2012

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Intelligence and National Security

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British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi: What the Stasi's Records Show about the Operations of British Intelligence in Cold War Germany
Paul Maddrell Version of record first published: 24 Feb 2012.
To cite this article: Paul Maddrell (2012): British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi: What the Stasi's Records Show about the Operations of British Intelligence in Cold War Germany, Intelligence and National Security, 27:1, 46-74 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2012.621594
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Intelligence and National Security Vol. 27, No. 1, 4674, February 2012
British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi: What the Stasis Records Show about the Operations of British Intelligence in Cold War Germany
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PAUL MADDRELL*
ABSTRACT The German parliaments Law on the Stasi Records, passed in 1991, extended the principle of freedom of information to the records of a Communist security service. By so doing, it has given historians, former targets of Stasi intelligence collection and others an unprecedented insight into the operations of such a service. Enough records of the Stasis trials department have been made available to reconstruct a picture of the work of British intelligence agencies in the years 194561, and above all the work of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). They show that SIS was a very skilful service which obtained the high-grade intelligence it sought. However, SISs work in East Germany was undone in the late 1950s by the treason of the KGBs penetration agent in it, George Blake.
When the Communist regime which ruled the German Democratic Republic (GDR) collapsed late in 1989, its Ministry of State Security (Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit, known for short as either the Stasi or MfS) was dissolved. Its massive archive passed into the hands of the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic (Bundesbeauftragte fur die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, or BStU for short). The Commissioner is elected by the parliament (Bundestag) of the Federal Republic of Germany.1 How much access the public should have to the Stasis records was a matter of much controversy. On the one hand, the Stasi had played a largely secret role in maintaining Communist rule in the GDR and many in the revolutionary movement that overthrew the Communists demanded that its role be exposed by making its records public. Freiheit fur
*Email: maddrell.paul@gmail.com 1 His initial title was the Special Commissioner (Sonderbeauftragte). My thanks go to Frau Ursula Sigmund, of the BStU, who made most of the documents referred to in these notes available to me, for all her hard, efcient work on my application.
ISSN 0268-4527 Print/ISSN 1743-9019 Online/12/010046-29 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2012.621594
British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi
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meine Akte! (Freedom for my le!) was a slogan common among civil rights demonstrators at the time. On the other hand, the Stasis informers, bugs and cameras had penetrated deeply into the lives of a huge number of people; opening their les to public inspection would destroy their privacy. Moreover, the Stasi had gathered a mass of information on foreign secret services which still existed and very much wanted their secrets to be kept. Among them were the secret services of countries either closely allied to the Federal Republic (the United States, France and Britain, for example) or ones whose interests it very much wanted to respect (such as Russia). In 1991 the Bundestag decided the issue by passing its Law on the Stasi Records (Stasi-Unterlagen-Gesetz).2 The law sought to take account of all these considerations. Its drafting reects principles of both data protection and freedom of information. The information collected by the Stasi on particular people was to be made available to them in its entirety. These people would therefore learn the identities of those who had spied on them (both the Stasi ofcers and informers).3 Historical and other research into the Stasi was to be permitted; of course, in part this represented educating the Germans in the virtues of democracy by showing them just how repressive a security service serving a one-party dictatorship had been able to be. The privacy of those on whom the Stasi had collected information (Betroffene) and of those third parties referred to in their les (Dritte) was protected; personal information about them, including their names, was to be redacted from records before they were made available to researchers. This can make such records unintelligible. A smaller right to privacy was conferred on historical gures, holders of political ofce and ofce holders discharging their functions (Personen der Zeitgeschichte, Inhaber politischer Funktionen und Amtstrager in Ausubung ihres Amtes); such people, as public gures, are considered to be worthy subjects of research.4 Revealing personal information on Betroffene or Dritte taken from Stasi records carries with it a criminal penalty (either a term of imprisonment of up to three years or a ne).5 The interests of secret services other than the Stasi were protected by giving the Interior Minister power to order records relating to their operations and ofcers to be withheld. All the minister has to do in this case is declare that making the records available would be detrimental to the public interest.6 Subject to this public interest exception and the privacy rights just mentioned, the records were to be made available for political and historical research. A further restriction on the use of the records is that, to
2
The law is set out in full and in English at: 5http://www.bstu.bund.de/4 (accessed 3 June 2010). For more on it, see Paul Maddrell, The Revolution Made Law: The Work since 2001 of the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic, Cold War History 4/3 (2004) pp.15362. 3 Section 13, Stasi-Unterlagen-Gesetz (StUG). 4 Section 32, StUG. 5 Section 44, StUG. 6 Section 37(1)(3)(d), StUG.
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be permissible, the research must concern the Stasi (a later amendment expanded the scope of permissible research to Nazism as well, on which the Stasi had gathered a great deal of information). Despite these restrictions, the laws most striking characteristic is the extensive disclosure permitted of these very sensitive records. No 30-year rule was imposed; the records were made available at once. Such extensive disclosure was unprecedented for records of this kind. The BStU has so far received more than 6.45 million applications to see Stasi records.7 The result has been that the Stasis methods are now well understood. Moreover, its entire agent network, both within the German Democratic Republic and abroad, has been uncovered in its entirety. This is an achievement without precedent in history.8 Since the Stasi had a large and active counter-intelligence service, its records could shed striking new light on the operations of other secret services as well, Britains Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) among them. The public interest exception represents a considerable obstacle to obtaining records on them. In practice, it is a complete bar to obtaining records which concern those services themselves. However, the counter-intelligence methods of the Stasi itself and the fate of those it repressed (including spies) are legitimate subjects of research. Enough information has been released on these two matters for historians to begin to form a picture of SISs operations in East Germany during the Cold War. These records are supplemented by the recollections of former Stasi ofcers. While fragmentary, this picture is useful since SIS was evidently an important arm of British policy in Germany (at least in the early Cold War). Moreover, it has not released to the National Archives any records at all relating to its Cold War operations. The academic literature on this subject discusses only very supercially SISs operations in Germany (and elsewhere) during the Cold War.9 Although an ofcial history of the service has been published, it only covers the period from SISs foundation in 1909 until 1949.10 The Stasi records therefore enable a better picture of SISs Cold War operations in Germany to be formed than is available from any other source and break
7 8
5http://www.bstu.bund.de/4 (accessed 3 June 2010). H. Muller-Enbergs, Kleine Geschichte zum Findhilfsmittel namens Rosenholz, Deutsch land Archiv no. 5 (2003) p.751. 9 Valuable academic works have been written which include information on British intelligence operations in Cold War Germany. These draw heavily on British intelligence records (records of agencies other than SIS) released as part of the Waldegrave Initiative on Open Government. The leading such works are R.J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand (London: John Murray 2001); R.J. Aldrich (ed.), Espionage, Security and Intelligence in Britain, 1945 1970 (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1998); and P. Maddrell, Spying on Science: Western Intelligence in Divided Germany, 19451961 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006). Memoirs such as George Blakes No Other Choice (London: Jonathan Cape 1990) supplement these academic works. 10 See K. Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, 19091949 (London: Bloomsbury 2010).
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new ground in study of the history of British intelligence. This article examines the Stasis ndings about SISs operations against the GDR and suggests what British policies this intelligence collection was supporting. The article will concentrate on the years 194561, but brief mention will also be made of the period thereafter. The principal set of records made available to me during my research on British intelligence at the BStU were records of Main Department IX (Hauptabteilung IX, known for short as HA IX), the Berlin headquarters of the Stasis Line IX.11 Line IX was the Stasis trials department (Untersuchungsorgan in German); its headquarters were in East Berlin and it had regional branches throughout the GDR. It was responsible for investigating cases of suspected political crime (Staatsverbrechen, state crimes, as the Stasi called them) and preparing them for prosecution. For this purpose, it worked closely with state prosecutors.12 Since spying was an important political crime, Line IX interrogated people suspected of it.13 Throughout the GDRs existence, HA IX provided the Minister of State Security, to whom it was responsible, and its own head with short summaries of the espionage cases the Line was investigating. These, and summaries of investigations into other types of political crime, were contained in monthly reports called Tatigkeits- und Auswertungsberichte (Operations and Assess ment Reports). As a rule, all that were assessed in the reports were particular cases of suspected espionage, though sometimes a number of similar cases were considered. HA IX did also prepare longer assessments of the activities of hostile intelligence services, examining many cases, but I received very few of these. The Tatigkeits- und Auswertungsberichte made available to me were actually photocopies of records which were themselves microlmed copies of the original monthly reports of HA IX. The microlmed copies are, apparently, the only ones that remain. I received the section on spying cases from each monthly report between October 1955 and October 1989. Since SIS played little role in spying on the GDR after the early 1960s, this article chiey examines its operations in the years between the early 1950s and the early 1960s.
11
