Aide Trained as Spy, Hid Film in Can of Hair Spray, Bonn Says

A woman who placed a job-wanted ad in a newspaper was recruited as a Communist spy and trained to photograph secret documents with a camera disguised as a cigarette lighter, officials said Monday.

The woman, arrested Friday in Bonn, hid film taken for her Soviet Bloc spymasters in a specially constructed can of hair spray, prosecutors said. Prosecutor Kurt Rebmann said investigators were assessing the damage to national security caused by Elke Falk, who worked in the West German chancellery from 1974 to 1977 and in other ministries later.

“The suspect delivered notes, copied documents and photographs from all of her professional duties to her intelligence contacts,” Rebmann said.

Manfred Oblaender, spokesman for the Economic Cooperation Ministry, said Falk had access to “very confidential and secret documents” from West German intelligence agencies.

Rebmann told reporters that Falk was recruited by a man using the name Gerhard Thieme after she placed a newspaper advertisement looking for work. On Sunday, the mass-circulation newspaper Bild reported that Falk began spying after Thieme seduced her.

Quoting security sources it did not identify, Bild said she also had access to transcripts of meetings between former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and foreign leaders, including former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford.

Bild quoted the security sources as saying that Falk’s activities represented the most serious security breach since the arrest of Guenther Guillaume, a top aide to former Chancellor Willy Brandt.

Brandt was forced to resign as chancellor in 1974 after Guillaume was exposed as a spy.