5th ANNUAL MEETING -- 1999

 
"Germany and Intelligence Organizations:
The Last Fifty Years in Review
(Deutschland und die Rolle der Nachrichtendienste:
Rückblick auf ein halbes Jahrhundert)"

18-20 June 1999
Akademie fuer Politische Bildung – Tutzing/Germany

____________

Conference Program:

(digest of papers below)

Begrüßung/Opening
Jürgen Weber, Tutzing
Reinhard R. Doerries, Nürnberg

Michael Salter (Lancaster)
Correcting the record: The role of Franz Neumann's section of OSS within the preparation for prosecutions in the Nuremberg war crimes trials as revealed by recently declassified archival material

Hilmar-D. Brückner (München)
Plus ça change ... The Bundesnachrichtendienst and the German Approach to Secret Intelligence

Alaric Searle (München)
The Gehlen Organisation and former Wehrmacht officers, 1949-1955: the role of military thinking and personnel issues in the pre-history of Federal German Intelligence

Michael van der Meulen (Krefeld)
Cryptologic Services of the Federal Republic after 1945

Ralph Erskine (Belfast)
Anglo-American Cryptological Co-operation in World War II

Leitung/Chair: Jürgen Rohwer (Weinstadt)

Joachim Lampe (Karlsruhe)
Spionagebekämpfung nach der Wende

Frühstück/Breakfast

Walter Richter (Siegburg)
Die Chefs des Militärischen Nachrichtendienstes der NVA der DDR von 1952 bis 1990

Wolfgang Wolf (Berlin)
Das Melde- und Berichtswesen des Militärischen Nachrichtendienstes der NVA der DDR

Hermann-J. Rupieper (Halle)
Feindobjekt Spinne: Surveillance of West German Excursions to the GDR

Willi Eisele (Wolfratshausen)
"ist durchgängig unter operativer Kontrolle zu halten": "Politisch-ideologische Diversion" unter "subversivem Mißbrauch der Einreise in die DDR"

Mittagessen/ Lunch

Richard Cummings (Düsseldorf)
Attacks from the East against Radio Free Europe

Herbert Romerstein (Clinton, MD)
Disinformation as a KGB Weapon in the Cold War

Bertil Häggman (Helsingborg)
East German Influence Operations in Sweden during the Cold War

William Leary (Athens, GA)
George Blake and the Berlin Tunnel: Success or Failure?

Richard Aldrich (Nottingham)
British Intelligence, Germany, and the Cold War

David Stafford (Edinburgh)
The British Foreign Office and the Intelligence Struggle in Germany during the 1960s: A Personal Perspective

Frühstück/Breakfast

Anna Nelson (Washington, D.C.)
Opening the Door to Intelligence History: The Example of the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board

Wolfgang Krieger (Marburg)
The Harvard Project on Intelligence Studies: A Brief Review

Shlomo Shpiro (Ramat Gan)
From Fürstenfeldbruck to Mogadishu: German-Israeli Intelligence, Media, and Anti-Terror Co-operation, 1971-1982

Cees Wiebes (Amsterdam)
Dutch Intelligence and Germany: The Work of De Inlichtingendienst Buitenland

Gregory Martin (Recklinghausen)
Aspects of the South African Intelligence Services Operations in Germany and Western Europe, 1948-1993

Ende der Tagung/End of Conference

Germany and Intelligence Organizations:
The Last Fifty Years in Review

Michael Wala

Part I

The fiftieth anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic in 1999 served as the impetus for the 5th Annual Meeting of the IIHSG, 18-20 June 1999, hosted once again by the Akademie für Politische Bildung, Tutzing. It turned out to be a very successful conference, with a large number of participants, members and non-members, from various countries attending. The Program may be found on the IIHSG's www-site.

