pound notes^[2] 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^[1] with a mandate to organise subversive groups behind what was now becoming the allied front line.^[6] On 8 March 1945, Felfe allegedly participated in the mass executions of 263 hostages in reprisal for the assassination attempt on Hanns Albin Rauter.^[7] 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.^[8] As the German war machine fell back across Europe, Felfe asked the Gestapo to harass members of the Sorbian minority back in his country's Saxon heartland.^[8]

British intelligence

He was captured by the British Army in 1945, and spent the seventeen months from May 1945 till October 1946 as a British prisoner of war.^[1] He at some point had learned to speak English fluently. Under interrogation in July 1945, at Blauwkapel (near Utrecht),^[3] Felfe stated that he had been "an ardent Nazi".^[5] This was nothing more than the British could have determined for themselves by rummaging through the relevant German records, but the egotistical candor of his assertion was sufficiently unusual for the British to flag it in their own files as well as in the record of the interrogation passed along to the CIA.^[5] In 1946 he agreed to work for British Intelligence ("MI6") in Münster. His assignments included reporting on Communist activism at Cologne^[9] and Bonn^[2] universities. He continued to work for the British at least till 1949, but amid growing suspicion by his handlers that he might also be working for the Soviet intelligence services.^[5] By 1949 Felfe had also found time to study for and obtain a Law degree^[1] from Bonn university.^[6]

Soviet intelligence

At some point between 1949^[1] and 1951^[6] he was indeed recruited to work for Soviet intelligence. Subsequent CIA reconstructions of the narrative indicate that he might have been working less formally for the Soviets from 1948 or earlier.^[3] However, Felfe is believed to have become a "full blown" Soviet agent only in September 1951, following a meeting in late 1949 or early 1950^[3] with Hans Clemens,^[6] a former colleague from their days in German Intelligence.^[5] By this time, however, Felfe had already been supplying Clemens with information for the Soviets.^[5] Both Felfe and Clemens were from Dresden: the recruitment of both men was directed by the KGB office in Dresden.^[3] Later CIA reports noted that during the years directly following the war the Soviets had systematically targeted former agents of the Nazi Intelligence services, and that they had particular success in recruiting people from Dresden because of bitterness against the British and Americans resulting from the very high level of civilian deaths and suffering caused by the destructive fire bombing of that city in February 1945.^[5] The intense bombing of Dresden had been controversial even in London and Washington.

Felfe's Soviet handlers used for him the code name "Paul". Meanwhile, in April 1950 the British "dropped " him, "for serious oparational [sic] and personal security reasons".^[3] Agent "Paul" continued to work under the case officer Vitaly Korotkov for the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate until his arrest in November 1961.^[5] Even after his arrest he managed to brief the KGB about his ongoing interrogation, using invisible ink to make additions to his private letters.

Refugee screening

In 1950/51 Heinz Felfe was also working for the West German government in Bonn with the Federal Ministry for intra-German relations. The zones of occupation agreed upon between the principal allied leaders at Potsdam had by now crystallized in such a way that the Soviet occupation zone had been developed into a separate stand-alone state; for the first few years after 1945 under Soviet administration and, since the young country's foundation in 1949, as the German Democratic Republic (while still able to access the fraternal security advice and practical support of several hundred thousand resident Soviet troops). The frontier between the two German states later became famously fortified, but through the later 1940s and early 1950s large numbers of people moved with little impediment from East Germany to West Germany. Inevitably some of those making the crossing would turn out to have been sent across to gather information for the East German and Soviet intelligence services. Felfe was employed as an interrogator,^[3] tasked with screening, among others, former members of East Germany's quasi-military police service (Volkspolizei) and any identified associates arriving in the refugee camps.^[10]