On these records, see P. Maddrell, Western Espionage and Stasi Counter-espionage in East Germany, 19531961, in T.W. Friis, K. Macrakis and H. Muller-Enbergs (eds.) East German Foreign Intelligence: Myth, Reality and Controversy (Abingdon: Routledge 2010) pp.1933. 12 On the HA IX, see R. Se litrenny, Doppelte Uberwachung: Geheimdienstliche Ermittlungsmethoden in den DDR-Untersuchungshaftanstalten (Berlin: Links Verlag 2003); and the chapters by Engelmann, Vollnhals, Joestel and Beleites in R. Engelmann and C. Vollnhals (eds.) Justiz im Dienst der Parteiherrschaft (Berlin: Links Verlag 2000). For a self-serving account of its work by former Stasi ofcers, see K. Coburger and D. Skiba, Die Untersuchungsorgane des MfS (HA IX im MfS/Abt. IX der BV) in R. Grimmer, W. Irmler, W. Opitz and W. Schwanitz (eds.) Die Sicherheit: Zur Abwehrarbeit des MfS, vol. 2 (Berlin: edition ost, 2002) pp.42694. 13 K.-D. Henke, S. Suckut, C. Vollnhals, W. Su and R. Engelmann (eds.), Anatomie der Staatssicherheit: Geschichte, Struktur und Methoden - MfS Handbuch (Berlin: BStU 1995).
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The HA IXs reports provide much information on the spies who worked for the main Western secret services, including SIS. The services which appear most often in them were the most important ones: those of the United States (the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the US Armys Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) and Military Intelligence Service (MIS)) and those of the Federal Republic of Germany (the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz (BfV) and the Militarischer Abschirm dienst (MAD)). Until 1956 the BND was under American control and was known as the Gehlen Organization, after its director, Reinhard Gehlen (for short, it is often called the Org). However, the British and French secret services also appear in the reports and HA IX compares their operations with those of the Americans (the American secret services conducted very extensive espionage in the GDR, and MIS and CIC played a large role in these operations). The records demonstrate just how radical the freedom of state security information conceded by the Stasi-Unterlagen-Gesetz has been. It has already been pointed out above that, thanks to the law, the MfSs entire agent network, both within the GDR and abroad, has been exposed. The HA IX records extend this achievement by revealing spies of other secret services as well. Of course, since they are considered people on whom the Stasi collected information, their names have been redacted from the records to protect their privacy. The services which ran these people as spies would never have exposed them; such information is exactly what such services seek to keep secret. Such information is generally obtained, as in this case, from the counter-intelligence service which arrested them. All in all, given the length of the period covered by the reports (195589), the reliability of the HA IXs ndings, the number of spies revealed by the reports, the number of services to which they reported, the importance of some of the spies (usually run by American services) and the convenient brevity of each of the summaries, the monthly reports represent a remarkable archive on spies working for hostile services. A brief word is necessary on the reliability of the Stasis records, and particularly on that of the HA IXs reports. The divisions of the Stasi, the records of which I have seen (chiey HA IX and HA III, later HA XVIII, which was responsible for the security of the GDRs economy), were competent investigators of espionage cases. They looked for reliable evidence. While much of the evidence the HA IX obtained was confession evidence, it was reluctant to rely entirely on it and, after the mid-1950s, made little use of physical violence to obtain confessions. The HA IXs records are full of references to physical evidence of spying which had been obtained (chiey communication and spying equipment discovered in the course of searching the suspected spys home, but also decrypted radio communications from the controlling service and intelligence reports written by the spy). The HA IX also drew heavily on its knowledge of the standard practice of the service it suspected the spy worked for. Sometimes it identied that service when the spy himself did not know which it was (for example, it could deduce from the telephone numbers a spy had been told to
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call in an emergency which service he was reporting to).14 Moreover, while I cannot give their names here, I have seen in Stasi records the names of people who are correctly identied there as British or West German intelligence ofcers. The archive of the Scientic and Technical Intelligence Branch (STIB), part of the British military governments intelligence staff in West Germany between 1945 and 1954, contains records which establish that the Stasi was right to identify these people as intelligence personnel.15 SISs Strategy in the GDR A very small number of records released to Britains National Archives, memoirs of former British intelligence ofcers and historical works have established basic facts about SISs operations in Germany in the late 1940s and 1950s. In the years immediately after the Second World War, SIS was based in Bad Salzuen, a spa town not far from Bielefeld. With the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany (in May 1949), the headquarters moved to the embassy in Bonn. It had outstations throughout West Germany and, crucially, in West Berlin. In the 1950s the SIS unit in West Berlin was its largest anywhere in the world. Its ofcers operated under military cover or, until the Occupation ended in 1955, that of the Control Commission for Germany (British Element).16 SISs tasking did not greatly change, though over time it became more focused on high-grade information on the Soviet Bloc. In 1947, it had ve main tasks in Germany, the most important of which was the collection of scientic intelligence (that is to say, intelligence of scientic research and development which might yield advanced weapons in the future). It also collected political and economic intelligence, military intelligence for the armed forces and engaged in counter-intelligence and intelligence collection on subversive political movements (right-wing as well as left-wing).17 George Blakes memoir relates that the West Berlin stations work was reviewed in 1955, when the Occupation ended and funds became more
For a fuller discussion of the reliability of the HA IXs records, see Maddrell, Western Espionage and Stasi Counter-espionage in East Germany, pp.234. 15 The STIBs archive is held at The National Archives (TNA), Kew, London, as DEFE 41. 16 T. Bower, The Perfect English Spy (London: Heinemann 1995) p.132; A. Cavendish, Inside Intelligence (London: HarperCollins 1997) pp.467. The cover name under which SIS operated in Germany between 1945 and 1949 was No. 1 Planning and Evaluation Unit. It was also responsible for the operations of other British intelligence agencies in Germany, such as the Technical Section of Intelligence Division (the Control Commission for Germany (British Element)s intelligence staff): see P. Maddrell, Britains Exploitation of Occupied Germany for Scientic and Technical Intelligence on the Soviet Union, 194558 (PhD thesis, Cambridge University 1998) pp.12, n.3. Intelligence Division became the British Intelligence Organization (Germany) in 1952. This was dissolved in 1954, when its Technical Section became part of SIS. Thereafter, the British intelligence agencies based in West Germany and West Berlin were SIS, which operated secretly, and those of the British Army of the Rhine (see note 20 below), which had been declared to the government of the Federal Republic. 17 TNA, DEFE 41/68, JIC (Germany) Coordinating Committee minutes, 21 July 1947.
14
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limited (previously SISs work had been paid for by the West Germans as part of the costs of occupation). It was decided that the station should thenceforth collect above all political and scientic intelligence on the Soviet Bloc. War was regarded as unlikely and the job of SIS in West Berlin, as elsewhere, was to give information support to a protracted effort at containment of the Soviet Union.18 This account of the review reveals little: it is clear from Stasi records and from Blakes account of his work for the political intelligence section of SIS West Berlin between 1955 and 1959 that that section devoted much effort to collecting high-grade economic intelligence. The Stasi, indeed, refers to it as the department for politicaleconomic espionage of the English secret service Secret Intelligence Service.19 SIS West Berlin continued to collect military intelligence. However, much military intelligence was collected by the Berlin Intelligence Staff, a military intelligence unit which, once the Occupation was over, supplied intelligence to the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR)s human intelligence collection service, the British Services Intelligence Organization (BSIO), and its security service, the British Services Security Organization (BSSO).20 The man who determined the character of SIS operations against East Germany after the War was the rst head of SISs German station, John Bruce Lockhart. A little is known from memoir sources about the character of the operations he devised, but Stasi les shed more light on this and reveal some of the spies his service recruited (though not their names). His operations were, naturally enough, strongly inuenced by memories of the war. SIS used two principal methods to build up and run its agent networks in East Germany. Its main method of recruiting spies was to ask refugees arriving in West Berlin and West Germany to write to former colleagues, relatives and friends of theirs still in East Germany who were reliably antiCommunist and could provide information on suitable targets (army bases, government ministries, research laboratories and so on). These people would then be invited to come to the West (usually West Berlin), where they would be asked to act as spies. SIS also worked closely with resistance organizations. So anti-Communism was the foundation of Bruce Lockharts operations against East Germany. The division of Germany and Berlin both very anti-Communist offered him ideal conditions for recruiting spies in the GDR. Unlike the American secret services, which had a policy of recruiting agents on a very large scale, SISs recruitment policy was very selective. It
G. Blake, No Other Choice (London: Jonathan Cape 1990) pp.1669. BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, report entitled Kurz-Analyse, engl. GD [Kurz-Analyse, englischer Geheimdienst: Short Analysis, English Secret Service], p.307. In German: Die Abteilung politisch-okonomische Spionage des englischen Geheimdienstes Secret Intelligence Service. See also Blake, No Other Choice, pp.1778. 20 On these organizations and military intelligence collection by the BAOR, see R.J. Aldrich, Intelligence within BAOR and NATOs Northern Army Group, Journal of Strategic Studies 31/1 (2008) pp.89122 at 979.
19 18
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aimed to recruit high-quality agents who could provide information over the long term. Above all, it sought them in government agencies, the ruling Socialist Unity Party (the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, or SED) and its mass organizations, as well as among army ofcers and educated people. SIS was skilful and very security-conscious. As appears above, it collected all major categories of intelligence: political, economic, scientic and military. It was not the sole British agency collecting these kinds of information; the methods of the others differed from its own. It was opposed to the creation of groups of spies (clearly for security reasons since the agents would know one another). This was wise because one of the principal methods by which the Stasi uncovered spies was by interrogation. Line IX questioned one member of the group and obtained information about the other members. Ever aware that its sources might be under hostile control, SIS demanded as many original documents as possible. To enable these to be brought over safely, it supplied its spies with cases with false compartments. It made good use of sophisticated concealment methods and technological aids to espionage (Ian Flemings Q, while an exaggeration, is not a complete ction).21 Its controllers recommended to their spies that they join the SED, so as to have good cover. In the interest of security, unlike other services, SISs agent controllers did not meet their charges in bars or restaurants, preferring safehouses or cars. They also preferred to meet them at night and, if possible, rarely. The spies were recorded on tape as they provided their information orally.22 Spies were exploited as much as possible. For instance, it was typical for those tasked to provide intelligence on the Soviet and East German armed forces also to report on their place of work (if it was a factory or some such target of interest).23 The Stasis depiction of SIS as a very skilful service is in accord with the recollection of George Blake.24 SISs recruitment policy was directed at obtaining high-level political and economic information. This information was intended to support Britains policy of containing Soviet Communism. This was a policy with economic, political, scientic and military parts. The British government saw the embargo on strategic trade with the Soviet Bloc as essential to restraining the