After short welcome addresses by Jürgen Weber (Akademie für Politische Bildung, Tutzing) and the conference organizer Reinhard R. Doerries (Erlangen-Nürnberg), Michael Salter (Lancaster) presented a paper on the „pre-history" of the two German states, speaking on „Correcting the Record at Nuremberg: The Role of OSS in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials". He quoted Taylor (1992: 47) on the inter-agency co-operation between Jackson's office and General Donovan's Office of Strategic Services (OSS): „It was a relationship which greatly benefitted the Nuremberg project in terms of staff and equipment." (1992: 47). Whilst this brief statement, according to Salter, is unobjectionable as far as it goes, it raises more questions and issues than it—or any other parts of the massive literature on the Nuremberg war crimes trials—answers. Where the OSS is mentioned, and the references within the Nuremberg literature are beginning to appear more frequently during the last decade, this literature still fails to supply its readership with a satisfying degree of detailed information. Taylor's cryptic reference to the benefits Jackson's office derived from OSS „staff and equipment", Salter said, invites the response what different types of staff and equipment, used in which ways and to what material benefit and indeed costs for both agencies? Salter asked what the factors which made the interaction between OSS and war crimes prosecutors possible were, were they mutually rewarding in some parts and contradictory in others? The extremely „mixed record" of the CIA in securing exemption from prosecution of Nazi war criminals, such as Klaus Barbie, in return for the provision of espionage, and scientific skills relevant to military application had been extensively documented and commented upon (Bower 1995; Finkielkraut 1992). However, Salter maintained, the positive role of the OSS as the immediate „precursor" to the CIA in actually helping to secure the conviction of others at Nuremberg, has received no such attention. Indeed, this intelligence agency's role is addressed only in passing even by the OSS literature that has focused upon its Research and Analysis Branch, from which most of the relevant expertise was derived (Katz 1991, Bigman 1995). During the present decade, Salter cautioned, many of those who have highlighted OSS's role within the Nuremberg trials have done so in an unfortunately polemical way. These polemics have aimed either to criticise the Allied response to the Holocaust (Aronson 1998), or—in a development stemming from so-called „revisionist" historians—to discredit the evidence accepted during these trials that a systematic policy of racial genocide ever took place within Nazi occupied Europe (Irving 1996). His paper investigated the precise role played by the OSS within the Nuremberg process, addressing this theme under the following sub-headings: Creating a Void: The Neglect of OSS's Involvement at Nuremberg; a Coincidence of Self-Interest: The Emergence of OSS's Involvement with Jackson's Prosecution Office within the Wider Nuremberg Process; the Division of Labour within OSS and between OSS and Jackson's Office; General Donovan's Personal Role; the Research and Analysis Branch's General Support for Justice Jackson's Office; OSS'S Contribution to the Strategic Thinking behind the Nuremberg Prosecution Strategy (Strategic Thinking on Giving Publicity to Nazi Atrocities and Extradition Questions; Strategic Analysis within R&A Reports on Definitional, Political and Jurisdictional Aspects of War Crimes Trials); the Involvement of OSS in Selecting Defendants and Recruiting Judges; the Provision of Key Witnesses and Other Types of Evidence; Goering and the Looting of Works of Art; the Employment of Prosecutors with OSS Backgrounds; OSS's Provision of Secret Intelligence Information; the Logistical Support Provided for the Trials: Staging the Court Room and Producing the Film of Concentration Camp Atrocities.

Hilmar-D. Brückner (Munich) addressed the topic of „Bundesnachrichtendienst and the German Approach to Intelligence". Intelligence services, he argued, do not operate in a void. They are part and parcel of their country, its society, and its culture. It can therefore be assumed that intelligence services have a ‘national profile'. Brückner sought to identify several aspects of the German approach to secret intelligence. Two of the four aspects he analyzed involve terminology, one leadership, and one operations: In the German language there are two corresponding terms for intelligence services; in Germany a „Geheimdienst" is equated with „Geheimpolizei". Both the Abwehr during the Weimar Republic and the Bundesnachrichendienst (BND) during the first years after the Second World War involuntarily supported this assumption by collecting domestic intelligence. The BND can therefore count much less on public support that the French DGSE and British MI6; a „Nachrichtendienst" is a service which collects and evaluates relevant information irrespective of its origin, and that is what the first German military intelligence service, the General Staff, did. The centerpiece of its work was sources evaluation while French and British intelligence concentrated on collection. That explains why the BND has a Directorate for Evaluation and Analysis, while MI6 and the DGSE have not; German military intelligence operated in the same way the German army did. Thus, the men in charge enjoyed sonsiderable liberty of action. They very nearly held an independent command. Internal cohesion therefore seems to be less than in French and British intelligence; German officers had a extremely strict code of honor which practically forced them to limit social contacts to people of their own social standing and above it. Their knowledge of the world outside seems to have been more limited than that of comparable French and British officers. This is possibly the main reason, Brückner argued, why they seem to have become more often the victim of double agents than their opponents.

Since the 1950s the German approach to intelligence is eroding, Brückner maintained, as Germany joined alliances, international as well as supranational, which are taking over tasks, which up to then had been the monopoly of the national intelligence services.

In his paper Alaric Searle (Munich) spoke on „The Gehlen Organisation and former Wehrmacht Officers, 1949-1955". The Gehlen Organisation, he argued, can rightly be seen as amounting to a ‘historical black hole' because of the lack of basic documentary material, Of the two standard works (M. E. Reese, General Reinhard Gehlen: The CIA Connection , and H. Zolling and H. Höhne, Pullach Intern ), neither make use of German documentary material accessible to other historians. His paper aimed at overcoming the lack of archive material through three techniques: first, by adopting a theoretical approach to assess the Gehlen Organisation; second, by utilizing some limited documentary material which has emerged in very diverse locations; third, by placing the Organisation within the context of the rearmament process in Western Germany, 1949-1955. The findings of the paper can be summarized as follows: 1. The preeminent goals of the Gehlen Organisation may well have been the positioning of supporters within the framework of the new state, the controlling and directing of the demands of the former officer corps and an effort to maintaining the homogeneity of the officer corps according to specific principles not shared by all its members. 2. On the plus-side of the balance sheet, one can identify the successful neutralization of former officers who were part of Communist front organizations or propaganda campaigns. 3. On the debit-side, one finds a propaganda effort on behalf of the rearmament campaign which sought to integrate officers of National Socialist conviction into the new security apparatus, while at the same time shutting out liberal reformers. Hence: 4. The historical significance of the Gehlen Organisation cannot be assessed according to the normal efficiency/effectiveness model applied to other postwar Western intelligence agencies, Searle argued.

In a section devoted to cryptology and cryptanalysis, Michael van der Meulen (Krefeld) spoke on the „Cryptologic Services of the Federal Republic after 1945". With the unconditional surrender in May 1945, every cryptologic service in Germany came to an end, van der Meulen maintained. Allied Intelligence services and their field teams collected whatever German cryptographic and cryptanalytic items they could get their hands on. This included the extraction of information by interrogations of former members of the German cryptologic community during their detention.

