Kaufmann claimed when he resigned last week that these unnamed agents became alarmed in 2001 after it appeared the United States Central Intelligence Agency had deduced—using the recently decrypted “Rosewood file” the CIA had taken into its possession in the chaotic days after the fall of the Wall in 1989—that Heinrich continued to dupe the BND and the government for a number of years after his return to the West.
“No one who had served in the Kohl government at the time ever gave authorization in 2001 for Herr Heinrich to be provided with a new identity in Thailand or anywhere else,” Kaufmann said in his resignation statement. It is not clear why the Americans did not make public the truth about Heinrich if they knew it in 2001 or earlier. A U.S. Embassy spokesman in Berlin would say only that the developing spy scandal was “an internal German affair.”
Both the SPD and the CDU have been resisting calls from the Greens and from political commentators for a full public inquiry. More resignations, and possibly criminal charges, are thought to be inevitable in the affair.
In a related development that could further tarnish reputations on both sides of the country’s political divide, the BKA said on Monday that federal police now wish to question one Horst Reinhard Becker, who is a staff pathologist at the main army hospital in Frankfurt. Becker was detained last week by police in Phuket, Thailand, where he has been working on the German victim identification team established after the tsunami disaster that killed thousands of people, including many European tourists and expatriates.
The Die Welt article that revealed the Heinrich scandal alleges Becker falsified a German autopsy report to show incorrectly that Heinrich died in the Bonn fire in 2001. The article alleged that Becker then travelled to Thailand earlier this year to try to prevent proper identification of Heinrich’s body after the tsunami. Becker was taken intro custody shortly after publication of the newspaper article but has so far not been charged with any offence.
In a press release, Thai Tsunami Victim Identification (TTVI) spokeswoman Ruth Connolly said: “The operation’s joint commanders will undertake immediate inquiries into allegations by Die Welt and by an Interpol officer in Phuket that one or more members of the German team at the disaster site tampered with or removed material from a DVI file in order to hide the true identity of the individual in question.”
The Interpol officer who made the Heinrich identification in Thailand, seconded Scotland Yard fingerprint expert Jonah Smith, was almost killed when a small explosive device was detonated in a popular bar in Phuket on 4 April. Neither the Thai police nor the DVI operation spokeswoman would comment on whether Smith may have been targeted by those trying to keep the Heinrich story a secret.
A 26-year-old Thai man working in the bar died in the bombing, and more than a dozen other people, including a Canadian magazine journalist on assignment in Phuket, were injured by shrapnel and flying glass.
Disgraced Former Policeman Shot Dead in Rural France
PARIS, 29 July 2005 (Newswire) – The disgraced former head of Germany’s federal police agency, Ulrich Mueller, has been killed in an apparent botched burglary at his home in southern France, police said on Friday.
Police in the French town of Privas said Mueller, 68, was shot once at point blank range by a heavy gauge shotgun in a ground floor bedroom of his house in the hills outside Saint Lager Bressac in the Ardeche region. His body was found early on Thursday morning by a housekeeper when she arrived for work.
An investigation is underway, a police spokesman said, but detectives were proceeding on the assumption that Mueller, who was infirm and used a wheelchair, was shot after confronting an intruder in his home.
However, a local radio report said the housekeeper, Veronique Chagny, had told police nothing appeared to have been stolen and there were no signs of forced entry in the large house where Mueller lived alone.
Mueller retired to the Ardeche in 2001 after a long and successful career with the German federal police, known as the BKA. In April of this year, an article in the Germany’s respected Die Welt newspaper, citing Mueller himself, an Interpol official and “a reliable Canadian source with inside knowledge of the situation,” revealed that the BKA chief had been forced to resign when it became known he had a long-running homosexual affair with one of the former West Germany’s most famous spies in the East.
The article alleged that the spy, Klaus Heinrich, had in fact for many years been a Stasi double agent.
French police dismissed suggestions Mueller may have been murdered in revenge for his providing information to Die Welt.
“There are many breakins in the isolated houses of foreigners in rural France,” Captain Laurent Chevrier of the Privas detachment said. “We have no reason to believe that Monsieur Mueller was murdered.” Also in April of this year, a Paris-based architect who had worked on the renovation of Mueller’s home was seriously assaulted in the house by robbers. Pierre Rochemaure, 47, received serious head injuries from the beating and was in a coma for several days before eventually being released from a local hospital and returning to Paris.
There have been no arrests in connection with that incident. Police said it is too early to tell whether the perpetrators of the April break-in and beating may also have been responsible for the Mueller shooting.
The BKA press office in Weisbaden, Germany, said the police agency would have no comment on Mueller’s death.
Scotland Yard Fingerprint Man Takes UN Bosnia Assignment
MetPolice Magazine
LONDON, 15 September 2005 – One of the most experienced fingerprint analysts in the Metropolitan Police Service, Jonah Smith, has landed himself another plum assignment, this time with the United Nations Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Smith was until recently seconded by Scotland Yard to Interpol headquarters in the picturesque French city of Lyon. Interpol in turn sent Smith to Thailand in January of this year to help in the massive international effort to identify bodies of victims in the tsunami disaster.
Although he is a Met civilian staffer, Smith has always showed a strong aptitude for investigative work, his colleagues say. While in Thailand, Smith used his police instincts to uncover a plot to cover up the true identity of a German national killed in the tsunami.
Smith became suspicious when he found that a DVI file had been tampered with but he was eventually able to positively identify the body in question as that of a former Stasi spy, using only poor-quality partial fingerprints. Solid police work by the Met’s Detective Chief Superintendent Adrian Braithwaite, assigned to the Thailand operation as joint commander, led to the subsequent arrest of a pathologist on Germany’s DVI team.
Smith has been on sick leave in sunny Spain since being injured in a bombing incident in Phuket in April just as the tsunami file affair was about to be made public. He received a broken arm, suffered multiple lacerations and lost most of the hearing in one ear as a result of that explosion.
Thai police have yet to make any arrests in connection with the bombing, which killed one person and injured a number of others. Smith brushes off continuing speculation that he may have been targeted because he was about to expose the coverup.
Fallout from media reporting of the tsunami file scandal has caused heads to roll in Germany, where the spy’s true identity as a former double agent had been a well-kept secret for many years. Observers say the scandal could influence the outcome of the German federal election, scheduled for 18 September.
Smith says he is looking forward to his new challenge working with the UN mission in Bosnia and to a new stage in his career.
“For a fingerprint man, being able to help with any major forensic identification operation is an attractive prospect,” Smith said at a small sendoff reception in London. “This sort of work is my life. But, for me, going to Bosnia at this stage is like a dream come true.”
Frank Delaney, a veteran Canadian journalist who interviewed Smit
h in Thailand for an International Geographic feature story on the tsunami DVI operation and who was also injured in the Phuket bombing, attended Smith’s sendoff event. Smith credits Delaney with saving his life in the blast.
“I think Jonah and I are kindred spirits, in a way,” Delaney told MetPolice Magazine. “I suppose you could say that in the sort of lives we have, we’re really always just looking for the same thing.”
About The Author
Canadian-born writer, journalist and broadcaster Michael Rose has worked in senior roles for major media organizations around the world, including the CBC, Maclean’s, and the Reuters news agency in London. From 2003 to 2006 he was Chief of Communications and Publications for Interpol. He draws upon that wealth of experience as a journalist, foreign correspondent and traveller for his Frank Delaney thriller series, which includes The Mazovia Legacy and The Burma Effect, both available from McArthur & Company.
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