21 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, report entitled Neue Arbeitsmethoden westlicher Geheimdienste, pp.34160. 22 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, Neue Arbeitsmethoden westlicher Geheimdienste, pp.3479; BStU, Auenstelle Leipzig, BVfS Leipzig, Leitung, 00153, minute entitled Protokoll uber die Kollegiumssitzung der Leitung der Bezirksverwaltung Leipzig mit der Abteilung II der Bezirksverwaltung am Dienstag, dem 26. 11. 1957, 27 November 1957, p.39. 23 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11185, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Februar 1959, 11 March 1959, pp.45. In this case the factory was of particular interest because, according to the Stasis report, it was owned by the Soviet Union. 24 Tom Bower claims that the SIS sub-station in West Berlin maintained a card index of all the services agents in Germany (The Perfect English Spy, p.262). Both the Stasi and Blake portray a service far too professional and security-minded for such a claim to be plausible. The claim is made even more implausible by the fact that by the late 1950s, when Blake was stationed in West Berlin, SISs German station (its headquarters) was in the embassy in Bonn. Why would the West Berlin sub-station maintain a card index of all the agents in Germany?
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growth of the Blocs military capability and therefore to preventing war. It also evidently regarded the Communist command economy as inferior to the free-market economy; this inferiority would be a key factor in the success of containment. Britain therefore needed high-grade economic intelligence to implement its policies effectively. The closed nature of the Communist economies meant that this information had to be obtained by spies. Accordingly, SIS tried to recruit spies in the GDRs central institutions of economic trade, particularly its foreign trade and planning agencies, to provide information on exports, imports, dependence on raw materials and economic plans. Like the US and West German secret services, it tried to recruit spies with access to information on the key sectors of the GDRs economy: engineering, chemicals and energy.25 It was, above all, on these sectors that the achievement of the targets set out in the regimes economic plans depended. SIS did successfully recruit spies in these institutions. The information obtained will have been passed on to the Joint Intelligence Bureau in London (later the Defence Intelligence Staff), the Foreign Ofce and other consumers of economic intelligence.26 The Stasis conclusions about SISs interest in political intelligence are in accord with what recent historical works, based on British and American policy documents, have argued about the development of British subversive policy towards the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. These works argue that Britain, in the late 1940s, briey irted with an aggressive policy of supporting guerrilla forces in the USSR and the Bloc which were trying to liberate their homelands. This policy found more favour with leading military gures than with the Foreign Ofce. The obvious failure of the guerrilla forces had, by the early 1950s, caused Britain to adopt a less aggressive policy of trying to destabilize the Communist regimes by encouraging divisions and purges in them and stirring up unrest in the Bloc. By the early 1960s, owing to the resilience of the Communist regimes, many in the Foreign Ofce favoured pursuing even more limited objectives. However, Britain still wanted to exert a subversive inuence on Communist rule in Eastern Europe, chiey by encouraging nationalist feeling there.27 Conclusions reached by the Stasi about SISs intelligence objectives are in accord with this. It may not have quite followed the development of British policy, but identied its main elements accurately. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, it regarded SIS as pursuing high-grade political information with which to discredit the GDR regime, provoke purges within it and exacerbate tensions between it and the Soviet Union. One operation which
25 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, report entitled Kurze Einschatzung der im Jahre 1961 erzielten Untersuchungsergebnisse in der Bearbeitung von Spionageverbrechen, 9 January 1962, p.232. 26 On the Joint Intelligence Bureau, see Huw Dylan, The Joint Intelligence Bureau: Economic, Topographic and Scientic Intelligence for Britains Cold War, 19461964 (unpublished PhD thesis, Aberystwyth University 2010). 27 Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, pp.16070, 1789, 3246; Aldrich, Espionage, Security and Intelligence in Britain, pp.1929.
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had this objective was codenamed Lyautey.28 Like the other Western secret services, SIS sought information on top-level decision-making, on opposition groups within the Socialist Unity Party, on the failings of high Party ofcials and on the GDRs relations with other states, both in the Soviet Bloc and in the developing world. The Stasi saw that Britain was interested in any manifestation of nationalism amongst the satellites.29 In the late 1950s, it noted, SIS was telling its spies to provide information on whether the satellites agreed with the Chinese Communists denunciation of Yugoslavia, or whether they leaned towards the Yugoslavian point of view. SIS was interested in any evidence at all of tension between the GDR and Poland.30 When Kurt Vieweg, the former SED Central Committee Secretary for Agriculture and Party expert on agricultural questions, ed to West Germany following disagreements with other SED leaders over agricultural policy, an SIS ofcer sought his view about the state of agriculture in the GDR and the proper policy to pursue.31 Examples of spies who provided high-grade political and economic information are to be found in the HA IXs monthly reports for 195860. The time of their arrest makes it likely that at least some (and perhaps all) were betrayed by George Blake. One such source was a stenographer who is stated at the time of his arrest to have been working in the stenographic ofce of the GDRs parliament, the Volkskammer. He was recruited by SIS in the summer of 1948. He was then working for a radio station in Leipzig (the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunksender Leipzig) and used his position there to supply political and economic information to his controller. In 1952 he was transferred to the government chancellery (Regierungskanzlei). From now on his controllers were SIS ofcers (the report indicates that his original controller was not an SIS ofcer: he was probably a German head agent). At some point he was transferred to the Volkskammer and provided intelligence on it and on the GDRs political parties, mass organizations and government institutions. Consistently with SISs policy of exploiting every source as much as possible, he also supplied technical information on particular bridges of interest.32 At the end of the 1950s, SIS had several spies reporting on the GDRs economy. They provided economic plans and production analyses (both original documents and photocopies). Amongst this was much information
On Lyautey, see P. Maddrell, What We Have Discovered about the Cold War is What We Already Knew: Julius Mader and the Western Secret Services During the Cold War, Cold War History 5/2 (2005) pp.23558 at 2501; Bower, The Perfect English Spy, pp.2612. 29 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, report entitled Einschatzung der Spionage- und Wuhltatigkeit der imperialistischen Geheimdienste gegen die Deutsche Demokratische Republik, 21 November 1961, p.266. 30 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, report entitled Information: Die Spionage im System der ideologischen Diversion, pp.3112. 31 Michael F. Scholz, Bauernopfer der deutschen Frage: Der Kommunist Kurt Vieweg im Dschungel der Geheimdienste (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag 1997) p.204. 32 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11174, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Februar 1958, 13 March 1958, p.6.
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on the GDRs consumption and import of non-ferrous metals, and on shortages of raw materials affecting important parts of industry such as mechanical engineering. They supplied information on 50% of the GDRs production of chemicals and 20% of its chemicals exports. A HA IX report of 1961 lists the British (and American, West German and French) sources in the GDRs trade sector who had been arrested in 195960 (see Table 1).33 The rst two of these are also to be found in the monthly Tatigkeits- und Auswertungsberichte. They were clearly put on trial. The rst was evidently a signicant spy in the GDRs economic bureaucracy. He was an engineer with an important position in its key institution of economic management, the State Planning Commission. He was also a long-standing member of the Socialist Unity Party. He provided intelligence from 1955 to 1959 and passed on excellent information on the progress of the GDRs energy programme, on imports from West Germany and on economic cooperation with other states in the Soviet Bloc. SIS told him to use his contacts to try and secure employment in the SEDs Central Committee so that he could provide high-grade political and economic information.34 HA IX reported on a similar SIS spy the following month. He is the second spy in Table 1. Codenamed Forster, he was a senior ofcial in the Foreign Trade Ministry, the deputy director of a statistics department there and an SED member. Between 1952 and 1959 he provided reports and photocopies of documents on the GDRs trade with both Western countries and other Bloc states.35 He managed to photocopy, in all, some 3000 documents for SIS. A spy similar to both of these was codenamed Herrscher; he was arrested in May 1958. Up to 1954 he had been head of the book-keeping division of the East German state bank, the Deutsche Notenbank; thereafter, he had worked for another bank in East Berlin. He also maintained that SIS was particularly interested in political and economic information. He had been told to report on the GDRs foreign currency position and its contracts with foreign countries. He was asked to provide information on people working for the SED Central Committee, so that they could be targeted for recruitment, and on other employees of the Deutsche Notenbank. Herrschers controller was also trying to recruit agents in the Ministry of Finance and the East German foreign trade agency.36
BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, report entitled Ubersicht - Betr.: Spionage- und Informationssammlung gegen den innerdeutschen Handel und den Auenhandel der DDR (1959/60), 7 April 1961, pp.2868. 34 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11193, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Oktober 1959, 9 November 1959, p.4; BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, Ubersicht - Betr. Spionage- und Informationssammlung gegen den innerdeutschen Handel und den Auenhandel der DDR (1959/60), 7 April 1961, p.286. 35 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11194, Tatigkeitsbericht fur November 1959, 9 December 1959, p.5. 36 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11177, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Mai 1958, 7 June 1958, pp.67.
