Dieter Gerhardt
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Dieter Felix Gerhardt was a Commodore in the South African Navy, and commander of the Simonstown naval base. In 1982 he was arrested then convicted as a Soviet spy together with his second wife, Ruth.
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[edit] Cold War
Gerhardt started his spying career early, offering his services to the Soviet Embassy in London while still a junior naval officer. It was 1954, and he had recently graduated from the South African Naval Academy in Saldanha Bay before being sent to London on secondment to the Royal Navy[1]. After background checks to ensure that his story was true, the Russians placed him on their payroll.
While based in London, he was able to discretely interview Royal Navy Polaris submarine crews for potential candidates that the Soviets could approach. It was also during this time that he met his first wife, British-born Janet Coggin.
Coggin became aware of her husband's Cold War spying activities in 1966[2], but chose not to turn him in, fearing that he would be executed and leave her children fatherless. Gerhardt eventually gave his wife an ultimatum to become a spy too, which she declined, forcing the couple's separation. She divorced him in 1966 and moved to Ireland with her children, living in constant fear of the KGB. She subsequently published a book in 1999 about her experiences called 'The Spy's Wife'[2]
In 1973 Gerhardt married his second wife, Ruth Johr, a Swiss citizen who was already a spy for the German Democratic Republic.[3]
[edit] South Africa
Gerhard rose through the ranks of the naval establishment to commander of the strategically important Simonstown naval base. In this position, he had access to all the South African Naval intelligence reports, technical details of weapons systems as well as ship and aircraft movements in southern Africa.
During the Falklands War, Gerhardt was able to use his position to supply the Russians with detailed information about the locations of British ships in the south Atlantic that the South African Navy intercepted via its sophisticated listening post at Silvermine, near Cape Town[1]. This information was subsequently passed on to the Argentines by the Russians.
It is also likely that he had some knowledge of the South African Army and Air Force's secrets and plans regarding the South African Border War.
[edit] Arrest
While the South Africans were initially none the wiser, the United States Central Intelligence Agency had its suspicions about there being a spy in southern Africa. Gerhard's cover was finally blown by a Soviet defector with the codename "Boris" who knew of him.[4] Gerhardt was arrested in a sting operation in New York by the Federal Bureau of Investigation while he was taking a degree in mathematics at a New York University. He was deported and tried in camera in Cape Town, with a life sentence being handed down in December 1983 for high treason, while his wife received a 10-year sentence for acting as a courier.[5]
Gerhardt put forward two explanations for his treachery. Initially he stated that he was disillusioned by the war-time internment of his German father, a Nazi sympathizer, at Koffiefontein[4]. However he later contended that he was opposed to the apartheid government, and sought black liberation.
[edit] Release
He was released in 1992 in a deal with the African National Congress just before the historic first democratic elections in 1994 in South Africa, and emigrated to Basel, Switzerland. His wife was released by the South African authorities before him. Gerhardt was subsequently also granted amnesty in 1999 under the new government by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.[6]
In February 1994, he stated in the Johannesburg City Press that the Vela Incident was the result of a joint Israeli-South African nuclear test, code-named Operation Phenix; however, most reports on this incident, from a variety of sources, contradict this.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Rusbridger, James (1991). The Intelligence Game: The Illusions and Delusions of International Espionage. IB Taurus, p127. ISBN 1850433380.
- ^ a b Coggin, Janet (1999). The Spy's Wife. Constable & Robinson. ISBN 0094794901.
- ^ Chapman Pincher (1987). Traitors: The Labyrinths of Treason. ISBN 0283993790. Retrieved on 2008-05-21.
- ^ a b Roger Faligot, Rémi Kauffer (1986). KGB, objectif Pretoria. P.-M. Favre. ISBN 2828902331.
- ^ Kalley, Jacqueline Audrey (1999). Southern African Political History: A Chronology of Key Political Events From Independence to Mid-1997. Greenwood Press, 487. ISBN 0313302472.
- ^ "Ex-naval commander Gerhardt Pardoned", Dispatch Online, 1999-03-17.
