The Pretty Victim

One May day in 1953, a good-looking brunette walked into the Berlin headquarters of U.S. Air Force intelligence, batted her black eyes at a pair of intelligence officers and confided that she had some secrets to tell about the East German Communist government. Air Force intelligence was fascinated--not so much by Irmgard ("Gardy") Schmidt's secrets as by her more public assets.

Before long, Gardy Schmidt had one highly placed U.S. officer frisking about in hot-breathed deference to her wants. The officer, identified with embarrassed reticence only as "a high official in a highly sensitive position," got Gardy a job in the Order of Battle Section, the G-2 branch which keeps tabs on Soviet troops and military operations in East Germany.

Dark Hobby. In their fascination with her good looks, Gardy's superiors over looked for a time her unusual interest in such things as official papers and unlocked safes. Even after this embarrassing hobby came to light and Gardy was dismissed from the Order of Battle Section, Gardy's high official got her another job in a different office, but still at Berlin's Tempelhof air base.

To keep in touch with the Order of Battle Section, Gardy struck up a romance with German named Sturm who worked there. One velvety night in November, Gardy offered to marry Sturm if he would steal for her information on the workings of the Order of Battle Section and the names of U.S. agents in East Germany.

Instead, Sturm reported Gardy's proposition to agents of the U.S. Military Intelligence Division, who manufactured a bogus report on the Order of Battle Section and instructed Sturm to give it to Gardy.

One day last month, with the phony intelligence report secreted in a pack of cigarettes, Gardy headed for the Soviet sector of Berlin. When U.S. agents grabbed her, she fought, bit and gouged. Under questioning, she confessed that, under the code name of Stephania, she had been spying for the Russians from the day she stepped into Air Force intelligence headquarters 18 months before.

Squeeze Play. The authorities let it be known that Gardy's high-placed benefactor had been bundled off to another assignment, refused to name other U.S. officers she had (to use a euphemism) duped, and did what they could to keep alive the hope that U.S. intelligence in sensitive Berlin knows more about what is going on in Communist territory than it knew about activities in its own headquarters. "Careful investigation has disclosed," said an official spokesman, "that Fraulein Schmidt did not succeed in effectively obtaining any information." But she got $375 from the Russians for what she told them about the Order of Battle Section.

For that, Gardy Schmidt went on trial last week in a U.S. High Commission court, charged with espionage. She pleaded guilty, gave as her defense the story that the Russians had forced her into espionage by holding her fiance as a hostage. The prosecutor suggested a relatively light sentence, but the judge sentenced Gardy Schmidt to five years imprisonment. She seemed startled. "It is worse than death, I can't take it," she sobbed as they hauled her off to prison. Said the spy's mother, explaining everything: "My Gardy became a victim of men."

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