The first new cryptologic service after WW II was established at Camp King, Oberursel, in the early stages of Organisation Gehlen, as an American controlled German intelligence service. An interview by Lt. Col. ret. Alexis Dettmann in 1994 revealed that it was Dr. Erich Hüttenhain who in 1947 laid the foundation of the cryptologic service within the Organisation Gehlen, the so-called „Studiengesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Arbeiten" (Study Group for Scientific Inverstigation) at a time when Alexis Dettmann was an employee of the European Command Intelligence Center at Oberursel. The study group emerged in 1956 as the German Cipher Board when the Organisation Gehlen became finally the Federal Intelligence Service.

The first official cryptologic service in Germany was established with the permission of the Allied High Commission in 1950 within the new Foreign Ministry as Referat 114 by Dr. Haas from the Federal Chancellery. Referat 114 was headed by Adolf Paschke, former member of Pers Z and joined by Dr. Horst Hauthal and Heinz Karstien, likewise former members of Pers Z. Referat 114 was advised by the so-called „Wissenschaftliche Beirat" with Kurt Selchow, Rudolf Schauffler, Heinz Kuntze and Erich Hüttenhain as members of the board.

When in 1955 the decision to establish the Bundeswehr was made, the „Fernmeldedienststelle der Streitkräfte" was established. Headed by General Boetzel, first and last Chef der Leitstelle für Nachrichtenaufklärung during WW II, Capt. Alexis Dettmann became the first head of Armed Forces Cryptanalysis. In 1956, a decision at the Federal Chancellery set the framework of the cryptologic services from 1956 to 1990. The cyrptologic departments of Referat 114 within the Foreign Office were shut down. The responsibility of the armed forces for development of cryptographic means and cryptanalysis was restricted to low grade ciphers. The unique responsibility for the development of high and medium grade hand cipher systems and machine ciphers as well as cryptanalysis of high and medium grade encrypted messages were combined in the hands of Dr. Erich Hüttenhain as director of the „Zentralstelle für das Chiffrierwesen", the German Cipher Board, at the Brown House at Bad Godesberg Mehlem.

Documentary evidence of the history of German Cryptologic Services after 1945, especially cryptanalytic achievements, are almost nonexistent, van der Meulen cautioned. Few documents scattered from five decades point to the cryptologic services. One should keep in mind that cryptologic services are a part of the whole intelligence community and there is no clear dividing line to electronic warfare and other technical services.

Ralph Erskine (Belfast) took us a short step back in time to assess „Anglo-US Cryptological Co-operation" during the years before 1949. As early as mid-September 1940, Erskine revealed, General George Marshall, the US Army Chief of Staff, authorized the Army to co-operate with the British on Axis ciphers. In February 1941, the Sinkov Mission delivered two copies of the Purple cipher machine to Bletchley Park (BP). The Mission was instructed on Enigma and the „bombes" (ultra-fast Enigma key-finding aids) and given a copy of naval Enigma's wiring, plus Enigma keys.

In September 1942, OP-20-G embarked on an extensive bombe building program. This led indirectly to the Holden Naval Sigint Agreement of 2 October 1942, which assigned „the general direction and control of the effort against Japanese communications" to the US Navy, and provided for „full collaboration" between BP and OP-20-G on Kriegsmarine ciphers. BP abandoned Japanese naval cryptanalysis, except for a research unit. Co-operation on naval Enigma was extremely successful. The US Navy's four-rotor bombes were much more reliable than the British models. In March 1944, on average only three out of BP's 18 four-rotor bombes were operational. Shark (the Atlantic U-boats' cipher) was mostly broken by OP-20-G after October 1943. OP-20-G's bombes also did a great deal of work for BP's Hut 6 on Luftwaffe and Heer Enigma.

BP and the Army stationed liaison officers with each other. In autumn 1942, the Army wanted to build its own bombes, and to receive Ultra from the British, which led to major differences. BRUSA, the Agreement between the US War Department and GCCS on Axis Army, Air Force, and secret service ciphers, was concluded in May 1943, but there were disagreements about Ultra until September. The Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) and the Army exchanged information on breaking the diplomatic codes of many States, including Vichy France, Germany, the Vatican, Greece, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland. The few exceptions included information from GCCS about Egypt and, after September 1944, on Spanish-American systems (from the Army). The Army did not reveal its attack on KGB ciphers until late 1945, and GCCS did not tell the Army about ISCOT, Comintern type traffic, until then.

The British gave America its high level cipher machine, Typex, but America would not allow the British even to see Sigaba, its advanced machine. A Combined Cipher Machine started to come into service in late 1943, and greatly facilitated the war effort. The Holden Agreement and BRUSA led to the important 1948 UKUSA Sigint pact between Britain and America.

