Markus Wolf
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The fall ofWilly Brandt, which closely followed that of Guillaume’s, was a serious political defeat. We knew that Brandt was committed to his Ostpolitik, which overlapped with our own strategic interests.We had no interest in aiding his downfall. Quite the contrary!
Chapter 17
Espionage, Science and Conscience
The story starts like all the best spy novels set in the days of the Cold War: a man, accompanied by a woman and a young girl, heavy suitcases in hand, slowly walk down a dark hallway. The low rumble of the subway trains can be heard ahead. Suddenly, the man stops in front of a metal door. Laying down his suitcase, the man takes a key from his pocket and puts it into the lock. The door creaks open; the man woman and child all pushing it. On the other side is the West: the free world. Werner Stiller had made it. Soon the western intelligence agencies will be racing to see the hundreds and hundreds of documents and microfilms contained in his suitcase.
The scene itself took place in the Berlin metro system at Friedrich-Strasse station, on the border between East and West. At the same time, an East German intelligence officer discovered that a security box at Department XIII (scientific espionage) had been forced open and that a special permit for crossing the Berlin Wall had disappeared. The head of the agency, Markus Wolf, was immediately alerted. But it was too late: he could only see that one of his deputies, Lieutenant Werner Stiller, had probably defected to the West. The damage was likely to be considerable: Stiller knew the names of several spies who had infiltrated western laboratories and research centres. They needed to act quickly and activate the long-prepared plans to get the men out. Some of the spies were able to be warned in time and slip through the nets. But in France, a top-level scientist was apprehended the very next day. His arrest was to ignite the world of scientific research, sparking violent protests and asking a fundamental question: where does the free and necessary exchange of scientific information between scientists worldwide end, and where does spying begin? A question that is still relevant today, in a time when intelligence agencies share more and more of their endeavours with scientific research.
One of the spies denounced by Werner Stiller was called Sperber, or ‘Hawk', to use the codename given to him by the East German intelligence service.94 He was a scientist, like his informer, and a physicist by training. Stiller had a very important role in the HVA, the intelligence agency in the GDR, as he was responsible for coordinating scientific information, with fifty agents at his disposal.
He crossed over to the West on the night of 18/19 November 1979.Yet Sperber was arrested in France on the morning of the 19th. Even if he had acted quickly to prevent Sperber from running away, it must be noted that the communication here between Berlin and Paris was too fast. However, this can be explained: Stiller had been in contact with West German intelligence agencies for some time and had already provided names of spies hidden in the scientific facilities of various western countries.
Sperber was therefore probably already in the DST's (the French counterintelligence agency) sights. However, there was always an obstacle in the way if he was to be arrested, which was the risk of jeopardising Stiller as the source. When Stiller decided to defect, however, the DST could take action as he was no longer in harm's way. This means that just hours after his journey to the West, arrests were made in both France and Germany.
The pseudo-Sperber was born in East Germany around the time that Hitler came to power. After the war, he remained in what would become East Germany and completed his studies. Gifted in mathematics and physics, he seems to have been approached very quickly by the intelligence services. At the time, the Stasi, which was not quite the powerhouse it was later to become, nevertheless, kept a close eye on this young student in these turbulent years. As a result, Sperber was enlisted, but this bright hope in the field of scientific research did not have much spare time to devote to spying on his classmates or teachers.
At the time, Markus Wolf95 was already the head of the East German intelligence service, despite being barely thirty. He was good at looking ahead and knew that espionage was a long process: even though pawns were put in place years in advance, it may be a long time before they could become useful. So he sent hundreds, maybe even thousands, of sleeper agents, first to West Germany and then further west, who would one day be activated at a time when their professional or social positions enabled them to be useful to their mother country.96 He also dispatched the ‘Romeos', men charged with seducing the West German secretaries who worked in sensitive departments, especially the government ministries.
Sperber had first been spotted by the Stasi and then by Markus Wolfs men. At the same time he was pursuing scientific studies at the highest level at Humboldt University, the young man was also undergoing spy training. He readily acknowledged this when later questioned by the police officers from the DST, but in Stalinist Germany, where the security bodies were all-powerful, could he really have refused to cooperate? If he had, he risked jeopardising his career and his family. Many East Germans had to work for the Stasi because they had no choice. In a totalitarian society, people were pawns to be manipulated at will and the means of coercion mattered little.
What is more, it should not be forgotten that the young Sperber, at least initially, was truly convinced that he was working for his country and for socialism. Yet after all the training, both scientific and technical, the hard fact remained: this brilliant
