Bonn Official Missing, May Have Fled to East : Held Key Anti-Spy Role; 3 Others Disappear; Kohl Says E. Germans Direct Espionage Ring

West Germany announced Thursday that a senior official of its counterintelligence service has disappeared, raising fears that he may have defected to East Germany.

The reported disappearance of Hans Tiedge, a departmental chief in the Cologne headquarters of the counterintelligence organization, came as that agency was already busy searching for three other missing people, all suspected of spying for East Germany.

The disappearances prompted Chancellor Helmut Kohl to accuse East Germany of masterminding an espionage ring involved in this latest West German spying scandal. In a Thursday television interview, Kohl warned that the machinations of East German spymasters are straining relations between the two countries, contacts that in recent months had been improving.

‘Panic Move’ Suspected

Although there was no official word that Tiedge had actually defected to East Germany, security sources in Bonn expressed fears that Tiedge, who was in ill health and had personal difficulties, had broken under the strain and defected in a “panic move.”

“If it turns out that for whatever reason he is in East Germany, this would be an absolute catastrophe for West German intelligence,” one of the sources said.

Authorities said that Tiedge, who is in his 50s, failed to report for work Monday after calling in sick and that he has not appeared since.

They described him as a key figure in the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is this nation’s counterintelligence agency. His responsibilities included tracking down East German spies at work in the West.

In his job, authorities said, Tiedge would have had unparalleled knowledge of suspected Communist agents and of Western operatives assigned to track them down.

Hans Neuser, an Interior Ministry official, said Thursday night on television that the government is deeply worried about Tiedge’s disappearance but that so far it sees no connection between it and the disappearances of the three other missing West Germans suspected of being spies.

The Cologne Daily Express, however, said authorities suspect that Tiedge, who holds the equivalent rank to colonel, may have tipped off one of the three, Ursula Richter, that she was under investigation by the counterintelligence service.

Richter, 52, is a secretary in the federal office dealing with refugees from the East. Also missing are Sonia Lueneburg, 61, secretary to Economics Minister Martin Bangemann, and Lorenz Betzing, 53, a Defense Ministry employee who is reported to be a friend of Richter’s.

Security officials say that Richter may have served as a controlling East German agent inside the Bonn government, supervising the work of other spies. The press here has speculated that Richter was under surveillance by West German authorities and that this became known to her East German masters, who then ordered her to flee behind the Iron Curtain.

First Acknowledgement

Thursday’s television appearance was Kohl’s first acknowledgement of the burgeoning espionage affair, which many observers are calling the worst since Guenter Guillaume, a senior aide to former Chancellor Willy Brandt, was arrested for spying in 1974. Guillaume’s conviction led to the resignation of Brandt as head of the West German government.

The chancellor said that the cases of the missing West Germans indicated that there are long-serving Communist agents planted inside the Bonn government.

Kohl declined to discuss details of the search for the missing people, but he said that if they are proved to have been spies, relations between the two Germanys could be jeopardized.

“Of course, it is a strain,” he said in reply to a question. “This is not our first experience of this kind. When spying and eavesdropping is going on in our ministries, in our parties, in business organizations and trade unions--indeed, wherever important decisions are taken--this inevitably creates mistrust.

“And this shows--there’s no point in beating about the bush--that the assurances of good-neighborly relations and the reality are often far apart. We really have to look at the difference between the propaganda and the real thing.”

Kohl admitted that it would be extremely difficult to root out all of the intelligence moles and sleepers that may have been planted over the years in West Germany.

“There is no point in having any illusions about this,” he said.

Economics Minister Bangemann, Lueneburg’s boss, is the leader of the Free Democratic Party, a coalition partner of Kohl’s Christian Democrats. His ministry is privy to many secrets about the country’s economic operations and its politics.

Richter was working in an office that deals with the politically volatile subject of people expelled from the East, a subject of great interest to Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union.

Top Secret Bunker

Betzing was reported to have helped install air-conditioning equipment in a top secret bunker built in the Eifel Mountains west of the Rhine River and to be used as a government command center in time of war. More recently, he was employed as messenger at an army center.

Deputy Interior Minister Carl-Dieter Spranger announced plans Thursday to improve internal security and institute much tougher regulations for investigating those hired for sensitive positions in government.