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Table 1. HA IXs List (from April 1961) of SISs Spies in Trade Ofces of the GDR in 195960. Number of SIS agents 1 SIS agent Description of agents (after the name has been redacted, all that remains is the job s/he had) stellv. Ltr. d. Kontrollstabes f.d. Energieprogramm: deputy director of the supervisory staff for the energy programme stellv. Ltr. der Hpt. Abt. Planung u. Statistik: deputy director of the Main Department for Planning and Statistics (1) Hpt. Referent, Staatl. Metallkontor: Head of Department, State Metal Wholesale Organization (2) Handelsltr., Staatl. Holzkontor: director of trading, State Wood Wholesale Organization Planungsleiter, VVB Textilmaschinenbau: director of planning, VVB Textile Engineering (1) Technologe, VEB Progre: technologist, VEB Progress (2) Planungsltr., VEB Energie- und Kraftanlagen-Export: director of planning, VEB Energy and Power Station Export
Government agency Staatliche Plankommission (State Planning Commission) Ministerium fur Auenhandel und innerdeutschen Handel (Ministry for Foreign Trade and Inner-German Trade) Staatliche Auenhandelsorgane (state foreign trade agencies)
1 SIS agent
2 SIS agents
Fachministerien und zentrale Institutionen (specialist ministries and central institutions) Nationalized and private enterprises
1 SIS agent
2 SIS agents
Notes: VEB stood for Volkseigener Betrieb (factory owned by the people, or nationalized factory); VVB stood for Vereinigung Volkseigener Betriebe (Union of Nationalized Factories). The VVB Textilmaschinenbau was often called the VVB TEXTIMA.
In March 1960 the Stasi arrested a senior ofcial at a large factory, the VEB Energie- und Kraftanlagen Export Berlin. The HA IX concluded that he had been providing SIS with intelligence since early in 1955. He had supplied much intelligence on it and on the Ministry for Heavy Engineering (Ministerium fur Schwermaschinenbau), for which he had previously worked.37 He is the last spy in Table 1. In the Stasis view, the aim of this extensive economic intelligence collection was to be able to exploit the GDRs economic weaknesses as effectively as possible. It believed that such intelligence collection did indeed result in further measures to disrupt the East German economy.38 Actually,
BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11198, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Marz 1960, 11 April 1960, p.4. BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, Einschatzung der Spionage- und Wuhltatigkeit der imperialistischen Geheimdienste gegen die Deutsche Demokratische Republik, 21 November 1961, pp.2649; BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, Information: Die Spionage im System der ideologischen Diversion, pp.3123.
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under pressure from Western European governments, including the British, in the 1950s the Western embargo on trade with the Communist Bloc became more and more focused on goods directly related to weapons manufacture and war-making capability.39 The largest Soviet army outside the USSR was based in East Germany. It was increasingly supplemented by an East German army (known from 1956 as the Nationale Volksarmee). From 1956 these and other satellite armed forces were united in the Warsaw Pact. The Pacts forces were numerically superior to those of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which always feared surprise attack. Obtaining warning of any movement of the Pacts armed forces and intelligence of their strength and weaponry represented urgent tasks.40 The HA IXs records show that British intelligence agencies actively recruited spies to collect intelligence on Soviet and East German military targets in East Germany. Many railway workers were recruited because they could report on transports of Soviet and East German troops. They were also constantly on the move and could therefore observe air and army bases as they travelled.41 They were meant to keep a particular eye on the movement of troops and materiel from Poland into the GDR.42 East German spies were told not only to keep an eye on military bases but also to put SIS in touch with ofcers of the Nationale Volksarmee and the Soviet army.43 Those observing particular bases were told to report transports of troops, stating the day and where each transport was going to.44 Spies with photographic skills were prized and were told to photograph Soviet aircraft.45 There were also spies at the ports, who kept a particular eye on Soviet ships which docked there.46 Among the agents recruited were ones who would only become active in time of war. They were supplied with radio sets with which they could transmit intelligence.47 The memoir literature provides support for SISs involvement in such intelligence collection. The HA IXs records, for the rst time, show who some of these spies were. However, it is hard to tell which British agency ran
I. Jackson, The Economic Cold War: America, Britain and East-West Trade, 194863 (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2001) pp.12858. 40 Aldrich, Intelligence within BAOR and NATOs Northern Army Group, pp.8992. 41 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11171, Tatigkeitsbericht fur November 1957, 9 December 1957, pp.89. Some of these were put on trial in show trials and sentenced to prison terms: for example, see BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11165, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Mai 1957, 7 June 1957, pp.1415. 42 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11201, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Juni 1960, 12 July 1960, pp.68. 43 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11169, Tatigkeitsbericht fur September 1957, 11 October 1957, p.9. 44 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11209, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Februar 1961, 7 March 1961, pp.67. 45 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11168, Tatigkeitsbericht fur August 1957, 9 September 1957, p.6. 46 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11178, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Juni 1958, 7 July 1958, pp.1819. 47 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11159, Tatigkeitsbericht fur November 1956, 8 December 1956, pp.56.
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the spy concerned because the HA IX referred to both SIS and the Berlin Intelligence Staff, which also collected military intelligence in the GDR, using the term der englische Geheimdienst (the English secret service) without distinguishing between the two. Their methods were different, according to the HA IX. The Berlin Intelligence Staff made use of groups of spies, whereas SIS did not.48 That said, Blakes memoir indicates that SIS head agents in West Berlin did recruit and run networks of spies in East Germany.49 The HA IX reported on an intensication of British military intelligence collection, using groups of spies, at the end of the 1950s.50 The Stasi rolled up an entire network supplying military intelligence when, in June 1958, it arrested a carpenter who had worked for a British agency since 1949 under the codenames Michel, Karl and Frank. He had recruited 16 other sources, almost all of them railway workers and skilled workers. The fact that he led a group indicates that he probably worked for the Berlin Intelligence Staff. The Stasi found physical evidence of their espionage, such as intelligence reports.51 Early in 1961 the HA IX reported on an arrested railway worker, to whom a Geiger counter had been issued by a British agency so that he could detect transports of uranium.52 It was common for a spy to recruit other members of his or her family as spies (even SIS favoured the use of the spys spouse as courier).53 An engineer at a factory in Dresden, in the south-east of the GDR, was recruited in 1954 to spy on troop movements, manoeuvres, weaponry and how full the barracks were. He provided much intelligence until his arrest late in 1960. Equipped with a camera with a telephoto lens, he often rode his motorcycle round the military bases of the region, staging a breakdown now and then so as to photograph bases, troop transports and weapons. His codename was Gondel and, like so many others, he had been recruited by means of a refugee who had ed to West Berlin. He also reported on his work at the factory on high-voltage electrical circuits. To hide his spying equipment, he had been supplied with a razor with a hollow handle.54 (This sophisticated means of concealment points to SIS being the controlling service.) Another spy, a housewife arrested by the Stasi district ofce in Erfurt, was recruited at about the same time (195354). She was told that she was above all to report on and photograph the location of missile bases and the concentration of troops near the border with West Germany. She was given a camera and a shopping bag with a false bottom in which it could be concealed. As with so
Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, p. 417; Cavendish, Inside Intelligence, p.6. Blake, No Other Choice, pp.1745. 50 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, report entitled Kurz-Analyse, engl. GD [Kurz-Analyse, englischer Geheimdienst: Short Analysis, English Secret Service], pp.3078. 51 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11178, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Juni 1958, 7 July 1958, pp.45. 52 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11208, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Januar 1961, 7 February 1961, pp.45. 53 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11201, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Juni 1960, 12 July 1960, pp.68. 54 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11206, Tatigkeitsbericht fur November 1960, 12 December 1960, pp.67.
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many other spies reporting on military targets, she passed on her intelligence by means both of meetings with her controller (in Hanover and West Berlin) and in letters containing secret writing. The former were the preferred method of communicating intelligence, but had the disadvantage that the spy might not be able to make the journey. The latter were meant to make up for this and ensure a constant ow of intelligence. She was also asked to try to recruit spies among soldiers in the Nationale Volksarmee and scientic and engineering workers at the Carl Zeiss factory in Jena who could provide intelligence on new weapons and other devices.55 As a key part of the Communist regimes repressive apparatus, the Ministry of State Security was another target. SIS recruited one of the Stasis informers in January 1957. One of his tasks was to seduce the daughter of a Stasi ofcer; the HA IX suspected that SISs objective was to win inuence over her father.56 The rapid development of the arms race made the collection of scientic and technological intelligence (S&TI) a high priority. British intelligence records, held at the National Archives in Kew, show that SIS sought to recruit East German scientists and engineers as sources, particularly those with knowledge of scientic developments in the Soviet Union. Records of the HA IX and other divisions of the Stasi provide support for this. The two sets of sources are in accord in demonstrating that the connections between veterans of the great, pre-1945 German companies such as Junkers, I. G. Farben, AEG, Carl Zeiss and Siemens were exploited for S&TI. Former employees of these companies now lived on both sides of the German divide. Yet they were still connected with one another; indeed, many belonged to associations of former employees. The Stasi called these Vereinigungen; the British called them Old Boys Networks.57 The association of former employees of Junkers, the aircraft company, was seen by the Stasi as being connected via senior members with several Western secret services and above all with the S&TI collection agencies of the United States.58 The connection with British intelligence was maintained via a publishing house called Die Flugwelt (The World of Flight).59
