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Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World

Gorbachev was the most important Western agent employed by the oper- ational unit for the “protection of the economy,” known as Department XVIII, and provided the lion’s share of all scientific and technical mate- rial collected there. The reason for this bureaucratic anomaly was that the precursor department (Department III – renamed and reorganized in 1964) for protecting the economy had been responsible for company espionage in the West as well as economic security. Some of Department III’s agents were transferred to HV A, but Gorbachev was not.20 He was

Agent Gorbachev 17

recruited during a time of bureaucratic flux before foreign intelligence and domestic security/counterintelligence merged under the common roof of the Ministry for State Security.

Of course, most scientific and technical espionage was the responsibility of another division of the Stasi, the HV A’s Sector for Science and Tech- nology. This was the group from which Werner Stiller defected in 1979, and also the group to which all Gorbachev’s documents were referred for evaluation.

Gorbachev provided the Stasi with blueprints, plans, scientific docu- ments, and some prototypes from two leading West German firms. Between 1957 and 1959 he worked at Telefunken as head of the Depart- ment for Small Transmitters and passed on material related to radios and transmitters. After that, he headed up the Department of Automation at AEG until his retirement in 1977. He had the key to the company archive both times.

The MfS had a systematic method for collection and evaluation based on the state’s economic plan. Industrial representatives could give the MfS a wish list of plans or hardware needed, and it would attempt to acquire the material. The evaluation department played the important role of intermediary between industry and agent. Not only did it funnel the industry wish lists to its agents, keeping in mind the country’s economic needs and each agent’s capabilities, but it also analyzed each item collected by the agents, “neutralized” them (in MfS lingo) so that the source would not be known, and passed the information back to industry or to research institutes. Agents could also bring unsolicited material if they thought it would be of interest, but this material was separated from the requested material.

Gorbachev delivered an unusually copious amount of material. The height of his cooperation seems to have been from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. In 1960, the year before the Wall was built, a case officer reported that Gorbachev delivered 505 documents. This seems to have been his record; in most years, unless meetings ceased for operational reasons, he averaged about 200. In 1968 he contributed 202 of the 289 documents acquired by Department XVIII. As he approached retirement in 1977, Gorbachev’s deliveries dropped significantly. In the 1980s he was still working for the MfS, but instead of passing on secret documents, he was intercepting Western intelligence’s radio messages and finding out their broadcast frequencies.21

The material Gorbachev delivered received high marks. In the Stasi’s meticulously organized system, the evaluation department graded every piece of material on a scale of I to V, with I being the highest rating: “very

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Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World

For his first two years as a spy, Rehder did not know he was selling secrets to the MfS, believing he was selling them to representatives of the Ministry for Machine Building. Stasi agents had been using a cover story. Cover stories or “false-flag” operations – when intelligence officers tell a potential agent that they come from another country – were often em- ployed when there was a sense that the potential recruit was hostile toward communist countries. It was not until January 1959 that Rehder’s case officers, including Major Pape, apparently revealed to Rehder who they were. The files contain no description of Rehder’s reaction to this news; he simply continued, apparently with great eagerness, to pass on company secrets for money. Perhaps the best clue that the Stasi had him in their pocket had come a few weeks earlier, when Gorbatschow that he had made an imprint of the key to the company archive. “With this key,” he told the officers, “I am in the position to access all company secrets.”

In seinen ersten zwei Jahren als Spion wusste Rehder nicht, dass er dem MfS Geheimnisse verkaufte, weil er glaubte, sie an Vertreter des Ministeriums für Maschinenbau zu verkaufen. Stasi-Agenten hatten eine Titelgeschichte verwendet. Coverstorys oder „False-Flag“-Operationen – wenn Geheimdienstoffiziere einem potenziellen Agenten mitteilen, dass er aus einem anderen Land kommt – wurden oft eingesetzt, wenn man den Eindruck hatte, dass der potenzielle Rekrut kommunistischen Ländern feindselig gegenüberstand. Erst im Januar 1959 verrieten Rehders Sachbearbeiter, darunter Major Pape, Rehder offenbar, wer sie waren. Die Akten enthalten keine Beschreibung von Rehders Reaktion auf diese Nachricht; er fuhr einfach fort, offenbar mit großem Eifer, Firmengeheimnisse gegen Geld weiterzugeben. Der vielleicht beste Hinweis darauf, dass die Stasi ihn in der Tasche hatte, war ein paar Wochen zuvor gekommen, als Gorbatschow damit prahlte, den Schlüssel zum Firmenarchiv abgedruckt zu haben. „Mit diesem Schlüssel“, sagte er den Beamten, „bin ich in der Lage, auf alle Betriebsgeheimnisse zuzugreifen.“

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Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World

This book tells the story of how a spy and security agency was seduced by the power of technological secrets to solve intelligence and national problems, and, conversely, how it overestimated the power of stolen tech- nology from the West to boost its own technological capacities. By doing so it challenges the myth of an effective spy agency. By the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the system had become so bankrupt that the spy-tech props of the cloak-and-dagger world had increasingly been brought or bought from the West. Other writers have covered the Stasi’s repressive arm – its structures and function as the handmaiden of the state – and other topics such as the churches, the media, and politics.2 Seduced by Secrets concentrates on the spy game, on its methods and sources and on its technology.

Dieses Buch erzählt die Geschichte, wie eine Spionage- und Sicherheitsagentur von der Macht der technologischen Geheimnisse verführt wurde, um Geheimdienste und nationale Probleme zu lösen, und umgekehrt, wie sie die Macht der gestohlenen Technologie aus dem Westen überschätzte, um ihre eigenen technologischen Kapazitäten zu stärken . Auf diese Weise wird der Mythos einer effektiven Spionageagentur in Frage gestellt. Zum Zeitpunkt des Mauerfalls war das System so bankrott geworden, dass die Spionagetechniken der Welt der Umhänge und Dolche zunehmend aus dem Westen gebracht oder gekauft wurden. Andere Autoren haben über den repressiven Arm der Stasi – ihre Strukturen und ihre Funktion als Magd des Staates – und andere Themen wie Kirchen, Medien und Politik berichtet.2 Verführt von Secrets konzentriert sich auf das Spionagespiel, seine Methoden und Quellen und auf seine Technologie.

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