Taking us into the post-1949 period, Walter Richter (Siegburg), introduced the „Leaders of the Military Intelligence Service of the NVA/GDR". The Military Intelligence Service (MIS) of the NVA had five leaders:1. Generalmajor Karl Linke (from 1952 to 1957) born on 10 January 1900 in what later became Czechoslovakia. After World War I, he worked in eastern Germany and in Czechoslovakia for the German Communist Party (KPD). In 1930 he defected to Moscow, where he worked in the Ministry for Industry. From 1941 on, he was polit-officer in a partisan group, fighting against the German army in Belorussia. After 1950 he worked in various ministries in the GDR. On 1 July 1952, he became the chief of „Verwaltung für Allgemeine Fagen", i.e. leader of the MIS. The CIA managed to place a domestic help in his household. When she defected to the West with sensitive documents, Linke had to leave the NVA and was demoted from general to colonel. He died in Zittau in 1961. 2. Oberst Willy Sägebrecht (from 1957 to 1959): From his early youth, he worked for the KPD and was head of a section in the KPD of Berlin-Brandenburg from 1929 until 1931. During 1932/33 he was a member of the Preußischer Landtag. In 1934 he was arrested for illegal activities for the KPD and was detained in several Concentration Camps until 1945. After World War II, he was successful in unifying the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the KPD in the province of Brandenburg. He occupied high level ranks in the SED, and he was a member of the Volkskammer. In 1957 he became head of the MIS. He was not successful and was replaced after LtCol Dombrowski of MIS defected to the West. 3. Generalleutnant Arthur Franke (from 1959-1974): He was born in Berlin on 5 August and became a member of the KPD in his youth. In 1938/39, during the Spanish Civil War, he fought in the Ernst-Thälmann-Battalion. After his return to Germany in 1942, he was arrested and detained in KZ Sachsenhausen until 1945 where he met Willy Sägebrecht, with whom he fled to the nearing Russian army at the end of the war. After 1945, he held several offices in the KPD in Berlin. In 1950 he began a career as polit-officer and became chief of the newly organized political section in the air force of the GDR. In 1958/59 he became leader of the MIS. He reorganized the MIS, replaced old and incapable officers with young and successful university graduates. During his stint at the MIS, he laid the basis for successful MIS espionage operations. He initiated the construction of a especial headquarters for the MIS. After his retirement in 1974 he became chief of the diving-section of „Gesellschaft für Sport und Technik" (GST). As its president he also traveled to the west; photographs document this. In 1987 he resigned. He died in Berlin 1992. 4. Generalleutnant Theo Gregori (from 1974 to 1982): He was the head of MIS of whom least was known in the West. He was born on 31 July 1929 and was the first leader of MIS to grow up in the GDR and to be formed in the NVA. From the beginning of his leadership, he regularly was present at the sessions of the National Defense Council (NVR) and reported on intelligence. On 30 September 1982, he was arrested on his way from home to the office and expelled from NVA. He was said to be an alcoholic and to have misused national property. However, it is more likely that insistence on independence of the MIS from the MfS—a position Erich Mielke would not tolerate—brought about his fall from power. He is living in Berlin. 5. Generalleutnant Alfred Krause (from 1982 to 1990): He was born in Dresden on 28 April 1930 and grew up in the GDR like Gregori. Before he became leader of MIS, he had a typical career in the army. In all his activities he also worked as official of the SED. Krause saw the end of the MIS in 1990 and tried to destroy all documents. He was only partly successful in doing so. Krause is still living in Berlin.

Wolfgang Wolf (Berlin) spoke on the related topic of „The Information- and Reporting-Ssystem of the Military Intelligence Service of the Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) of the German Democratic Republic". Wolf explained that in the 1980s the Section Reconnaissance [Bereich Aufklaerung]—which was subordinated to the main staff [Hauptstab] of the Ministry of National Defence [Ministerium fuer Nationale Verteidigung]—was not only the central administration of the military intelligence service but also the command authority of the Chief of Reconnaissance [Chef Aufklaerung]. Section Reconnaissance was organized for information procurement and intelligence gathering as well as evaluation, with departments responsible for strategic, operative, and branch reconnaissance.

The procurement of information was the exclusive responsibility of the Department for Operative Reconnaissance, whereas the military attachés reported to the Department for Strategic Reconnaissance. The signals intelligence unit FuAklRgt-2 [Funkaufklaerungsregiment 2, radio-reconnaissance regiment 2] was part of the Department for Branch Reconnaissance which also directed the reconnaissance and MI units of all branches of the NVA in peacetime and was responsible for all matters of these units.

The information and reporting based on intelligence was an important but not the only element of the information- and reporting-system of the NVA's reconnaissance. The departments mentioned above were exclusively responsible for collecting information, Wolf said. These were forwarded to the Department of Information [Verwaltung fuer Information] which was responsible for evaluation and analysis. It processed all incoming data, compiled reports and messages, and organized their distribution.

Wolf argued that the information- and reporting-system has essentially contributed to consolidate the authority of the military intelligence service and its reconnaissance. It had realistically reported on the situation of the potential enemy and developments, especially in the areas of main interest, i.e. Central Europe and the Baltic Sea.

The well-known reservations—which apply to democratic systems, too—against intelligence services generally and their results and information specifically, usually occurred when either reported information were at odds with the prevailing ideology, did not correspond with the perception of its addressees, or came to different conclusions than the USSR.

In his paper on „‘Feindobjektakte Spinne' - West German ‘Bildungstourismus' to the GDR 1983-1989", Hermann-J. Rupieper (Halle) demonstrated that with the fall of the Schmidt-Government and election victory of the Kohl government, SED fears of further Western German subversive activities against the GDR increased significantly. The MfS expected a strong move towards the political right in West German politics and, subsequently, increased enemy activity. The Deutschlandpolitik of Kohl/Genscher was described as an „imperialist and capitalist plot" against the socialist GDR. The double-track decision of NATO in 1979 and the worsening of relations between East and West in its aftermath seemed to be especially problematic since—while in opposition—the CDU had criticized the security and GDR policy of the SPD.