55 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11195, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Dezember 1959, 12 January 1960, pp.56. For other cases in which the HA IX concluded that East Germans were spies collecting military intelligence for British intelligence agencies, see: BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11184, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Januar 1959, 6 February 1959, p.5; BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11209, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Februar 1961, 7 March 1961, pp.56; BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11211, Tatigkeitsbericht fur April 1961, 6 May 1961, pp.56; BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11214, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Juli 1961, 10 August 1961, p.5. 56 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11172, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Dezember 1957, 10 January 1958, p.6. 57 See Maddrell, Spying on Science, pp.8997. 58 On these, see P. Maddrell, BritishAmerican Scientic Intelligence Collaboration during the Occupation of Germany in D. Stafford and R. Jeffreys-Jones (eds.) AmericanBritish Canadian Intelligence Relations 19392000 (Ilford: Cass 2000) pp.7494. 59 BStU, BVfS Leipzig, Leitung 00208/02, report entitled Bericht: Betr.: Feindtatigkeit in den Objekten der Abteilung VI, BV Leipzig, Abteilung VI, 29 November 1957, p.84.
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British records indicate that SIS was successful in recruiting spies among East German scientists, engineers and technicians. For example, in the 1950s it was making approaches to aeronautical engineers in East Germany and suggesting to them that they apply for jobs in the Soviet Union and send back intelligence from there on Soviet science. However, the Soviet security service, perhaps aware of these approaches, arrested the men concerned, and others, in September 1951. Most of those in whom SIS was chiey interested had once worked at the Junkers aircraft factory in Dessau. Three of them, twin brothers, Dr Ing. Horst and Ing. Justus Muttray, and Ing. Hans Schorlemer,60 were engineers (the latter two at Junkers-Dessau); another man, called Max Rubens, had been a technical director at the factory and was at the time of his arrest working for a big nationalized enterprise, VVB ABUS,61 in Berlin. All were evidently just the kind of high-grade agent SIS was looking for. Horst Muttray is reported in these records to have agreed to go to Russia but was arrested before he went. Rubens and Schorlemer appear to have refused to go. However, Rubens seems to have been a subagent who passed information to a German head agent, a factory owner called Hans-Henry Herrmann who worked for SISs Technical Section.62 Their signicance for research into the history of British intelligence prompted me to apply to read any records the BStU held on these men. The BStU conrmed that it held records on them but I was denied permission to read them. As German victims of Soviet repression, the fate of all three men was monitored by the resistance organization, the Untersuchungsausschu freiheitlicher Juristen (UfJ),63 a group of lawyers which researched into arrests and other repressive acts on the part of the Soviet and East German authorities with the aim of bringing those responsible to justice, if circumstances changed to permit this. The Ministry for All-German Questions (Ministerium fur Gesamtdeutsche Fragen) took the organization over in 1960; it was dissolved in 1969. On its dissolution, its archive was taken over by the Gesamtdeutsches Institut, records of which are held at the Federal Archive (Bundesarchiv) in Koblenz. Records on the Muttrays and Rubens show that they were sentenced to 25 years hard labour and transported to Russia to serve their sentence. However, they were released early, in 1955, when Nikita Khrushchev cleared out the camps after Stalins death.64
Ing. is a German form of address indicating that the person is question is an engineer (Ingenieur). 61 ABUS stood for Ausrustungen fur Bergbau und Schwerindustrie. 62 TNA, DEFE 41/12, STIB Berlin to Director, Scientic and Technical Intelligence Branch (STIB), 14 December 1951; DEFE 41/12, Production Directorate to STIB, 3 December 1951; DEFE 41/12, STIB Berlin to Director STIB, 13 October 1951; DEFE 41/12, STIB Berlin to Director STIB, 3 October 1951; DEFE 41/12, STIB Berlin to Director STIB, 1 October 1951. 63 In English: Investigative Committee of Free Jurists. 64 Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Haftkartei des Gesamtdeutschen Instituts (prisoners card index of the Gesamtdeutsches Institut), B285/4561 (Justus Muttray) and B285/4584 (Max Rubens); B. Stover, Die Befreiung vom Kommunismus: amerikanische Liberation Policy im Kalten Krieg, 19471991 (Cologne: Bohlau Verlag 2002) pp.2812.
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SIS was clearly keen to nd out how science and technology were progressing under a Communist regime which claimed to represent the future. Moreover, the GDR could draw on great German traditions of scientic and engineering skill. One British intelligence view in 1952 was that, The electronics potential of the GDR exceeds that of all the [other] satellites combined.65 It is therefore unsurprising to nd an SIS spy among those arrested at key research and development institutes. Early in 1961 the HA IX reported on an engineer at the Institut fur Geratebau (Institute for Instrument Construction), who turned out to have provided SIS, since 1955, with photocopies of technical drawings and descriptions of research and development projects at the institute. He had also gone for drives through East Germany to nd out more about places where, SIS had been informed, Soviet missile bases existed. One of the places he visited in 1960 was Vogelsang, near Templin, where the year before a Soviet medium-range ballistic missile force had indeed briey been based. The HA IXs report on this is conrmed by a record in the archive of the Bundesnachrichtendienst at the Federal Archive in Koblenz. This establishes that the BND received from both SIS and BSSO reports of a Soviet missile base at Vogelsang.66 Naturally, the Soviet Unions massive uranium-mining effort, in the south of the GDR, was also of much interest. In its report for April 1956, the HA IX reported on a courier for SIS who had been investigated by Line IXs Dresden branch. He had taken letters from SIS to targeted people in East Germany and had invited them to meetings in West Berlin at which an approach was to be made to them. In interrogation, the courier said that he thought that his controller ran spies exclusively against Soviet uraniummining installations in East Germany.67 In the early 1960s SIS was clearly seeking to recruit high-grade scientic sources among Soviet Bloc scientists who had contacts with the West and were allowed to attend conferences outside the Bloc. An example is the East German nuclear physicist Professor Heinz Barwich. From 1962 to 1964 Barwich was Deputy Director of the Soviet Blocs Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, at Dubna, near Moscow, where he worked on secondment from his position as Director of the Central Institute for Nuclear Research (Zentralinstitut fur Kernforschung, or ZfK) at Rossendorf, near Dresden. In 1963 the Stasi had information that SIS was interested in Barwich. This may have been given to it by the KGB, which may have received it from George Blake. Blake had some involvement with scientic intelligence in the years 195961; in 1959 he joined the SIS unit responsible for obtaining intelligence from British visitors to the USSR and Soviet visitors to Britain.
TNA, DEFE 41/153, Directorate of Scientic Intelligence Memorandum No. 15, Science in the German Democratic Republic, 17 May 1952, p.1. 66 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11210, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Marz 1961, 7 April 1961, pp.67; Matthias Uhl and Vladimir Ivkin, Operation Atom: The Soviet Unions Stationing of Nuclear Missiles in the German Democratic Republic, 1959, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issue 12/13 (Fall/Winter 2001) pp.299307 at p.306, n.32. 67 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11152, Tatigkeitsbericht fur April 1956, 11 May 1956, p.5.
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These visitors included scientists (Barwich himself applied to the British Embassy in Moscow for a visa to visit Britain in 1962).68 Exploitation of the Stream of Migrants from East Germany As appears above, the Stasis les make clear that SISs principal method of recruiting spies (and that of the other Western secret services too) was by exploiting the connections back to East Germany of the migrants who moved from there to West Germany. Migration was easy for East Germans until 1961 because the border with the West was still open in Berlin. Moreover, they were entitled to the citizenship of the Federal Republic, established in 1949. The only obstacles to successful migration were the practical difculty of crossing the border with any possessions at all (the East German Volkspolizei were on the watch for anyone burdened down with luggage) and managing to settle in West Germany without any home, possessions or money (save a meagre handout from the federal government). The open border in Berlin was therefore crucial to SIS agent recruitment. It was also crucial to communicating with spies. As is stated above, SIS preferred its controllers to meet their agents face-to-face in cars and safehouses in West Berlin. The controllers could read through the original documents or photocopies brought by the spy, check that they were authentic, satisfy themselves that the spy was genuinely cooperating and had not been followed, and give training and further instructions. The Berlin Wall, erected in August 1961 and progressively reinforced, made recruitment of spies harder and communicating with them much harder. The opportunities of doing both were most easily exploited by the BND, which is one reason why it emerged in the 1960s as clearly the most important human intelligence (Humint) service operating against the GDR.69 Until 1961, the Western secret services thoroughly exploited the migrants pouring into West Berlin from the East. The questioning went far beyond merely establishing whether they knew people still in East Germany who might be valuable as spies. People who might have such information were sifted out of the stream of refugees and transferred to SIS for specialist interrogation. But the refugees were questioned for all the useful information they had. They were a very valuable source on the factories and industrial production of the GDR. Most were low-grade sources but their information was pieced together to form a detailed and up-to-date picture of East German industry. Spies were recruited by all the Western secret services in the GDRs factories but, certainly by the end of the 1950s, migrants provided information on industrial production so substantial that the signicance of spies was reduced. One SIS ofcer is stated in a Stasi report of the time to have told a double agent run by it that migrants provided enough
68 P. Maddrell, The Scientist Who Came in from the Cold: Heinz Barwichs Flight from the GDR, Intelligence and National Security 20/4 (2005) pp.60830 at pp.623 and 62930, n.63. 69 See Maddrell, Spying on Science, pp.24770.
