SALUTE TO VETERANS: Lake Oswego resident served as spy in East Germany during the Cold War

(LAKE OSWEGO) – Bob Kelley had a unique military experience.

His work for the United States Military Intelligence was classified, and he was technically spying on the Soviet Union.

After studying and living in Berlin for 10 years, Kelley was chosen to aid the United States Military Intelligence as a liaison, reporting on military detachments in East Germany from 1970-1973.

“I was in seventh heaven. I enjoyed the hell out of that,” said Kelley. “It was the most exciting time of my life — except for marrying my wife.”

His father was a pilot during World War II, serving in the North Atlantic, but Kelley’s journey into the military was different.

“I got a draft notice, and I wanted to prove they couldn’t draft me and have a pick where I wanted to go. So I enlisted,” said Kelley. “I enlisted to go into the Army Security Agency.”

As a new recruit, Kelley joined the Army Security Agency, but because of his time in Europe studying communist bloc politics, his security approval would’ve taken years, according to his commanding officers at the time.

“I came to the notice of a general during advance training,” Kelley said. “He says, ‘Oh, I was in Germany. ‘Sprechen Sie Deutsche?’ I rattled off a paragraph. I’d been there 10 years and had been out of Germany only six months at that point.”

According to Kelley, the next day he was pulled from the line, ready to leave for Vietnam, and sent to Germany instead. His destination said only ‘Germany,’ with no particular unit listed. Wanting to be of use, Kelley pitched himself as a possible German-speaking driver for a colonel in Berlin.

In Berlin, the military officers were already staffed, but the colonel had him wait and said, “You go sit out there. Some people are going to come shortly, and they’re going to take you for some testing, and we’ll see if there’s a job offer. If there is, you can take it, but if you decide not to take it, and I can’t tell you anything about it at all, we’ll send you back to Frankfurt.”

Kelley passed the test, driving a large, reinforced Ford across Germany, and became a military liaison, spying on Soviet military operations in East Germany.

“We would have assignments to look for specific things like on airfields … looking for modifications (to airplanes),” he said. “We had long telephoto lenses, and we were taking pictures.”

As the first German speaker and college student in the operation, Kelley said he was an enthusiastic recruit who could navigate the East German countryside without a map. He brought knowledge of Berlin and the surrounding areas that was invaluable to the operation, so much so that eventually he found out the Russians had kept a dossier on him.

“(The Russians) had informants and it’s pretty clear that the information was made up stuff so they could collect their money,” said Kelley. “There’s stuff in (my file) that’s just totally ludicrous. For example, they say I went to Howard University.”

With his expertise of the rural German countryside from his time as a student, he navigated fields, forests, and bogs for three years.

Kelley is originally from rural Missouri. After finishing his service, he returned to Yale Law School and practiced law across the United States. Now a resident of Mary’s Woods Senior Living Community, where he moved in because his sister-in-law is also a resident, he’s had time to reflect on his clandestine military service.