Thus it is hardly surprising, Rupieper argued, that on 31 May 1983 branch VI of the MfS—passport control, tourism, and Interhotel in Halle—started a so-called „Feindobjekt-Akte" which existed until 1990. The purpose was the surveillance of study and educational trips into the GDR by the NLpB in Hannover, one of the major institutions of political education involved in organizing trips for high school students, teachers, public servants, and other interested groups. Points of interest were cultural monuments in Weimar, the Buchenwald concentration camp, the Kyffhäuser, the Vökerschlachtdenkmal Leipzig, or typical medieval cities. Another aspect were meetings with GDR teachers, FDJ-student groups, city planners, representatives of the churches, etc.

For Erich Mielke and his Ministry of State Security this group tourism threatened the GDR. It had to be controlled „to guarantee the security of the GDR, to support the domestic and foreign policy of the party in an offensive act, and in order to fight institutions and enemy organizations which might be the point of departure for the subversive misuse of entry roads into the GDR". The NLpB was deemed to be dangerous because it cooperated with the Federal Ministry for Inner German Relations in Bonn, the „Kuratorium Unteilbares Deutschland", and was the spearhead for „spreading the official political program of the Bonn government" in the GDR. It was suspected that information collected by these groups was turned over to West German intelligence organizations (the BND and the Verfassungschutz). MfS officers responsible for educational tourism developed a conspiracy theory. According to this, these tourists tried to gain the support of GDR citizens for subversive activities. They attended seminars run by the NLpB to prepare visits. While visiting, they spread the idea of German unity and the open German question. They supported reunification and launched through political and ideological attacks against political institutions and society in the East. Furthermore, these groups and there leaders were accused of collecting information on political attitudes of the population, especially young people. They contacted dissidents and other unruly elements in society. They were interested in the development of prices, the availability of consumer goods, social institutions, the peace movement, trade union problems, a comparison of the two dictatorships in Germany, military education, and attitudes towards developments in Poland and Hungary, to name only a few topics mentioned by IM (unofficial informants) in their reports of discussions.

Target groups of West German activities were teachers, representatives of the churches, artists, students, functionaries of the trade unions, city officials, and qualified workers who inight be lured into the West. The latter point was a response to the disquieting fact that besides members of the medical profession highly qualified workers constituted one of the major groups demanding exit permits, Rupieper maintained.

Willi Eisele (Wolfratshausen) related his own experience with these practices in his paper „...ist durchgehend unter operativer Kontrolle zu halten: Als Lehrer im Verdacht der ‘Politisch-Ideologischen Diversion' (PID) gegen die DDR (1973-1989)". When the GDR was opened for tourists after the VIII. Parteitag of the SED (1971), Erich Mielke sought to prepare the MfS for the risk of a „new quality of class warfare" that this new policy entailed for the political-operative work.

Referring to documents from his MfS file, Eisele delineated the massive allocation of personnel and other resources for the period 1980 to 1989 against a teacher who was perceived as a „multiplier of antagonistic ideological influence", measures that were to counter the „political-ideological subversion", supposedly a precursor of „work in the political underground". He described allegations by members of the MfS and what they after 1987 saw as „evidence" for his activities which subsequently served to deny him entry into the GDR that was to last until 31 December 1997. In this, the MfS acted as a domestic „ideological police". Before the backdrop of the „Neue Ostpolitik", the inter-state agreements between GDR and Federal Republic after 1970/72, and the FRG credits since 1983, their activities proved to be counterproductive, Eisele maintained, because they were supposed to prevent contact between citizens on a personal level while, at the same time, it was difficult for FDJ-„Contactgroups" (Begegnungsgruppen), organized to canvas areas of major interests to tourists such as Dresden and Weimar, to involve citizens of the Federal Republic in discussions on the basis of „class discipline".

The MfS reacted with disbelief, panic, and helplessness when tourists and teacher/student groups deviated from the official itinerary and when unscheduled contacts with citizens of the GDR took place (see „minute protocols" of the journey, transfer of groups at county (Kreis and Bezirk) borders to MfS groups of the same „line", and the „reports" of MfS departments VI, and VIII, etc.).

That a individual teacher and teacher organizations would provide information to prepare the trip to the GDR was imaginable to the MfS only as part of a centrally organized effort by „enemy organizations". Even when Eisele was again allowed to enter the GDR after the order to deny his entry dated 31 October 1987 was repealed upon „the highest order by the Comrade Minister"—after an intervention by the Bayerische Staatskanzlei on 6 June 1988—the MfS placed him under „...constant operative control". The MfS found no lever against the humane aspects of contact between citizens of GDR and FRG that had started with the severely controlled softening of inner-German travel in 1973.