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.^[2] That US-sponsored intelligence agency^[3] was the precursor to the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst) which would replace it in 1956. The West Germans were evidently not aware in any sufficient detail of the circumstances that had led the British security services to dispense with Felfe's service back in April 1950.^[3] Initial contacts between Felfe and the Gehlen Organisation had been choreographed by the very same Hans Clemens who had facilitated Felfe's recruitment by the Soviet Intelligence agency.^[2] Felfe's code name in his work for the West German agency was "Friesen".^[1][4] Many years later an angry fellow former West German intelligence officer testified that Reinhard Gehlen himself had used the alternative code name "Fiffi" for Heinz Felfe: the same witness stated that the same alternative name "Fiffi" was also used for the Soviet agent "Paul" by "Alfred", who at the time had been Felfe's KGB handler.^[8]

Soviet intelligence and West German intelligence

Felfe rose quickly through the ranks of the West German intelligence service. After his arrest in November 1961 it would be established that as a double agent his over-riding loyalty was to Soviet intelligence,^[3] but along the way the Soviet KGB and GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate / Главное разведывательное управление) were keen to preserve his cover and therefore enabled him to provide plenty of credible intelligence to his West German handlers. Subsequently declassified CIA analysis outlines four elaborate operations undertaken in the early 1950s by Soviet Intelligence, under the codes names "Balthasar", "Lena", "Lilli Marlen" and "Busch", designed to support Felfe's usefulness and credibility in the eyes of his West German bosses.^[3] According to Reinhard Gehlen's own memoirs, published in 1971, Felfe had provided an abundance of intelligence nuggets to close confidants of the West German intelligence chief.^[11] Within the West German service, Felfe rose rapidly to the relatively senior rank of Regierungsrat.^[2][5] In the end, either by 1955^[5] or 1958,^[1] he became the agency's head (or deputy head)^[3] of counter-espionage against the Soviets.^[2] His status within the service and the confidence of his senior colleagues enabled Felfe's free access to many of the secret files held by the federal government and, notably, its foreign ministry.

He later claimed that he had been heading up a West German spy ring in Moscow from as early as 1953 and that information passed to the West from that exercise had included the secret minutes from meetings of the (East German) ruling party's central committee, featuring alleged criticisms of high-ranking party officials close to the East German leader, Walter Ulbricht: they had also included the identities of ("expendable") KGB agents.^[12] 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.^[3][13]

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.^[2] He later recalled that he had been able to pass his handlers plans (in the end never implemented) for the creation of a European Defence Community and of the detailed diplomatic planning for the visit to Moscow undertaken in 1955 by the West German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer.^[2][6] Another career highlight during the 1950s was his success in integrating himself into a CIA operation to penetrate the KGB Headquarters in Berlin, which led to a CIA mole having to disappear in a hurry.^[3]

According to two exceptionally well-briefed pundits, Oleg Gordievsky and Christopher Andrew, he managed to keep the Soviets regularly up apprised in their major areas of interest concerning the CIA and other intelligence services.^[14] From the West German perspective, however, his treachery inflicted serious damage. He betrayed the leadership of the Federal Intelligence Service.^[5] Copies of Intelligence Service reports prepared for the Chancellor's office were shared with the Russians. He gave the Soviets the identities of ninety four West Germany overseas "field officers",^[8] including the agency chief in Bangkok. The identities of these officers were known to only a very few, even within The Service, but Felfe proved adept at finding their names by sounding out the relevant colleagues.

His senior position in counter-espionage left him plenty of opportunities to cover his own tracks on such matters as any links he may have had with the English spy Kim Philby. Subsequent CIA analysis notes that following his arrest Felfe was open and cooperative on questions to which his interrogators already knew the answers, but in contrast to other more garrulous agents unmasked and quizzed at around the same time, he took care not to disclose matters on which he judged his interrogators were not already well informed.^[5] The totality of his damage done must have far exceeded that which has yet come to light: nevertheless, when his apartment was searched more than 300 microfilms containing 15,660 images were found, along with 20 audio tapes.^[8]