Germany A Mountain of Moles

By JAMES O. JACKSON BERLIN

The dun-colored buildings on Berlin's Normannenstrasse that once served as headquarters for the Stasi, the East German state security service, may turn out to be the world's biggest molehill. As agents from the Western part of Germany search through the archives, they are discovering that over the years a burrowful of East German spies managed to infiltrate West Germany more thoroughly than Bonn had thought. Since unification day on Oct. 3, police have apprehended more than a dozen espionage suspects, and more arrests are expected. "The people in the West were foolish enough to believe that these files contained the story of only this ((Eastern)) side of the country," said Werner Fischer, the head of a citizens' committee that took control of the files during the interim period following the collapse of the Erich Honecker regime. "But there is plenty in there about the other side as well."

The biggest catch so far is Klaus Kuron, 54, a senior West German counterintelligence officer who was responsible for turning East German spies working in West Germany into double agents. When Kuron surrendered last week, he confessed that he had been a double agent himself, providing the Stasi with top-secret information over the past eight years, including the identities of those who had worked for him. The Stasi paid Kuron $2,500 a month for his disloyalty. "That is the highest goal there is -- to put an agent exactly where Kuron was," said a shaken Heribert Hellenbroich, a former chief of West German counterintelligence.

Nearly as shocking was the arrest of Gabriele Gast, 47, an employee of Bonn's espionage service, where she helped prepare a weekly top-secret intelligence summary for Chancellor Helmut Kohl. For six years she had passed copies to the Stasi, sometimes before Kohl himself saw the reports.

Fischer said the most explosive details are contained in the files of the department's secret-intelligence agency, the section run by the fabled Markus Wolf until his retirement in 1987. "That stuff is dynamite, and ((West German)) agents might not like what they find in it," said Fischer. The archives also contain videotapes of individuals in sexually compromising situations, financial records of Stasi-front business enterprises, and electronic surveillance transcripts that could become evidence in criminal prosecutions -- to say nothing of destroying political and professional careers. Berlin officials reported last week that Stasi bugging devices even turned up in church confessionals.

Kohl himself suggested that some of the Stasi material should remain secret. "We cannot permit a failed communist regime to posthumously poison the atmosphere in our country," the Chancellor said last week. "If there is evidence of a crime, then it should go before a court. But we should not start a witch hunt."

That could be difficult to prevent. Some former top Stasi officials may have fled to the KGB or other intelligence services with a wealth of incriminating information that could be used for blackmail or to besmirch the characters of prominent persons. Still others may be offering to keep quiet in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Wolf's successor as head of the intelligence agency, Werner Grossmann, was arrested on Oct. 3 but was freed the next day without being charged. Fischer said Grossmann had probably made an "arrangement" with the West Germans.

Wolf has avoided arrest, apparently by staying outside Germany. Some officials believe he will take refuge in the Soviet Union, perhaps to resume the career in intelligence he abandoned in 1987. Officials in Bonn said Kuron had been in contact with his handlers as recently as February and that the KGB tried to recruit him only a few days ago -- evidence that Wolf's old shop may still be in business, but at a new address.