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information for SISs policy to be to recruit spies in the government bureaucracy to supply intelligence on high-level decision-making.70 One Stasi document gives a rare insight into SIS ofcers at work. An East German engineer ed to West Berlin in the 1950s. Since he had worked at an important factory in East Berlin, he was identied as a promising source in preliminary questioning in West Berlin and driven to the British and American intelligence headquarters in the city for specialist interrogation. The British headquarters was located next to the stadium built for Hitlers Olympics in 1936. SIS ofcers, presented as treating the interviewee very politely, questioned him no fewer than eight or nine times about the factory and those who worked there. It was hinted to him that, if he cooperated, the British would support his application for recognition as a political refugee (which would give him some means of subsistence). Dissatised with life in West Berlin, the engineer later returned to the GDR. Ever interested in information on hostile intelligence services, the Stasi questioned him years later about his experiences of British intelligence (the report is dated 1971).71 Resistance It is clearly established that the encouragement of West German resistance organizations played a key role in American spying and subversion against the GDR and the Soviet Bloc. This was long alleged by Bloc propagandists;72 it is now conrmed by US government and intelligence records.73 Stasi records, supplemented by other information, show that British intelligence pursued the same policy. This was, of course, merely a continuation of its policy in World War Two. However, the Communists hatred of the resistance organizations which fought them was such that their claims about them must be examined with great care; they were only too keen to accuse such organizations of being vehicles of the Western secret services. While some Stasi records clearly refer to reliable factual evidence of collaboration between resistance organizations and secret services, others display a tendency to abuse resistance and to treat it as all part of an ideologicallyconstructed enemy, imperialism, of which the secret services were the directing mind. A famous collector of intelligence on the GDR for much of the Cold War was the Ostburo (Eastern Bureau) of the West German Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD). The East German SPD dissolved itself in 1946 when it merged with the East German Communist Party to form the ruling party, the Socialist Unity Party.
BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, Information: Die Spionage im System der ideologischen Diversion, p.310. 71 BStU, ZA, MfS-Allg. P. 8086/76. 72 See Maddrell, What We have Discovered about the Cold War is What We Already Knew. 73 See D. Murphy, S. Kondrashev and G. Bailey, Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1997).
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However, many Social Democrats were bitterly hostile to the new party and more became disaffected with it as the SED proved itself to be a mere vehicle for Communist domination. The West German SPD sought to maintain links with Social Democrats in East Germany; this was the job of its Ostburo, which was one of the principal anti-Communist organizations of the early Cold War. The Ostburo obtained a mass of intelligence from its sources in East Germany until its dissolution in 1971. Its records are now held in the Archiv der sozialen Demokratie (the archive of the Social Democratic Party) in Bonn. Its sources made it a valuable partner for any Western intelligence service. The US Armys CIC collaborated with it. The Central Intelligence Agency maintained a looser connection, preferring to nance only its propaganda and covert action. The Ostburo also maintained links with British intelligence. Its long-serving chief, Stephan Thomas, had during the Second World War been a prisoner of war in British hands and had even worked for the BBC. He was alleged by Communist propagandists to have worked closely with Western intelligence services. These claims are worthy of further research. The SPDs contacts with the British authorities naturally extended back to the war period, when many Social Democrats (including the second post-war party chairman, Erich Ollenhauer) had found refuge in Britain. It was the British authorities in the British Zone of Occupation which rst made an ofce in Hanover available to the Ostburo. The SPD has conceded that it passed on to both British and US intelligence reports on East Germany.74 A former SIS ofcer in Germany at that time recalls that abundant political information was obtained from the SPD so much that SIS set up a special ofce in Hanover to receive it.75 The SPD has also stated that it suggested to British intelligence Social Democrats who might be willing to spy for it.76 Social Democrats certainly did spy for the British in the late 1940s. One who is believed to have done so was Wilhelm Lohrenz, whose case was made famous by Communist propaganda. He was a member of the Berlin SPD who was arrested in the Soviet Zone in November 1946 when, apparently, on a mission for SIS. His case became famous in 1948 when the Communists decided to use it to accuse the SPD-Ostburo of spying. Lohrenz was forced to sign a confession admitting that he was a spy and accusing the Ostburo of espionage. However, he had never worked for the Ostburo.77 Stasi records conrm that the Ostburo cooperated with SIS. Erich Mielke, in an instruction to his counter-intelligence ofcers in 1953, stated categorically that leading gures at the Telegraf, an SPD newspaper in
The Stasi had made this nding long before: see BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 17811, Schulungsmaterial, Hochschule Potsdam-Eiche, Vorlesung, Die feindliche Tatigkeit der rechten Fuhrer der SPD und des DGB sowie des Ostburos der SPD im Rahmen der politisch-ideologischen Diversion gegen die Deutsche Demokratische Republik, p.313. 75 Cavendish, Inside Intelligence, p.50. 76 Stover, Die Befreiung vom Kommunismus, pp.2589. 77 W. Buschfort, Parteien im Kalten Krieg (Berlin: Links Verlag 2000) pp.7, 868.
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Berlin, were SIS agents; they acted as principal agents, running other agents in East Germany. He also stated that couriers for the SPD-Ostburo carried out intelligence tasks directly on behalf of Western secret services.78 The HA IXs records conrm cooperation with SIS. In 1956 the Stasi arrested an SIS courier. Between 1950 and 1954 he had carried out military intelligence tasks in East Germany for the Ostburo. Then, in 1955, he had transferred to SIS, to act as a courier for it in the GDR.79 In a further order from 1953, Mielke, then the Stasis deputy chief and the man principally responsible within it for counter-subversion and counter-intelligence, maintained that another West German resistance organization, the Association of Victims of Stalinism (Vereinigung der Opfer des Stalinismus, or VOS), had been founded in February 1950 at the initiative of British intelligence ofcers. However, Mielke regarded the organization as controlled and funded by the CIC, which probably reects how closely the British and Americans cooperated in post-war Germany, as well as how impecunious the British were.80 The VOSs aim was to represent all those who had once been political prisoners in the GDR. Its members were, naturally, fanatically antiCommunist. By the 1960s, the Stasis view of the VOS was a very moderate one. It believed that by that time the organization only sought to represent its members and did not engage in active subversive work in the GDR. The Berlin organization had in the 1950s constituted an exception to this rule; SIS had recruited agents from among its members until about 1960. However, after that the Stasi had not been able to detect any such activities. This is a further indication that SISs operations in East Germany were greatly reduced in about 1960.81 Stasi and KGB Counter-intelligence Operations and the Loss of Spies by SIS The main Western secret services those of the United States, West Germany, Britain and France suffered heavy losses of spies throughout the 1950s. The GDRs vulnerability to spying forced the Communist regime and
BStU, ZA, MfS-BdL, Dok. Nr. 529/1859, Dienstanweisung Nr. 20/53, 29 June 1953. For further allegations, of uncertain reliability, that important SPD ofcials were agents of SIS, see: Oberleutnant Szosta, Lektion: Die Ostburos als Hilfsorgane der imperialistischen Geheimdienste, Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit, Hochschule Potsdam-Eiche, II. Hochschul Lehrgang, August 1957; BStU, ZA, Allg. S. 1003/67, Band 6, Auszug aus einem Bericht v. 11. 10. 48, 23 September 1954, pp.923. 79 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11150, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Januar 1956, p.5. 80 BStU, ZA, MfS-BdL/Dok. Nr. 002087, Dienstanweisung Nr. 3/53 zur Sachakte Pest, 14 January 1953. 81 BStU, ZA, Allg. S. 66/68, Band 10, Oberst Schroder, Leiter der Hauptabteilung V, to Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit, Bezirksverwaltung Gera, Abteilung IX, Tgb.-Nr. HA V/5/ I7875/63, 19 November 1963, pp.5960. In German: Zur Tatigkeit der VOS ist zu sagen, da die Aktivitat uber eine Versammlungstatigkeit nicht hinausgeht. Eine Ausnahme bildete der Landesverband Berlin, wo in fruheren Jahren Personen fur den engl. Geheimdienst angeworben wurden. Auf Grund von Veranderungen in der Landesgeschaftsstelle Westberlin konnte seit ca. 1960 in dieser Richtung ebenfalls nichts mehr festgestellt werden.
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KGB to take extraordinary counter-intelligence measures. In the years 1953 55 the KGB and Stasi carried out the largest arrests of spies to take place anywhere in the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. The Stasi called them konzentrierte Schlage (concentrated blows); they appear to have been the brainchild of the then Stasi chief Ernst Wollweber. Resistance ghters were also arrested in large numbers (naturally enough, since many such people also acted as spies or couriers and their organizations worked closely with the Western secret services and were heavily dependent on them for funds). SIS lost a substantial number of spies, though fewer than the American secret services or the American-controlled Gehlen Organization (this is natural since it ran fewer spies than either). The rst two major arrest operations were Feuerwerk (Firework, 1953) and Pfeil (Arrow, 1954); the spies arrested were mainly those of Gehlen and the US secret services. SISs networks were targeted in the third major operation, codenamed Blitz (Lightning, 195455). In its second phase, codenamed Fruhling (Spring, 1955), ve SIS spy networks were reportedly rounded up by the Stasi and KGB. A document obtained by the dissident KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin has established that the konzentrierte Schlage depended very heavily on information obtained by the KGB from its best agents in SIS and the Gehlen Organization. These agents were Kim Philby (SIS), George Blake (SIS) and Heinz Felfe (the Gehlen Organization).82 Information provided by Philby and Blake guided the Stasi in carrying out Fruhling. According to Erich Mielke, who reported to the Socialist Unity Partys Central Committee on the whole of Blitz, 105 agents of the British secret service had been arrested in the operation. By agent he meant not only spies but also resistance ghters and people with suspicious Western contacts. Nevertheless, it appears that SIS lost a lot of sources in Blitz.83 A report from 1976 of the Stasis central analytical staff, the Zentrale Auswertungs- und Informationsgruppe (ZAIG), establishes that Blakes treason devastated SISs operations in East Germany a second time. It states that information provided by Blake enabled the Stasi to identify approximately 100 spies in the GDR in the years 195861. The report refers to six such sources. As victims of the Stasi, their names have been redacted from the report. However, the report does state their jobs, from which it is again clear that SIS had succeeded in its aim of recruiting high-grade sources in the GDRs government, administration and army who could provide valuable intelligence over a long period of time. One was a short-hand secretary who worked for the Council of Ministers; indeed, this may well be the same case as that referred to in the HA IXs report on a stenographer-spy.84 Another was a colonel in the
C. Andrew and V. Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West (London: Allen Lane/The Penguin Press 1999) pp.5201. 83 K.W. Fricke and R. Engelmann, Konzentrierte Schlage: Staatssicherheitsaktionen und politische Prozesse in der DDR, 19531956 (Berlin: Links Verlag 1998) pp.4260. 84 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11174, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Februar 1958, 13 March 1958, p.6.
