Shaky Case

Was it mistaken identity?

From the moment West German Defense Minister Manfred Worner an nounced earlier this month that he had fired Four-Star General and Deputy Commander of NATO Guenter Kiessling on charges of homosexuality, the issue has been troubling. Last week the case against the general was weakened considerably.

What had begun as a titillating scandal was turning into a major political embarrassment for the government of Chancel lor Helmut Kohl.

Worner had reported that eyewitness accounts obtained in a special investigation by German army intelligence agents proved that Kiessling, a bachelor, had long frequented gay bars in Cologne. Un der German law, however, homosexuality is not sufficient cause for dismissing officers. Worner justified his action by arguing that Kiessling had denied his homosexual tendencies; if Kiessling was homosexual and sought to conceal the fact, he would be liable to blackmail.

According to Kiessling, Werner's charges were nonsense: he was not a homosexual and never had been. The gener al's statement gained credence when Cologne police announced that they had located a soldier bearing a resemblance to Kiessling who had often been seen at the bars in question, raising the possibility that the general was a victim of mistaken identity.

Then came the suggestion that he might even have been framed. According to Cologne's newspaper Express, a gay-bar patron swore that he had been offered $7,000 by army agents to testify that he had had sexual relations with Kiessling. The assertion was immediately denied by the West German military.

Called before the Bundestag's Defense Committee to explain, Worner admitted his decision to retire Kiessling had been influenced by a second factor: concern over "personal differences" between the German general and NATO'S supreme commander, U.S. General Bernard Rogers. Angered, Bonn's legislators launched an extensive nonpartisan investigation.

For Kohl, the problem comes at an awkward moment. In December, Economics Minister Count Otto Lambsdorff was charged with engineering a huge tax break for the Flick industrial conglomer ate in return for contributions to his Free Democrat Party. Kohl promised that Lambsdorff would resign if the case goes to trial. Even if Worner can prove his allegations, he too faces mounting pressure to resign. The loss of either minister would bring a shake-up in Kohl's moderate-right coalition government.