Operation Scorpio

This article covers the KGB espionage operation. For the military operation in World War II, see Company Scorpio .

Operation "Skorpion" was an espionage operation carried out by the KGB in the Federal Republic of Germany around the main character Heidrun Hofer .

The then secretary of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) was involved in a liaison in 1969 by the Romeo agent "Hans Puschke". a. Handed over defense plans of NATO on West German soil and information about a German stay-behind organization .

The action was initiated by the KGB general Juri Drosdow , who invented an old Nazi organization called “survivors” in South America in order to induce Heidrun Hofer , who was right - wing nationalist through her parents' home, to betray secrets.

Hofer was contacted in 1969 by Puschke in Paris, where she worked for the BND in St. Cloud . She was blinded by expensive trips and the supposed “good deed” of helping a Nazi organization. The luxury trips and the frequent stays abroad of her “fiancé” gave her colleagues cause for mistrust. She was observed by the BND for about six months before she was arrested on December 20, 1976 on the way to Austria to see her lover.

At the LKA Munich on Maillingerstrasse, she was put under such pressure with the threat that her parents would also be prosecuted that she threw herself out of the window on the 6th floor. She survived, seriously injured, and her long recovery made no charge until the statute of limitations.

swell

• Arte documentation "Operation Scorpio" by Andreas Dirr , 2009
• Dieter Krüger: Gerhard Wessel (1913–2002) - Gehlen's foster son at the head of the BND . In: Dieter Krüger and Armin Wagner (eds.): Conspiracy as a profession - German community service chiefs in the Cold War . Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-86153-287-5 , p. 279 f .

Web links

• Big appetite . In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 1979, pp. 49 f . ( online ).
• Top secret ( memento from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Article by Henrike Girmond in the museum magazine of the Haus der Geschichte , issue 2, 2006.
• Trembling in Pullach . Focus , issue 34, 1995.
• Operation Scorpion in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO's Stay-Behind Armies ( Memento from December 29, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) , Parallel History Project , December 12, 2008.
2. ↑ Erich Schmidt-Eenboom , Ulrich Stoll : Die Partisanen der NATO: Stay-Behind-Organizations in Deutschland 1946–1991 , Ch. Links Verlag, 2016