In 1999 the Berliner Zeitung devoted an article to Werner Stiller, the man who denounced Sperber. It stated that even before his defection, the former East German was working for the BND, the intelligence agency of West Germany. Elegant and cynical and attributed him the following words: ‘When the world is as bad as it is now, it is best to make the most of it!'. Stiller underwent plastic surgery on his face in case he would be recognised and risk the possible revenge of his former employers. In the 1980s he wrote his first memoirs, In the Middle of Espionage, which he wrote in collaboration with BND experts. He would publish another book ten years later.
He lived for a long time in the United States, where he had successful careers in real estate and the stock market and now lives in Budapest, under a false name, of course. The German television channel ARD intends to produce a drama about his life called The Red Jackal.
An interesting title, but those who knew him say that Stiller often portrayed himself as a real James Bond. After reading the article one might question the reliability of Stiller and consequently the authenticity of the information he passed to the West. But will we ever know the truth? While most of the Stasi archives were recovered by the German authorities, and sometimes even made public, the same cannot be said for those files belonging to the HVA, the intelligence service led for so long by Markus Wolf. There are so many secrets that have been lost, which according to some experts, is one of the greatest achievements of Wolf's men.
On the orders of the HVA, Sperber first travelled to West Germany. The Berlin Wall had not yet been built in 1959, and there were many crossings between East and West. The aim was to make Sperber a West German. This was easy as at the time, any East German who chose to travel to West Germany automatically received West German citizenship. This mean that he was now a German citizen who had all the correct paperwork in order to enter French territory. Many people might have thought that he had voluntarily crossed the Iron Curtain in search of freedom. He was not even obliged to hide the fact that he had completed his scientific studies in East Germany. Once in France, Sperber was able to show his excellent knowledge and qualifications that he had gained from his time at Humboldt University. He quickly found work and became a fellow in the laboratory of Louis de Broglie, who had won the Nobel Prize for physics. He was soon hired by the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) and was to work at the University of Paris-Jussieu, even writing a thesis whilst there.
Sperber was a mathematician and a theorist, who specialised in plasma physics. Plasmas are unstable fluids obtained by heating gas, such as hydrogen, to extreme temperatures using powerful lasers. At the time, this area was at the forefront of research and although only still at the theoretical stage, it would eventually lead to the domestication of nuclear fusion.
The manufacture of H bombs certainly sprang from this technique, but for the scientists, it was about uncontrolled thermo-nuclear explosions. Scientists like Sperber wanted to control this fusion for civilian use, that is, to produce energy: the fusion of plasma atoms gives off a fantastic amount of energy, which practically inexhaustible as hydrogen is everywhere! Sperber was working with the plasmas and trying to mathematically translate the phenomena that occurred during their creation.
It may seem surprising that this theoretical research would fascinate the world of intelligence, but from the moment where they can be put to practical use, these scientific studies also interested spies. In addition, the research was very expensive, requiring considerable intellectual and technological investments. By secretly appropriating the work with a competitor meant substantial savings!
The idea must be tempered slightly, however: scientists all over the world constantly publish their work and exchange information at scientific conferences or via the internet, today. Yet there are times when they withhold information, such as the technological and mathematical tricks they used to help them to achieve their results. This becomes even more true when the theoretical research can have possible military applications.
Sperber thus settled in France and married a compatriot. He worked in the most prestigious and advanced laboratories, yet loyal to his country, he continued to submit the findings from his research to the intelligence services of the GDR. To send the documents, he used the complete panoply of a spy: coded messages, microfilms, invisible ink and even dead letterboxes. He even went so far as to hide some papers in fake dog poo, such as those found in a joke shop. He was paid for his services, but not much, receiving 500,000 francs in twenty years. Money was not his motive, but did he realise that in passing over this information, he was engaged in espionage work?
Even if he was using espionage tactics, the scientist always claimed that he was not a traitor. During his interrogation or the many trials he was later forced to appear at, he maintained that he had only handed over open documents, i.e. documents that were either already published or were going to be sooner or later. For him it was not a question of spying. So then why clandestinely transmit these ‘open' documents, when he could have just sent them in the post to his correspondents in East Germany?
Thierry Wolton
97
As part of his scientific studies he joined a research group looking at thermo-nuclear fusion using lasers, driven by the various theoretical physics laboratories at the Polytechnic School, who were working for the army. He did not have access to secret documents, but he sent all the information he could get his hands on to the MFS (aka, the Stasi). He had been sent a Minox camera hidden in a clock and a Pentaka
