$119,000 for an Answer

For two weeks Chancellor Konrad Adenauer remained silent about the strange case of Otto John (TIME, Aug. 2), though he knew full well the damage that had been done to the West and to public confidence in his own regime. Last week, speaking to his people by radio, he described John's disappearance into the Soviet zone as "shocking," but he insisted that the former West German security chief had no Western military secrets: "The damage he can cause is not so great as was thought at first." Adenauer freely acknowledged the error in giving so unstable a man so crucial a responsibility: "That he was not suited for it is clear."

Next day, Adenauer's government offered 500,000 marks ($119,000) to anyone who would come forward in the next three months with facts that would ex plain the mystery of Dr. John's strange exit. But though West German and U.S. intelligence officers still profess to be in doubt whether Dr. John defected or was lured into a trap, German public opinion had hardened into the almost unanimous belief that he defected.

Within days after John's journey into East Berlin, he made three convincing radio broadcasts, wrote several personal letters, and appeared in a photograph which showed him apparently enjoying life in an open-air cafe on Stalinallee (see cut).

More and more, it looked not like well-planned betrayal (he left behind papers which would have been invaluable to the Communists) but like a case of impetuous defection at the height of an emotional jag. John had been hitting the bottle, and telling friends of his concern over what he regarded as the return to power in West Germany of former Nazis. He disappeared immediately after attending the morbid anniversary observance of the July 20, 1944 attempt on Hitler's life (his own brother was executed in the bloody aftermath of that unsuccessful plot).

His fear of a Nazi revival was the explanation John himself gave over the Communist radio, and it was a handsome propaganda gift to the Reds. It was also doubly embarrassing to Konrad Adenauer, for one reason at home, for another abroad. Extreme rightists and neo-Nazis in Germany crowed that Dr. John's defection proved that Germany could not trust any German who resisted Hitler during the war. Replied Adenauer: "Those who, out of love, for the German people, tried to destroy the tyranny are worthy of the highest honor." Abroad, Adenauer knew that talk of resurging German Naziism was sure to strengthen the opponents of EDC in France. Said Konrad Adenauer: "I expressly declare that there is no revival of National Socialism in Germany, and that it will not revive."

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