Part II

Richard H. Cummings (Düsseldorf) outlined in his paper on "Attacks from the East against Radio Free Europe" the background of "Radio Free Europe" and "Radio Liberty." The Communist "takeover" of East European countries and Soviet propaganda offensive in the late 1940s, he maintained, served as the catalyst for supplementing overt United States foreign information programs by covert psychological operations and political warfare, including international broadcasting to the USSR and its satellites. His paper outlined the origins and development of two critical elements of the CIA's early Cold War clandestine activities: Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. For decades, the eastern intelligence services infiltrated or recruited agents in search of information to counter the radios' programming effectiveness by publishing numerous propaganda books, countless newspaper articles, and constantly airing radio and TV shows for both domestic and foreign consumption. Cummings traced in his paper these patterns of hostile operations of Soviet and East European intelligence services against the radios over a forty-year period. He also filled in some gaps in the historiography of the Warsaw Pact intelligence services by presenting anecdotal information and limited details of the intelligence services archives, which temporarily became available following the collapse of Communism in East Europe and the USSR.

Herbert Romerstein (Clinton, MD) outlined in his contribution how the KGB used disinformation as a weapon in the Cold War and how the use of disinformation and forgeries caused Western countries to take actions beneficial to the Soviet Union. This has been a Soviet intelligence service weapon, Romerstein argued, since 1923. During the Cold War, the KGB called its unit that did this work Department D and later Service A. Such activity continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

His paper outlined some of the disinformation campaigns and forgery operations of the hundreds conducted by KGB during the Cold War period and how the Eastern European intelligence services, particularly the East German service, the Stasi, were aiding the KGB to carry out these activities. Among the campaigns discussed was the false charges against the United States of using germ warfare in Korea and the false story that the United States government deliberately created the AIDS epidemic. Romerstein's paper included analysis of some of the forgeries. He also explained that in the 1980s the United States government conducted an extensive program to expose the forgeries and the Soviet Union was discredited for doing such things. As a result, in the last years of the Soviet regime, it was possible to influence Soviet officials to reduce and sometimes eliminate the disinformation campaigns.

Bertil Haggman talked about "East German Influence Operations in Scandinavia During the Cold War" and explained that East German organization and technique for influence operations in Scandinavia (mainly Sweden) were well known as early as 1963 when with West German support a booklet on the subject in Swedish, "The Baltic Sea—Sea of Peace?" was published in Lund. A "Baltic Sea Week" took place in July of each year in Rostock for Nordic participants and delegates from other Baltic Sea nations, were the University of Greifswald was used for influence operations in academia. During the Rostock weeks, Haggman explained, the MfS gathered an extensive staff in and around Rostock often disguised as press representatives of the Internationale Wirtschaftskorrespondenz to tend to the "guests" from Scandinavia. First contacts were made in pubs and cafés in the seaside resort of Heiligendamm, where most participants were staying. A leading personality in organizing the recruiting efforts was Karl Mewis (alias Fritz Arndt), first secretary in the SED district leadership in Rostock. In Bad Doberan, close to Rostock, the Swedish Communist Party established a party school, paid for by the regime in Fast Berlin. There were both Swedish and East German teachers and the courses lasted from a week to a year. Around 300 Swedish communists are believed to have been trained in courses lasting well over a month. The party school was closed in the 1960s after Swedish newspapers managed to infiltrate it. One of the important goals of the MfS, Haggman argued, was to achhieve diplomatic recognition of the GDR by Scandinavian countries.

In addition to these efforts, the GDR planted a number of agents and informers, among them Jan Aage Jeppesen who was discovered when he had infiltrated a daily newspaper (probably on behalf of Russian intelligence) in Copenhagen. He worked from 1981 to 1989 as Stasi agent with the codename "Apollo" according to his file Rostock I/848/83 in the Gauck archive.

William Leary (Athens, GA), discussed George Blake and the Berlin tunnel. In his paper, he reviewed the recent literature on Operation Gold—the effort by the CIA and SIS to tape Soviet telephone and telegraph cables in Berlin in 1955-1956—and argued that the Berlin Tunnel was both a technical and operational success. Recent publications have given at least tentative answers to a number of questions about Operation Gold. Assertions about disinformation have been incorrect, Leary said, as the KGB considered such an effort both too complicated and too risky. Although the KGB tended to dismiss the importance of the information being gathered by the Allies as insignificant, we now know that the data in fact proved to be very valuable. At a time when President Eisenhower feared a Soviet surprise attack and when intelligence sources could provide little information on Russian military capabilities and intentions, Leary argued, material from the wire taps provided extensive knowledge about the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. His paper also highlighted George Blake's role as double agent and Leary contended that the KGB also could claim Operation Gold as a Soviet intelligence victory in the Cold War and that claims by both the KGB and CIA/SIS are not incompatible.

Richard J. Aldrich (Nottingham) spoke on "British Intelligence, Germany and the Cold War", stating that in the last ten years we have come to understand aspects of intelligence in Germany during the Cold War in unprecedented detail, that this would reflect a process of ‘Glasnost' that has been underway in many countries, not just those of the former Eastern Bloc, and that many witnesses are now free to speak with remarkable candor. Yet this process has tended to dull our sensibilities regarding documents or witnesses that are lost to history, Aldrich maintained.

