Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND; Federal Intelligence Service) in 1956.
No longer responsible to the Americans but to the Chancellor’s Office
of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), Gehlen also started to de-
velop bilateral relations with other foreign intelligence agencies, includ-
ing those of Israel, Egypt, and Switzerland. The BND’s main personnel,
however, showed little change, and critics took particular issue with the
number of former SS officers who had been recruited. Moreover, as a
result of Heinz Felfe—a former SD officer who had become a com-
munist double agent and risen to dominate the BND’s counterintelli-
gence branch—Gehlen’s entire operation suffered an almost fatal blow.
Because of his close relationship with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer,
he managed to survive in office, but following his retirement, his suc-
cessor, Gerhard Wessel, initiated a series of major reforms aimed at
reducing the BND’s overly conspiratorial atmosphere.
To handle domestic affairs, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz
(BfV; Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) was es-
tablished in the earliest days of the FRG. So as to avoid any resem-
blance to the Gestapo, scrupulous attention was given to its restricted
mandate. But problems surfaced early on, particularly when its first
director, Otto John, mysteriously appeared in East Berlin and held an
international press conference. Like the BND, the BfV quickly became
a prime target for the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS; Ministry
of State Security), as evidenced by two highly successful double agents,
Hansjoachim Tiedge and Klaus Kuron. The FRG further created a third
intelligence unit—the Militärischer Abschirmdienst (Military Counter-
intelligence Service)—to shield the newly established Bundeswehr, but
it, too, did not remain completely immune from enemy penetration.
In the “other Germany”—the German Democratic Republic (GDR)—
the institutionalization of intelligence took a decidedly different course.
Although the MfS can be traced to a secret decree in 1950 by the
parliament of the GDR, the new security apparatus was in essence an
offspring of the Cheka, the original Soviet organization formed under
the chairmanship of Felix Dzerzhinsky. That meant not only a secret
police that functioned primarily as the “sword and shield” of the reign-
ing Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED) but close Soviet
supervision of all MfS operations for the immediate future. Over time,
the tentacles of the security apparatus under the leadership of Erich
Mielke extended into nearly every sector of GDR society. In statistical
xxxii • INTRODUCTION