While seeking magical solutions to the country’s problems by stealing technology. (Kristie Macrakis)įrequently these activities were related sometimes they were not. The technical division (circled) was in the Stasi’s northern Berlin campus, across the street from the prison (in black), in a restricted area. Map of the Technical Operations Sector campus. Because “Seduced by Secrets” is a general book about technology at the Ministry for State Security, it includes both their espionage aspirations to acquire the best Western technology as well as the spy technology they attempted to create themselves. Further, a similar book on the United States would not include the functions of the FBI because it is separate in geography, organization, and function from the CIA. Whereas other books on intelligence history are sometimes organized around the directorates of a single spy agency, they are usually seen as discrete entities. intelligence, the Stasi combined the roles of the CIA and the FBI/police under one roof. In 1956 foreign intelligence moved to the Ministry for State Security’s compound in Lichtenberg and became a part of Minister Erich Mielke’s empire. Two major events in 1953 – a defection to the West from foreign intelligence in April and the worker’s uprising in June – reshaped the German structures, goals, and manpower. A year later, the foreign ministry set up the Foreign Political Intelligence Service, and thirty-year-old Markus Wolf took over the helm in September 1953.Īt the beginning, then, foreign intelligence was separate from internal security and the secret police, but both worked closely with Soviet advisors. It was not until 8 February 1950, when the German Democratic Republic (GDR) became a sovereign state, that the German police structures from the occupation, such as the K-5 criminal police and the administration for the protection of the economy, developed into the Ministry for State Security. Meanwhile, communist Germans set up fledgling political police and information structures. In the chaos of the occupation period, 1945–49, the KGB staked an outpost in Berlin-Karlshorst and conducted internal and external operations from the Soviet-occupied territory of East German soil. Historyīorn during the Cold War division of Germany, the Stasi developed in the image of the KGB with a German personality. What the general public does not know is that technology was at the heart of the KGB’s (Soviet Committee for State Security) and the Stasi’s spying operations against the United States and the West. The general public already knows that husbands spied on wives and children on parents and that East Germany was probably the most known spied-upon country in world history. By examining the interplay between secrecy and technology at one of the most effective and feared spy agencies and secret police in the world, we can also do what all spy agencies fear: reveal the Stasi’s secret spy-tech methods and sources.ĭespite the little-known fact that almost half of all its agents planted in the West were stealing scientific and technical secrets and that more than eight thousand staff members at headquarters worked on providing James Bond–like technology to support espionage and security, the Stasi is primarily associated with the omnipresent informer.
The book “Seduced by Secrets” takes a radically different approach to the history of the MfS/Stasi by bringing the story into the realm of intelligence history and distancing itself from politically charged commentary. They have to be patiently excavated like artifacts at an archeological dig.
Stasi or the East German Ministry for State Security (MfS/Stasi) and its Secrets.
0 kommentar(er)