He said that the purpose of his paper was to stand back a little from the super-abundant detail, offering a short re-assessment of significance of Germany, both as a subject and also as an operational area, for British intelligence during the Cold War and that his presentation would focus on the period before 1960, concentrating on three themes:

A. Germany and the Cold War Machine in London: Germany was critical in several senses to a key intelligence debate in London during the early 1940s, Aldrich argued. By 1946 this debate had developed into a struggle between the diplomats and the military for control of the Cold War planning and intelligence itself and by 1949 this struggle was focused on ‘liberation' or ‘Cold War fighting'. From 1942, British diplomats believed their intelligence pointed to a future Soviet Union that was co-operative, while the military believed intelligence pointed to a Soviets Union that would be hostile. These views co-existed uncomfortably until the explosive issue of the future Germany was introduced in 1943. The military argued for a re-armed Germany against the Soviets, while the diplomats accused the military of producing intelligence replete with ‘fascist assumptions'. Soviet behavior in Eastern Europe, especially in Germany in 1945, further sharpened these divisions as the military developed a picture of the Soviets as ‘barbarous' semi-Asiatics. By 1949 this debate had developed into an argument about how far the West should go with ‘liberation', for which Germany was to be the launch pad. The diplomats wanted intelligence gathering only, Aldrich said, while the military wanted ‘roll-back'. The argument formatted the Cold War machine in London for years to come.

B. The Hard Target. Germany as a window on the Soviet Union: The second crucial theme was the importance of Germany as window on the Soviet Union. Again a difference of perspective can be emphasized, Aldrich said. Diplomats sought broad intelligence about political intentions while the military sought technical intelligence about Soviet capabilities. The urgency that underpinned the search for military/ technical intelligence is often over-looked, he argued. In 1948 many in SIS and MI5 believed that a war, focused on Germany and the Middle East, was only weeks away. Suddenly demands for intelligence appreciations went up exponentially. Germany offered an ideal window on the Soviet Union for several reasons, Aldrich maintained. First, the Soviet had attempted to suck Germany dry of scientists and technicians. By the late 1940s many of these individuals were returning from the Soviet Union with tales to tell of places that were otherwise impenetrable to Western intelligence. Second, moving agents from the West into the East was easier in Germany than anywhere. Third, the cost of British spying was born by Germany and not Britain. At a time of stringency in London this was immensely important. Thus the transition to a recovered statehood in Austria, Japan and Germany, which removed this advantage, was especially problematic for Britain.

C. Intelligence, Germany and the Western Allies: During the creation of the Bundesrepublik, Britain lost the struggle for dominance of intelligence in Germany, perhaps even in Europe. The relationship with the Americans was simultaneously close, competitive and therefore complex. During the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany the Americans edged ahead of their British collaborators in several respects. But, Aldrich explained, the issue of British intelligence on Germany, on Germans and on German intelligence organizations is much more opaque than the business of Anglo-American intelligence on the Eastern Bloc gathered through Germany. A brief exploration of this will underline a general conclusion that the recent ‘Glasnost' offers dangers as well as dividends. The new archives, with their treasures, offer distractions from areas and subjects that remain unreleased. The danger is that they will be forgotten until a time when the witnesses are no longer available.

A second paper on Germany and Great Britain, entitled "The British Foreign Ofice and the Intelligence Struggle in Germany during the 1960s: A Personal Perspective", was presented by David Stafford (Edinburgh). Drawing on personal experience as a desk officer in the British Foreign Office during the 1960s, he discussed the extent to which intelligence concerns affected diplomatic dealings affecting the German Democratic Republic. During a decade when fears of Communist espionage and infiltration in Britain were especially high, Stafford said, the activities of the GDR and of East Germans in Britain came under close scrutiny. So far as diplomacy was concerned, however, the main item on the agenda was eventual recognition of the east Berlin regime. Here, knowledge of the Federal Republic's position was as important as anything coming out of east Germany itself.

Shlomo Shpiro (Ramat Gan) presented a paper on "From Fürstenfeldbruck to Mogadishu: German-Israeli Intelligence. Media, and Anti-Terror Co-operation". He revealed that a clandestine meeting at the Badawi refugee camp in May 1972 brought together representatives from numerous terrorist organizations worldwide, in order to coordinate and expand joint activities towards their common goals. Palestinian terror organizations were now able to tap into the resources and use members of foreign terror organizations in their fight against Israel. This international terrorist cooperation required corresponding cooperation among the intelligence services fighting terrorism for their activities to be effective in stemming the rise in terrorist activities around the world, Shpiro maintained.

The cooperation between the Israeli and German intelligence services, which dates back to the early 1950's, was further enhanced by both countries' interests in combating terrorism. While the German BfV and BND were coming to grips with the activities of the German Red Army Faction, their Israeli counterparts were confronted with a series of terror attacks against Israeli targets carried out with active participation of foreign, i.e. non-Palestinian, terrorists. The wave of coordinated terror attacks reached its peak in the massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. The failure of the German rescue attempt at Munich brought home the difficulties of fighting terrorism alone, and served as catalyst to expanding German-Israeli anti-terror cooperation. This cooperation was not limited to the Mossad-BND channel but also included the BfV and LfV's, which were at the forefront of monitoring Palestinian activities within Germany.

His paper examined the development of this aspect of the German-Israeli intelligence cooperation between the Munich massacre and the 1982 Lebanon war. It analyzed main issues and incidents in this cooperation, and examined the role of the media and of diplomacy in the development of these relations. The paper outlined how cooperation was developed at several different and overlapping levels by the Mossad, enabling it to access sources in Germany as well as enhance its operations in other countries with German assistance. Shpiro concluded his paper with a short balance-sheet and analysis of joint German-Israeli successes against international terrorism up to 1982.

