W. German Espionage Official Vanishes During Spy Scandal

An official of West Germany’s counterespionage unit has disappeared in the midst of a spy scandal in which two government employees and a lobbyist have been implicated, the chief government prosecutor’s office said today.

Alexander Prechtel, a spokesman for Chief Federal Prosecutor Kurt Rebmann, said the official has been missing since Monday.

Prechtel declined to identify the missing official but said he works in the Cologne-based Constitutional Protection Office, a federal investigation agency. Among its duties, the office handles West Germany’s counterespionage activities.

The mass-circulation Bild newspaper of Hamburg reported that the missing official may have fled to communist East Germany.

Bild said that the missing man’s office was in charge of counterespionage aimed at Ursula Richter, the missing lobbyist being investigated in connection with the suspected spying.

Her sudden disappearance, as well as that of two government employees, has sparked fears of a new East German spy network that could embarrass Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s coalition government.

A missing army administration office employee, identified only as “Lorenz B.,” is under investigation for suspicion of being connected with the suspected East German ring, Prechtel said.

Bild said Lorenz B., 53, has been missing for three days. It said he once worked as an elevator repairman in the top-secret Eifel Hills bunker which the Bonn government would use in the event of nuclear war. It added that authorities were investigating the possibility that secrets about the bunker were handed over to East Germany.

Richter, 52, disappeared after telling fellow employees at an exiles’ lobbying group in Bonn Friday that she was taking a one-week vacation.

Authorities say Sonja Lueneburg, 61, a longtime aide to Economics Minister Martin Bangemann, also is being investigated in connection with spying for East Germany. She vanished Aug. 6.