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army;85 a third was an ofcial of the State Planning Commission;86 a fourth was an important ofcial (Oberreferent) at the Ministry for Mechanical Engineering; a fth was a head of department at the Ministry of Foreign Trade;87 and the last was an ofcial of the Special Construction Staff in Potsdam.88 However, summaries of the cases of far fewer than 100 spies are to be found in the HA IXs reports for 195861. The reports for 1958 refer to two high-grade sources providing political and economic information and to a further spy, Michel/Karl/Frank, who led a group of spies providing military intelligence. Fifteen further sources were arrested with Michel, but it may be that none of these people was betrayed by Blake, who worked in the political intelligence section of SISs West Berlin station. Moreover, given SISs hostility to running groups of agents and its focus on scientic, political and economic intelligence, it is likely that these sources on military matters were spies of the Berlin Intelligence Staff. So two (or, at most, 18) SIS spies were signicant enough for the HA IX to report on them that year. The reports for 1959 refer to ten British spies, two of whom were highgrade sources providing economic and political information and had probably been run by SIS. The remaining eight had provided military intelligence. The reports for 1960 refer to nine spies for British agencies in all. Only one of these had provided high-grade economic information. The others consisted of a family group of three who supplied military intelligence and a group of ve who also collected chiey military intelligence. The reports for 1961 refer to seven British spies.89 Six provided military intelligence; the seventh gathered scientic and technological intelligence, though he carried out military intelligence collection tasks as well. So in the years 195861 44 spies for British agencies passed through Line IXs hands. Most (38) of them had provided intelligence on the Soviet and East German armed forces, which was a type of intelligence collection
Another colonel in the East German army (then called the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, or KVP), who reported to a British intelligence agency between early 1953 and early 1956, is to be found in: BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11151, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Februar 1956, 6 March 1956, p.7. He worked in the KVPs Verwaltung fur Kraftfahrzeugwesen (Administration for Motor Vehicles). 86 This may well be the case referred to in note 35 above (BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11193, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Oktober 1959, 9 November 1959, p.4). 87 This may well be the case referred to in note 36 above (BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11194, Tatigkeitsbericht fur November 1959, 9 December 1959, p.5). 88 BStU, ZA, MfS-ZAIG 15753, report entitled Hinweise zum sowjetischen Kundschafter im britischen Geheimdienst, George Blake, 3 December 1976. 89 However, another document indicates that more people were arrested that year on suspicion of spying for British agencies. The report (which is for the whole of 1961) states that HA IX/1 (the division of the department responsible for prosecuting spying cases) had arrested 65 people on suspicion of spying for the major Western secret services in 1961; of these, ten had been arrested on suspicion of spying for British intelligence agencies: see BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, report entitled Jahresabschlubericht uber die Resultate und den Stand der Untersuchungsarbeit, 8 January 1962, p.246.
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which SIS did not then prioritize and in which Blake was not involved during his time in West Berlin. There is, therefore, a strong chance that he did not betray them. However, he may have had a hand in their downfall, either because negligence on SISs part gave him access to information he should not have had or because he was able to betray the controllers to whom these agents reported, thus enabling the Stasi to put them and their safehouses under surveillance. The ve spies who supplied high-grade political and economic information were probably betrayed by Blake. He may also have betrayed the spy who had provided scientic and technological intelligence, even though Blake was not then involved in S&TI collection. Whichever of these spies he betrayed, it is evident that not all of those he betrayed passed through Line IXs hands. It is unclear how the Stasi handled these cases. The fact that they do not feature in the ordinary monthly reporting of the HA IX must mean either that their cases did not go to trial in the GDR or that they were the subjects of special reporting or that they were handled by the KGB. It may be that many betrayed by Blake were not arrested immediately on discovery, to protect him, but one would expect them to have been arrested after Blakes own arrest in 1961. However, no spies for SIS or any other British intelligence agency are referred to in the monthly reports for the last 28 years of the Stasis existence (196289). The last spy for a British agency to be reported on by the HA IX in its monthly reports appears in the report for December 1961 (see below).90 The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Parker, when he sentenced Blake to a prison term of 42 years, gave as one of his reasons for this unprecedentedly long sentence that Blakes treason had been so grave that it had forced a complete reorganization of SIS. One aspect of that reorganization seems to have been a considerable reduction in the scale of its operations against the GDR. The Effect of the Construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 The open border with the East in West Berlin was so important to all the major Western secret services that they prepared throughout the 1950s for its possible closure.91 Khrushchevs ultimatum on Berlin of November 1958
This one spy represents 0.4% of all the spies to have passed through Line IXs hands in the period from 13 August 1961 to 31 December 1965. However, it is clear that more spies for British intelligence agencies were arrested in the same period: a study written by Stasi counterintelligence ofcers in 1967 states that 5.5% of all the spies of the major Western secret services (those of the United States, West Germany, Britain and France) arrested in those months were British spies: see BStU, ZA, MfS-JHS 21769, Oberst Werner Grunert & Hauptmann Paul Abisch, Dissertation, Zur wirtschaftlichen Stortatigkeit des staatsmono polistischen Herrschaftssystems Westdeutschlands gegen die fuhrenden Industriezweige der Volkswirtschaft der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, March 1967, p.117. 91 See P. Maddrell, The Western Secret Services, the East German Ministry of State Security and the Building of the Berlin Wall, Intelligence and National Security 21/5 (2006) pp.829 48. This article has also been published in L. Scott and R.G. Hughes (eds.), Intelligence, Crises and Security: Prospects and Retrospects (London: Routledge 2007) pp.17795.
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galvanized British intelligence agencies, like the other Western services, into preparing for being deprived of West Berlin as an espionage base.92 However, the British agencies anticipated a Soviet attempt to do this; they (like the CIA) had been making preparations for a border closure in the months before that. This is clear from the HA IX case report for December 1959 referred to above. This is the case of the enterprising housewife, arrested by the Stasis Erfurt ofce, who took photographs of military targets as she passed them, using a camera artfully concealed in a secret compartment in her shopping bag. Her interrogation revealed that in the winter of 195758 her controller had told her that it was necessary to prepare for the possibility that the state and sectoral borders might be sealed. If this occurred, her instructions were to pass on intelligence in letters bearing writing in invisible ink.93 The Walls construction proved an effective security measure against Western espionage. Owing to the more difcult conditions, many spies abandoned spying. The West German, American and French secret services suffered heavy losses of spies. The BNDs losses were particularly heavy, partly because of the services poor tradecraft and partly because, in the wake of Heinz Felfes arrest in November 1961, the Stasi was able to arrest spies he had betrayed. However, owing to George Blakes treason, SIS seems already to have been largely eliminated from espionage in the GDR. The border closure itself seems to have had little effect on it, save to encourage it to leave the GDR to the BND. The HA IX reported on only one spy for a British intelligence agency after the Walls construction. As stated above, he is the last British spy to appear in the monthly reports. He was a 71-year-old, retired railway worker, codenamed Paul, who provided intelligence on armed forces stationed in the GDR.94 As a low-grade source on military matters, it is likely that he was run by the Berlin Intelligence Staff, not SIS. SISs operations against the GDR seem to have been signicantly reduced at this time. Helmut Wagner, an ofcer of the Stasis main counterintelligence division, Line II, recalls that SIS endured the arrests of its agents in the GDR ohne Reaktion ihrerseits (without any reaction on its part).95 This needs to be qualied: on SISs behalf, British businessmen who had
BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, Einschatzung der Spionage- und Wuhltatigkeit der imperialistischen Geheimdienste gegen die Deutsche Demokratische Republik, 21 November 1961, p.260; BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, Neue Arbeitsmethoden westlicher Geheimdienste, p.341. The latter report has been published as Document 1 in P. Maddrell, Exploiting and Securing the Open Border in Berlin: The Western Secret Services, the Stasi and the Second Berlin Crisis, 19581961, Cold War International History Project Working Paper No. 58. This working paper is available online at: 5http://www.wilsoncenter.org/ topics/pubs/CWIHPWP58_maddrell.pdf4. 93 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11195, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Dezember 1959, pp. 67. 94 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX, MF-11219, Tatigkeitsbericht fur Dezember 1961, 8 January 1962, pp.56. 95 Interview with Helmut Wagner, formerly an Oberstleutnant in the MfSs Line II, 5 September 2001. Wagner is the author of Schone Grue aus Pullach (Berlin: Das Neue Berlin 2001).
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dealings with GDR enterprises tried to obtain information from the ofcials with whom they dealt.96 Nevertheless, SISs pursuit of agents in the East German state apparatus greatly declined. Line II became aware of only a few attempts on its part to recruit East Germans; the targets were mainly ofcials working in the GDRs foreign trade ofces, scientists and diplomats. They were either based in democratic states or authorized to travel there on business. SISs much smaller operations against the GDR must reect a change in its priorities in the 1960s: it left spying in East Germany to the BND. The CIA increasingly did the same. As far as the Stasi could ascertain, the efforts of British military intelligence to run spies in the GDR ended in the wake of the Berlin Walls construction. The GDR continued to have a low priority for SIS until almost the end of the Cold War. It did open a station in East Berlin when a British embassy was established there in 1973, but the ofcers based there made very little effort to recruit East Germans as spies. They obtained information on the GDR chiey from contacts. Their recruitment efforts they directed against citizens of Bloc states other than the GDR Russians, for instance and of Third World countries. As a result, the Stasi had little up-to-date information on SIS (as on the rest of British intelligence). The British intelligence service most active against the GDR throughout the Cold War were the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which collected signals intelligence at stations based in West Germany and West Berlin.97 SIS in the German Democratic Republic in the 1980s The GDR rose in importance to British intelligence in the early 1980s, when an opposition movement emerged there. It consisted of peace, human rights, environmental, womens and other groups, most of which formed initially within the Protestant churches, which gave them some protection from the regime. They were eager to make contact with the embassies of all the major Western states and provide information about their doings. Diplomats and intelligence ofcers at all the leading Western embassies quickly developed contacts with opposition groups, kept in regular touch with them and obtained much information from them about their hopes and activities. SIS
