Kohl Fires Chief of Spy Agency; Scandal Widens

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl fired his intelligence chief Wednesday as still another case came to light in the country’s widening spy scandal.

The intelligence chief, Heribert Hellenbroich, acknowledged in an interview with West German television that he has been dismissed. An official announcement was not expected until today.

Emerging from a private meeting with Kohl, Hellenbroich replied “yes” when asked by a television interviewer if he had been fired.

‘I Must Accept This’

“As a public servant, I must accept this,” he said, “and I would like to add something to that. But I cannot.”

In the latest espionage case, authorities disclosed that they are investigating a West German man who is thought to have fled to East Germany after attempting to compromise a counterintelligence agency official.

The disclosure coincided with word that two East German couples have been arrested on spying charges in separate police actions in London and in Bern, Switzerland.

The West German man under investigation is said to be a close friend of an officer in the counterintelligence agency, whose chief of East German affairs, Hans Joachim Tiedge, defected to East Germany last week.

The officer and the friend were on a recent vacation trip to Austria, authorities said, when the friend arranged a meeting with a third person who suggested that the officer spy for East Germany.

The officer refused and reported the incident to his superiors on his return to West Germany. But meanwhile, his friend disappeared, informed sources said.

In Bonn, aides of Chancellor Kohl said he will make an announcement today on the shake-up within the nation’s intelligence establishment.

Kept Tiedge in Post

Hellenbroich, who has most recently headed the Federal Intelligence Service, which deals with external espionage, previously headed the domestic counterintelligence service. He thus was responsible for keeping Tiedge in his senior position despite neighbors’ reports that the official had been involved in scenes of public drunkenness.

It is speculated here that Hellenbroich’s boss, Interior Minister Friedrich Zimmermann, will stay in his job--despite his overall responsibility for counterintelligence operations--because he had not been informed of Tiedge’s conduct and because he has powerful political backing in his home state of Bavaria.

Hellenbroich is expected to be replaced by Hans-Georg Wieck, 57, West Germany’s representative at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a former envoy to Moscow. He also served as a senior planner in the Defense Ministry.

In addition to the defection of Tiedge, 48, three highly placed government secretaries and a long-serving employee of the Defense Ministry are missing and are believed to have left the country.

Kohl is also expected to announce new procedures for tightening security in sensitive government posts and within the intelligence services.

Swiss Incident

Meanwhile, in Bern, Swiss authorities said they have arrested an East German couple on suspicion of running a spy network from their home base in Lucerne, from which they allegedly made frequent trips to West Germany to contact East German agents.

The Swiss police were tipped off by West German authorities, sources in Bern said, and the couple had been under observation for some time. They were arrested three days ago.

In maintaining its tradition of neutrality, Switzerland expels foreign diplomats that it can prove are engaged in outright spying.

In London, an East German couple appeared before a magistrate on espionage charges, but no details were forthcoming in the three-minute hearing. Reinhard Schulze, 32, and his wife, Sonia, 35, were charged with violating Britain’s Official Secrets Act. It was not immediately clear whether information about the couple came from West Germany or was developed by MI5, the British counterintelligence service.

Sources in Bonn, though, reported that the arrest of the couple in London was tied to Tiedge’s defection.