Der Doktor

Somewhere in West Germany last week, two of the free world's top intelligence chiefs met in secret conference. One was pipe-smoking Allen Dulles, head of the U.S.'s Central Intelligence Agency. The other: shadowy Reinhard Gehlen, 58, head of West Germany's Federal Intelligence Service and a man who has been giving the Communists fits for nearly 20 years.

Under Cover Names. The Communists have tried hard to eliminate Gehlen. In a 1953 ambush on a lonely road near Munich, Gehlen escaped death only because his windshield was of bulletproof glass. Attempts to get at his wife and four children have been narrowly frustrated. Gehlen travels under a variety of cover names, and has not been photographed since the war years. Unable to do him bodily harm, the Communists scream that Gehlen is the high priest of a revived Naziism (he never joined the Nazi Party); the current Red line is that Gehlen is plotting the rescue of Mass Murderer Adolf Eichmann from the Israelis.

As a career officer in the Wehrmacht, Gehlen had charge of intelligence on the bloody Eastern front. Late in 1944 he reported that the Russians were planning a huge winter offensive, accurately predicted that it would crush the Nazis' Eastern armies. Hitler raged that Gehlen's report was "the greatest bluff since Genghis Khan," shouted that he should be sent to a lunatic asylum. Replied Chief of Staff Heinz Guderian: "Then send me there with him."

As the Allies closed in, Gehlen looked to the future. Deciding that the U.S. and Russia would be the next antagonists, he selected 50 cases of important documents from his files, hid them in Bavaria. Then he ordered 30 key officers of his staff to go underground and wait for word from him. He himself holed up in a mountain chalet, and several weeks later marched down, surrendered himself to U.S. authorities.

At the same time, he made them a proposition: he would make his hidden files and his staff men available to provide intelligence on the Soviet Union. The U.S. agreed, set up Gehlen and his men in a closely guarded compound outside Frankfurt. Exactly what Gehlen and his men did during the following years is still closely veiled, but a U.S. official says: "They were mostly useful in squelching various alarms; they knew a lot more about the Russians than anyone we had."

Sliding Doors. After West Germany became a sovereign state in 1955, the new government took over Gehlen's operation. For the past 13 years Gehlen has been established in the village of Pullach, some five miles from Munich, in a tree-shaded compound on the banks of the Isar River. Surrounded by a 10-ft. concrete wall, the compound looks like a housing development, with neat lawns and flower beds, lace-curtained villas and administration buildings. At each entrance are electrically operated sliding doors of steel mesh, with sentry boxes manned by armed and uniformed guards. Gehlen's own headquarters are separately enclosed by a steel fence, and his paneled, second-floor office contains only one symbol of his profession: a box of cigars labeled Geheimdienst (Secret Service). (In Washington, Allen Dulles also keeps a gag prop on his desk--a plaster statuette of a man with a cloak and dagger.)

Gehlen, like Dulles, has a rather professorial air. Of medium height, with a square, leathery face, blue eyes, a high forehead, outsize ears and a thin brown mustache, Gehlen's manner is a courteous blend of wit and erudition, but he has a steely core of devotion to duty and to Germany. The victories and defeats of the Gehlen organization are seldom publicized. He is known to have been instrumental in virtually destroying the 1948 Czech spy ring in West Germany and in duping the Soviets for two years with a highly placed double agent. It was Gehlen who managed the remarkable feat of planting an agent in the Cabinet of East Germany's Red boss, Walter Ulbricht, and when the Communists finally caught on, spiriting him to safety in the West.

Gehlen's group numbers some 5,000 fulltime members and another 5,000 occasional employees, all of whom refer to him as "der Doktor." The organization operates on two fronts: it collects and evaluates intelligence largely from behind the Iron Curtain and detects foreign agents operating in West Germany, who may then be either won over, fed false information or arrested. Since 1951, Communist agents to the number of 1,799 have been jailed in West Germany and another 16,500 detected but unpunished--mostly people who confessed voluntarily or proved that they had been intimidated or had done no damage.

Double Trouble. Gehlen agents come in four categories: 1) those who penetrate the various Red parties and administrations; 2) those who live near important target areas or in close contact with important Communist personages and can therefore make continuing reports; 3) itinerant travelers trained to keep their eyes peeled for specific subjects of interest; 4) double agents, i.e., spies who are ostensibly working for the Communists but actually work for the West. Gehlen does not engage in such activities as sowing unrest in East Germany or attempting to stir up riots or sabotage. He thinks it futile and dangerous to encourage insurrection if it is not to be supported by military help from the West. Germans are proud of Gehlen's professional competence. When he was leaving for the U.S. early last month, West German Defense Minister Franz-Josef Strauss was jokingly asked if he planned to buy a U-2 spy plane in Washington. Cracked Strauss: "What would we do with it? Our man Gehlen does things better--and he has never been caught."

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