W. Germany Indicts Former GI for Treason as East Bloc Spy

A former U.S. Army sergeant, arrested last year, has been charged with treason for allegedly running an international spy ring that sold NATO secrets to East Bloc agents, the federal prosecutor’s office announced Friday.

The case of former U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Clyde Lee Conrad marks the first time that a foreign citizen living in West Germany has been charged with treason, according to Hans-Juergen Foerster, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office.

Foerster said Conrad could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted. A trial date has not been set.

The American was arrested Aug. 23, 1988, on suspicion of heading a West German-based spy ring involving seven other people with contacts in Sweden and Austria. It took a year to formally charge him, apparently because of the complexity of the case.

In a statement Friday, Federal Prosecutor Kurt Rebmann said the Aug. 14 indictment charges that Conrad provided classified documents, including material on “nuclear operations,” to Hungarian military intelligence, starting in 1975, and the Czechoslovak intelligence service, from 1981 to 1986..

Conrad, 42, a native of Sebring, Ohio, received at least $1.1 million for his work as a spy, the statement said. He has lived in West Germany since retiring in September, 1985, after 20 years in the Army.

For most of the time from 1975 until his retirement, he was stationed with the U.S. Army’s 8th Infantry Division in Bad Kreuznach, West Germany, as head of the classified document center.