president, the structure of his organization remained fundamentally
intact. Moreover, with few oversight mechanisms in place and an-
swerable primarily to the Chancellor’s Office, he essentially retained
the same freedom of action as under the Americans. Despite a critical
article by Sefton Delmer in the British press that portrayed Gehlen as
an unreconstructed Nazi, he maintained cordial relations with Ger-
man journalists and even had some on the BND payroll. Reflecting
the conspiratorial tone that prevailed within his organization, Gehlen
(code name dr. schneider) impressed many with his aloofness and
cultivated aura of mystery.
Gehlen kept the BND’s main focus on the German Democratic Re-
public, which had already launched a series of high-level disinforma-
tion and penetration operations. Yet Gehlen, convinced that postwar
British intelligence was seriously compromised, ignored repeated
warnings that the BND contained enemy operatives as well. The
revelation in 1961 that Heinz Felfe, chief of the counterintelligence
section for the Soviet Union, was a longtime KGB agent came as a
severe blow. Not only were the BND’s inadequate vetting procedures
brought to light but its entire network of agents in Eastern Europe
was destroyed. Remarkably, Gehlen survived in office. Adenauer
again extended his supporting hand and resisted calls for Gehlen’s
resignation.
Soon that relationship took a different direction. During the Spie-
gel Affair the following year, Gehlen’s name surfaced as the likely
source of a warning to the magazine Der Spiegel of an impending
police search for incriminating material. At one point, Adenauer
wanted his intelligence chief arrested but was told that insufficient
legal grounds existed. The chancellor’s advanced age and imminent
departure from office prevented him from pursuing an investiga-
tion, while Gehlen’s role remains unclarified. Despite relinquishing
most of the BND’s daily business to two close associates, Gehlen
continued to serve under Adenauer’s successor, Ludwig Erhard, who
showed little interest in intelligence matters. In 1967, the new chan-
cellor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, although skeptical of the BND reports
he received, nevertheless extended Gehlen’s tenure beyond the man-
datory retirement age. Gehlen left the BND in 1968 when extensive
reforms advocated by the chancellor’s state secretary, Karl Carstens,
became effective. Ignoring his own admonition to colleagues that a
GEHLEN, REINHARD • 131