BStU, ZA, MfS-JHS 21769, Grunert & Abisch, Zur wirtschaftlichen Stortatigkeit des staatsmonopolistischen Herrschaftssystems Westdeutschlands gegen die fuhrenden Indus triezweige der Volkswirtschaft der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, March 1967, p.118. 97 G. Moller and W. Stuchly, Zur Spionageabwehr (HA II im MfS/Abt. II der BV) in R. Grimmer, W. Irmler, W. Opitz and W. Schwanitz (eds.) Die Sicherheit. Zur Abwehrarbeit des MfS, vol. 1 (Berlin: edition ost 2002) pp.4714. On recognition, see K. Larres, Britain and the GDR: Political and Economic Relations 19491989 in K. Larres (ed.) Uneasy Allies: BritishGerman Relations and European Integration since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000) pp.6398.
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had particularly good contacts with the Protestant church in Berlin and Brandenburg.98 An important part of SISs tasking in the GDR in the 1980s concerned nding out more about its foreign trade system. Stasi records from that decade point to a determination on Britains part to enforce the embargo on strategic trade with the Soviet Bloc. This clearly reected the harder line on such trade which the Reagan administration had adopted (but which Britains European Economic Community partners had not). GDR research and development into microelectronics depended heavily on stolen Western technology (its 16- and 32-bit microprocessors, both completed in the late 1980s, were obvious copies of Western models). SIS tried to nd out how hardware, software and knowhow were being obtained in breach of the embargo. The importance of spying on the GDR also increased as a result of awareness of greater East GermanSoviet scientic cooperation. The Stasi ran double agents against SIS and the BND in the 1980s. These agents were in leading enterprises such as the Kombinat fur Mikroelektronik Erfurt and Kombinat Carl Zeiss Jena. It wanted to know how much SIS already knew, and how. Otto Bernd Kirchner, who has written a doctoral thesis on Carl Zeisss contribution to the development of microelectronics in the GDR, suspects that SIS and the BND were aware that its sources (senior people in the East German microelectronics eld) were under the Stasis control. The questions put to them by SIS and the BND were so precise that the Stasi believed that they had to have further sources in GDR microelectronics. It searched intensively for them but did not nd them. One of SISs sources (under the Stasis control) was Dr Hillig, deputy Generaldirektor of the Kombinat fur Mikroelektronik. Hillig even supplied (with the Stasis agreement) samples of East German microelectronics (for example, silicon chips).99 Whatever their defeats at the Stasis hands, the British had the last laugh because in 1990 the committee which dissolved the Stasi gave SIS access to its foes counter-intelligence records. Conclusion The Stasis records show that the counter-intelligence les of one service can be used to write the history or the beginnings of a history of the intelligence operations of another. The HA IXs records on the Secret Intelligence Service are factually detailed and, for the most part, accurate. The Stasi is much criticized for holding views of its enemies which were severely distorted by ideology. There is much force to this criticism but it does not apply to all parts of the ministry or to all types of reporting. The HA IX, in particular, was a reliable analyst of individual cases of espionage.
Wagner, Schone Grue aus Pullach, pp.18495. Otto Bernd Kirchner, Wafer-Stepper und Megabit-Chip: Die Rolle des Kombinats CarlZeiss-Jena in der Mikroelektronik der DDR (unpublished PhD thesis, Fakultat Geschichts-, Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Abteilung fur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und Technik, Stuttgart University 2000) pp.121 and 141.
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Its surveys of patterns in Western espionage, which, as far as the records I have seen are concerned, only relate to relatively short periods of time (a year or two), are also reliable, though more polemical and ideological in tone.100 These records show that the HA IX was very well able to form a matter-of-fact and, indeed, positive view of a hostile intelligence service. Both these characteristics of their view of SIS are inconsistent with what ideology is supposed to have taught them. What arises from the HA IXs records is a very unsurprising and plausible picture of the Secret Intelligence Service at work in post-war Germany. They present SIS as a very skilful and professional service. Its agent-running was, compared with that of the United States secret services, on a modest scale; SISs aim was to obtain information of high quality and evident reliability. It sought information which served Britains cautious, long-term policy of containment. British policy relied heavily on economic and scientic superiority, diplomacy, propaganda and deterrence. SIS therefore sought information on the GDRs economy and trade; on the development of East German and Soviet science, so as to identify any Western inferiority and maintain superiority; on disagreements within the SED regime or the Bloc; on any movement of Warsaw Pact forces; and on the strength and weaponry of those forces. As the Stasi saw it, intelligence played a central role in British policy, as it did in the policy of all the other major Western powers. It identied weaknesses which could then be exploited by policy initiatives (often, propaganda and other initiatives of subversive policy). In their turn, propaganda and subversion served to encourage East Germans to betray the GDR and become spies.101 SIS was a successful gatherer of intelligence in the GDR in the late 1940s and for most of the 1950s. Its success greatly declined in the late 1950s and was ended completely by Blakes treason. The harder conditions for espionage brought about by the closure of the Berlin sectoral border in August 1961 encouraged SIS to leave spying in the GDR to the Bundesnachrichtendienst. Its successes in the 1950s were hard won. It had to contend with severe and skilful counter-intelligence operations by the Soviet security service and, increasingly, by the Stasi. The penetrations SIS suffered in this period (not only Blake but Kim Philby as well), both at the hands of the KGB, were devastating ones. However, save for the fate of the
100
This statement needs to be qualied in one respect. The HA IX consistently showed casualness in describing the organization of British intelligence (and of other Western intelligence services). As with other Western services, it generally does not distinguish between SIS and other British intelligence agencies: they are all described as der englische Geheimdienst (the English secret service). Moreover, a report which otherwise contains obviously reliable factual information maintains that both SIS and the Berlin Intelligence Staff were directly responsible to the Prime Minister (sie unterstehen direkt dem Premierminister): see BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, Neue Arbeitsmethoden westlicher Geheimdienste, p.347. SIS is, of course, responsible to the Foreign Secretary. As a military intelligence staff, the Berlin Intelligence Staff will have been responsible to the Secretary of State for Defence. 101 BStU, ZA, MfS-HA IX 4350, Information: Die Spionage im System der ideologischen Diversion, pp.30920.
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unfortunates Blake betrayed, the signicance of his treason should not be overestimated. SIS was most important in Germany at the very beginning of the Cold War, in the late 1940s, when the United States intelligence effort was still relatively small and badly organized. By the 1950s the United States intelligence services were far and away the most important on the Western side, carrying out operations which were much greater in scale than those of British agencies. Throughout the 1950s the Gehlen Organization grew rapidly in importance, so much so that in 1954 the GDRs security chief, Ernst Wollweber, considered it the most important Western service. By the 1950s the Org (later the BND) and its American partners were easily capable of making up for the collapse of Britains covert operations in the GDR. The tragedy, however, is that the BND did not have SISs skill, as its appalling losses of agents in the early and mid-1960s show. The American services were evidently skilful and spying for the United States had great appeal for East Germans; the best spies in the HA IXs records tend to be spies working for US intelligence. However, it was the BND which in and after the 1960s increasingly became the principal Western service operating against the GDR. And the simple fact of the matter is that it failed in these operations: its spies were frequently uncovered by the Stasis counterintelligence divisions owing to successful counter-intelligence work and it was itself grievously penetrated by the Stasis foreign intelligence service, the HVA.102 The BNDs failure against the Stasi meant that the West failed against the GDR as well.103
102 103
Maddrell, Spying on Science, p.269. See E. Schmidt-Eenboom, The Rise and Fall of West German Intelligence Operations against East Germany in T.W. Friis, K. Macrakis and H. Muller-Enbergs (eds.) East German Foreign Intelligence, pp.3447; B. Fischer, Deaf, Dumb and Blind: The CIA and East Germany, East German Foreign Intelligence, pp.4869.

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Intelligence and National Security

British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi

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Intelligence and National Security

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British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi

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Intelligence and National Security

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British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi

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Intelligence and National Security

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British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi

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Intelligence and National Security

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British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi

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Intelligence and National Security

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British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi

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Intelligence and National Security

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British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi

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Intelligence and National Security

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British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi

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Intelligence and National Security

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British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi

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Intelligence and National Security

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British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi

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Intelligence and National Security

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British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi

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Intelligence and National Security

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British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi

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Intelligence and National Security

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British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi

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Intelligence and National Security

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British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi

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Intelligence and National Security

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