No one suspected that Dr. Gabriele Leinfelder was a spy for the other side. Her colleagues thought she was too prim and proper for that. They admired her intellect and thought she projected the image and purity of a nun. She rarely wore make-up, had simple, short hair, and wore unfashionable glasses. She was very bright and had landed a coveted position at the West German intelligence service's (BND) Soviet division in 1973 after completing a dissertation on “The Role of Women in the GDR [German Democratic Republic]” with Professor Dr. Klaus Mehnert, the leading GDR studies scholar in West Germany. When her colleagues at the BND heard that she was Markus Wolf's “best spy,” they were shaken and felt betrayed. That sense of betrayal was likely similar to that felt by Aldrich Ames's CIA colleagues when they learned he worked for the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB). The super-spy imagined the scene at work the day after her arrest in 1990: “Have you heard? Mrs. Dr. Leinfelder! No way. We would have never imagined. I am shocked.”

The unglamorous, inconspicuous person who blends in with the rest of the crowd has always been the perfect spy and cover. Leinfelder, whose real name was Gabriele Gast, was far from an ordinary spy. It was unusual for a woman to work at the BND; by the time she was betrayed by a defector and caught in 1990, she had advanced to director of the evaluation department.