U.S. Professor Guilty in German Spy Case : Conviction: Judge calls story of CIA double-agent recruitment a fabrication. Sociologist gets probation.

A state judge convicted Berkeley-educated sociologist Jeffrey Schevitz of spying for East Germany during the Cold War, rejecting the American professor’s elaborate, sometimes tearful claims that he had spied at the behest of the CIA and had always been loyal to the United States.

The decision makes Schevitz, 54, the first known American to be convicted of spying for the former Communist state since the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent seizure of the vast, damning files kept by the Ministry for State Security, the East German secret-police and spying agency that was known as the Stasi.

Schevitz’s name surfaced in those files as a source of intelligence and was reportedly first spotted by the CIA itself during a review in 1993. The CIA then tipped off German authorities, who arrested Schevitz in May, 1994.

Schevitz spent four months in jail before posting $65,000 bail and surrendering his passport.

Upon his arrest, Schevitz shocked colleagues, old friends and international analysts by announcing that he had been a double agent, naming the man who had supposedly recruited him to work for the CIA--the late founding director of the respected Aspen Institute in Berlin--and offering his rationale for becoming a spy.

Schevitz, a longtime anti-military activist who took part in the anti-war movement at UC-Berkeley in the 1960s, said he had hoped that by gathering intelligence on West Germany, he could help Washington keep tabs on Bonn’s commitment to nuclear non-proliferation treaties, thereby helping to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. He said he fed the information to the Stasi on the side as a way of gleaning information about the East German intelligence agency for the CIA.

His story attracted international attention because it suggested that the United States had been running an espionage operation directed at West Germany, a close ally. The CIA has repeatedly denied Schevitz’s assertions.

In sharp tones Friday, presiding Judge Helmut Holzapfel scolded Schevitz for making the whole thing up.

“It wasn’t necessary to invent the story about the CIA,” he told Schevitz, who admitted from the beginning that he had passed information to the Stasi, sometimes with the help of his wife, Beatrice Altman, 40. “It would have been much easier on the court, God knows, if you hadn’t.”

Holzapfel added: “Any intelligence agency would burst out laughing” if its operatives had sat through some of the less credible parts of Schevitz’s CIA tale.

Holzapfel gave Schevitz an 18-month prison term but reduced it immediately to three years’ probation, saying the American’s open admission that he had fed information to the Stasi had helped the court.

Holzapfel also noted that Schevitz’s spying had not done “any measurable harm.”

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The worst trouble the American had caused, the judge said, was reporting on West German colleagues’ weaknesses to the Stasi, making it easier for the East Germans to pinpoint potential new recruits.

Holzapfel also ordered Schevitz to pay about $10,000 to a German charity for the handicapped.

Prosecutors had asked for a 3 1/2-year prison term for Schevitz. They charged that he worked for the Stasi from 1977 until early 1990 and that he had received $23,000 from East Berlin for the information he provided. Much of the intelligence involved the activities of West German scientists, which Schevitz could watch from his position as a social policy analyst at Germany’s Nuclear Research Center in Karlsruhe.

Schevitz’s lawyer and prosecutors agreed Friday that German authorities would almost certainly take steps to deport the newly convicted spy.

Schevitz said he would resist any deportation, however, because he is a severe diabetic and is fearful that someone with a pre-existing medical condition would be denied health insurance in the United States. He said that in Germany he is covered by the national health plan and depends on it.

Schevitz said he did not know whether he would appeal the conviction. A small number of friends and family members in the courtroom said they were relieved that his sentence was so light.

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After the Berlin Wall fell, scores of West Germans--including some high-ranking officials and diplomats--were arrested on charges of spying for the former East. Some of them have since been convicted and served prison terms. Other trials continue.

Earlier this week, the state court in Stuttgart dropped espionage charges against Schevitz’s wife, accepting her lawyer’s argument that she was too young and naive at the time of her husband’s recruitment to have made sound decisions on her own.

Altman was ordered to pay a fine of about $7,200.

Times special correspondent Katharine A. Schmidt in Stuttgart and staff writer James Risen in Washington contributed to this report.