Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1954-08-17
.Dr. John Identified
By RueiuI Allies as
Russian Master Spy
BY Doniel De Luce

BERLIN. Aug. 1T.-Dr. Otto
John is identified now by rueful
allied powers as Russia's master
German spy.
The man who dined cozily in
Washington two months ago
with Allen Dulles, Central Intel
ligence Agency director, and cur
ried favor with the British secret
service for 10 years sits openly in
the Communist camp today
Until he motored into Berlin's
Soviet sector the night Of July
20-as casually as driving around
the block-Dr. John was security
chief of the West German gov
eminent.
His Office for Protection Of the
Constitution spent So million a
year from the federal treasury
on espionage. His mission: To
ferret out and expose Communist
and Nazi plotters inside the Bonn
republic.
This work was directly con-
nected not only with the security
of the West German state but
of 100000 allied troops.
Learned Much About Allies.
From his headquarters in
Cologne, DR.. John maintained
contact with allied intelligence
agencies.
Inevitably, he learned a great
deal about what the allies did to
fight Communist espionage.
Fear of eventual exposure is
considered the primary motive
for his switch. The British say
now that they became uncertain
about John about 10 months be-
fore his overt detection. They
never told the Americans, French
and West Germans of such
doubts, however. The French
were always lukewarm on John
because of his known background
as a British agent. Americans
cuorted him.
This personable, talented West
ern deserter, born As years age
in Marburg, has mixed with
princes and revolutionaries, Ges-
tapo brutes and Red stool pig
cons, austere idealists and SEX
mad libertlnes.
Nazi Agent at "a.
A boy wonder with a legal
degree, DIR. John was appointed
business trustee of Lufthansa,
the Nazi governments interna-
tional airline, in 1886, when he
was barely 81.
If the Gestapo wanted special
information from John to be
gathered on his official trips
abroad, it takes no great stretch
Of the imagination to suppose he
complied.
But is is also know that he es-
tablished contact with a German
baron who deserted the Nazi
diplomatic service for British
asylum in 1889, then deserted
the British for Communist East
Germany after the war.
He also became intimate with
a Dutch double-agent who two
timed the British in favor of the
Soviet Union in wartime, fitted
in and out of Johns security Of
flee last year, and was found
dead, an apparent suicide, in a
Swiss hotel last November.
Allied intelligence can only
speculate now on the possible
links that John forged with the
Soviet spy rings that sprang up
within Hitler's occupied Europe
after 1941.
When the bomb plot against
the Fuehrer was Matched in 1914,
John was III on it. His primary
assignment was liaison with
Prince Louis Ferdinand, anti
Hitler grandson Of the last
Kaiser.
When the assassination failed
Johns brother, Hans, was among
those executed. John escaped on
a Lufthansa plane to Madrid
and the story is that he turned
over top secrets of the V-weapon
rocket base at Peenemuende to
British agents, who spirited him
on to London. He was soon well
coined into British counter
intelligence.
Opposed by Adenauer.
At last. resettling in the Bonn
Republic, John was the British
favored choice in 1850 to head
the new federal security Office.
Chancellor Konrad Adenauer did
not care for him, but John got
the job.
He cultivated two old friends,
DR.. Wolfgang Wohlgemuth,
much-married West Berlin play
boy and parlor pink. and United
States counterintelligence Capt.
Wolfgang Hoefer, a German
POPULAR PRICES 0nzmcaMn