| http://newsreal.yellowbrix.com/pages/newsreal/Story.nsp?story_id=23125719&
ID=newsreal&scategory=Internet& German intelligence service experts: Former Stasi agents possibly used by CIA Source: BBC Monitoring European - Political Publication date: 2001-08-27 A German newspaper report has said intelligence service experts consider it possible that former East German Stasi foreign intelligence agents are still active in German industry and that they might even be working for the CIA. The following is the text of the report by Peter Scherer: "Experts suspect that former GDR agents are still active today", published by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag web site on 26 August: Frankfurt/Main: Industry and large banks in the Federal Republic apparently have been spied on more intensively than previously assumed. And some agent sources around chairmen of the board, supervisory board members and business managers are still undiscovered, say intelligence service experts. They even consider it possible that former Stasi agents, placed in the world of big money, continue to be active - taken over by intelligence services of the former GDR comrades-in-arms. But it is also conceivable that the United States' CIA might have used the personnel files of the Stasi foreign department, procured by them, to put pressure on powerful Stasi agents by threatening to hand them over to the criminal justice system and to "turn them around". Although the United States denies this, the Germans continue to be suspicious about what role the US services actually play in industrial espionage. Although the 33 CD-Roms and over 2,000 statistical pages on the Stasi espionage network turned over so far by the CIA to Germany - the remaining "Rosenholz" [Rosewood] files are to be delivered by the end of 2002 - will probably give the German authorities new possibilities of proof for identifying the "centre field of informants", they will probably not make possible the unmasking of top agents who meanwhile might be in the service of the friendly United States or other countries. True, for most Stasi informants the prescription period for GDR espionage has by now run out, but in cases of treason as well as for the still active espionage cadre, they continue to be threatened by justice's long arm. Last year, the federal attorney general initiated a total of 45 preliminary investigations for suspicion of agents' intelligence service activities. During the same period, German courts sentenced four people accused of criminal acts in the area of "treason and endangerment of external security". According to the spokeswoman of the federal attorney's office, senior public prosecutor Frauke- Katrin Scheuten, preliminary investigations, in connection with intelligence service activities for the GDR, were carried out for a total of 2,928 West German citizens. Ultimately, however, they resulted in only 388 indictments; 245 individuals received jail sentences. "Despite the changes of the past years, and partial cooperation with the intelligence services of former East Bloc states, Germany has remained a preferred intelligence target for foreign intelligence services," is the current estimation of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. And still in the game are even those former GDR agents who had managed to penetrate the control centres of economic power in Germany. Their general mission, formulated by the Stasi Sector of Commercial Coordination (BKK): "Intelligence gathering of the procedures of capitalist authorities, corporations and firms." Among other things, the Stasi "dealt with operatively interesting personnel pointers" in Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank; looked for approaches to members of the defence industry task force in the Ministry of Defence; and snooped in the iron and steel industry, in economic research institutes, defence plants, chemical enterprises and machine factories. This, among other things, emerges from files of the Main Intelligence-Gathering Administration (HVA) of the Ministry for State Security (MfS), whose Science and Technology Sector was in charge of "procuring scientific-technological insights from the highly developed capitalist states". To this information are added documents of the MfS Leipzig district administration, department of Foreign Intelligence Gathering, which Die Welt has in hand. An "object study" on Rheinmetall AG Berlin and Rheinmetall GmbH Duesseldorf, prepared by informant "Hain" and informer candidate "Weissenfels", may serve as an example for the GDR's involvement in industrial espionage. The detailed report of the Leipzig district administration for state security, Department XV, is dated 20 May 1986. And in connection with Stasi operations against Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank, the aliases "Esse" and "Reger" appear in the Leipzig espionage evaluation (date: 30 April 1985). An intelligence service expert explained to Die Welt: "Either they are the cover names of operations against then-board members of the two banks, or they are aliases of 'sources' in the business or private surroundings of the top banks concerned, which they have 'siphoned off'". Not only the Leipzig Stasi centre (Dept. XV/3/807) dealt with "Esse" and "Reger", but also Mielke's Department XII, the internal MfS central information office on personnel review. The same applies to German industry leaders from Duesseldorf, Mannheim and Geislingen, whose "operative treatment" was carried out under the aliases "Radar", "Renner" and "Rotor." In the terminology of State Security, these "operatively dealt with" representatives of industry were "individuals who, on the basis of their actions, attitudes, ideologies and capabilities, connections/ contacts and other personal traits must be known to the MfS in the interest of the purposeful search for the enemy and of combatting enemy activity." "Source Reger" at the Dresdner Bank also appears in the data available to Die Welt in the hand-written statistics of a Stasi control officer who assessed the quality of the material delivered during the period of 1 November 1988 to 21 February 1989. Accordingly, "Reger" during this period twice delivered information from the Dresdner Bank, whose quality was rated as grade 'C' by Mielke's espionage apparatus. The Berlin-Lichtenberg district, Commercial Coordination of the MfS, gave itself better marks for its "foreign contacts" to the "non- Socialist economic area". Dated 14 March 1985, the BKK [District Control Commission] reported successes in the "use of clandestine means and methods for conducting foreign connections": "Through capital participations and financial allocations, material dependencies of selected people on the sector were created. According to the assessments to be made in the sector, these individuals, if the necessary differentiations are observed, are willing to carry out tasks of the sector even under complicated situational conditions." Although, in the opinion of German security experts, the data turned over by the CIA to the Federal Republic will not lead to a mass unmasking of former West German GDR spies, there may be movement in the coming weeks and months in individual cases not yet cleared up. The Federal Attorney's Office is now in possession of the original documents which thereby now have a considerably "higher value of evidence", says Karlsruhe. Thus surprises cannot be ruled out, since the CIA in 1993 probably did not release to the German headquarters all the Stasi material to be copied, but may possibly turn it over now, after respective "handling". Since GDR foreign intelligence gathering had operated even much more clandestinely than the "normal" Stasi, counterintelligence specialists now hope to procure the necessary evidence for personal attributions in still pending cases of suspicion. This will be done through joint analysis of the files kept by the controllers of agents of the Main Intelligence-Gathering Administration, the F-16 True Name file, the F-22 Proceedings file, and the so-called statistics sheets, whose first instalment is now available in the original, not just in copies. In fact, it was one of the specialities of the controlling of agents of HVA that several persons were listed under a certain filing number and a certain alias. Whether they were victims or agents of the GDR espionage apparatus - the CIA material will probably provide useful evidence for criminal justice and historical research. |
