From the archive · A retrospective
The BND hired an author to attack its KGB mole. Bonn stopped the book.
Heinz Felfe’s exposure produced a second intelligence struggle over memoirs, reputations and the public record.
By 1968, West Germany’s foreign intelligence service had another assignment involving its exposed KGB mole Heinz Felfe: commission a book against him. The Federal Chancellery stopped publication. BND chief historian Bodo Hechelhammer described the episode in a 2019 interview, revealing how a counterintelligence disaster continued as a contest over what readers would believe.
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The 1968 book commission is year-level dated; eventDate is the exact historian interview publication date. Motives are interpretive; the feature makes no claim of a single cause. Krichbaum finding is attributed to the archival report, including its source qualification. The underlying CIA dossier could not be read and is not cited.
Sources & further reading
- Interview with BND chief historian Bodo HechelhammerGerman Spy Museum / historian interviews
- National Archives analysis of CIA file on Wilhelm KrichbaumUS National Archives
- Publisher description of Hechelhammer’s Spion ohne GrenzenPiper publishing / book and author records
- Federal Archives announcement of Felfe biography discussionGerman Federal Archives
- Christopher Nehring history of German intelligence, part IGerman Federal Agency for Civic Education