Gregory Martin (Bochum) spoke on "Aspects of the South African intelligence services' operations in Germany and Western Europe, 1948-1993", outlining a proposed investigation into — i) South African (SA) intelligence service operations against opponents of the apartheid regime in Western Europe, — ii) operations designed to acquire technology to circumvent the arms-embargoes in force against SA — iii) possible cooperation with western intelligence agencies as partners in the Cold War. This also encompasses toleration of, or even cooperation with, the SA intelligence services' operations in the first two areas by western agencies.

The first part of the paper addressed the question of sources. Here the systematic destruction of records by the intelligence agencies themselves, and the fact that those records which survived are only partially available pending the conclusion of amnesty hearings, is a difficult one, Martin maintained. After a brief outline of the history and structure of the SA intelligence services, a discussion of what is known of the SA intelligence services' operations in Western Europe followed, as well as a look at embargo breaking.

The "Dutch-German Psy-War Cooperation and the Foundation of Interdoc (1963)" was addressed by Paul Koedijk (Amsterdam). He outlined the establishment of the International Documentation and Information Center (Interdoc), founded on 7 February 1963 as the result of a cooperation between representatives of several western security and intelligence organizations with a common interest in psychological warfare. All were dissatisfied with the negative anti-communism that served the needs of the early Cold War but proved to be obsolete when an answer was needed to the new Soviet propaganda offensives and the politics of peaceful coexistence in the 1950s. They decided upon the founding of Interdoc, to be based in The Hague and to serve as a international documentation center with the following purposes: a base for day to day information on communism to the press and other interested organizations, as well as in particular to underdeveloped countries; providing basic information through studies on topics of paramount interest for the defense of the West against communist psychological influence; to be a center of action in the field of training of cadres of Western society on the dangers of communism, inclusive the preparation of teams of Western students for contacts with communist youth at for instance World Youth Festivals; to take any action in the field of psychological defense or attack which for some reasons could better be taken by a private institution than by governments services, for instance if such an action would be based on classified information, provided for example by the participating intelligence services.

Although the origin of the Interdoc-idea lies in French-German intelligence-rapprochement, Koedijk explained, Dutch-German cooperation was crucial in the actual founding and financing of Interdoc. The director of the BVD (Dutch Internal Security Service), L. Einthoven, became one of the main driving forces behind the plans, acting as a liaison between intelligence-services, multi-national industries and other "very powerful groups in the Western society". Einthoven and his co-worker C.C. van den Heuvel developed close relations with Gehlen and his organization and especially with Rolf Geyer, who was responsible for psychological operations and who headed the German constituent of Interdoc, the Munich based "Verein zur Erforschung sozial-politischer Verhältnisse im Ausland e.V." Based on thus far secret documents and interviews with one of the key-persons, long-time Interdoc-director and "mystery-man" C.C. (Cees) van den Heuvel, Koedijk provided a clearer picture of the background of a new phase in psychological warfare against communism. He maintained that this may also help to provide clues about the possible effects of "positive anti communism", with its accents on Western values and dialogue, in the eventual demise of communism as an ideology and the collapse of communist society.

In a section not closely linked to the conference topic, Anna K. Nelson (Washington) reported in her paper "Opening the Door to Intelligence History. The Example of the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board" on the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) that was to tackle lingering suspicions of government involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy based on government records that had to be opened after U.S. Congress, in 1992, required government agencies to open all their records related to the assassination. The Board was created to examine all the documents agencies did not want to release. From 1994-1998, the ARRB opened thousands of pages of documents from the CIA, Nelson explained, many of which would ordinarily be forever closed to the public or released with extensive deletions. These documents give researchers an unprecedented look at CIA activities from 1960-1964, many of which have not changed in the intervening 35 years. These files expose a very bureaucratic organization, she argued, that accumulated an astonishing number of documents, confident they would remain secret forever. "Sources and methods" of the CIA can be closely followed, as well as hints of extensive liaisons with governments of foreign countries. Researchers can learn the language and culture of intelligence, and, thus, for example, are able to more accurately judge ambiguous allusions to covert interference in other countries.

Although very little can be learned about the influence of intelligence on foreign policy, Nelson maintained, it is clear that while there were "rogue elephants" in the CIA, contrary to the official view, the director and his assistants did not carry out major intelligence operations without direct knowledge by the president.

Wolfgang Krieger (Marburg) provided a brief overview of the "Harvard Case Studies on ‘Intelligence and Public Policy'" in that same section, pointing out that since 1989 Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government has held seminars for CIA officials as well as for officials from the Pentagon and the State Department on "Intelligence and Public Policy". This effort of linking up the academic discourse on various foreign policy questions with the expertise of government insiders needs to be seen in the context of the CIA's "openness" policy, Krieger argued, which goes back to the mid-1970s and which has acquired a new meaning in the post-Soviet world. He explained that the teaching method used in these seminars is based on case studies produced either by university scholars or by CIA officers specifically for the Harvard seminars. These case studies are openly available (Case Program Sales Office, Kennedy School of Government, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge MA 02138, USA). Krieger's remarks were based on a review of 17 case studies plus one large study on the Suez crisis which consists of 18 individual studies.

These case studies are of special interest to the historian of intelligence, Krieger maintained, not only because they are based on privileged access to source materials and to intelligence personnel but also because they can perhaps be regarded as a model for bridging the gap between academic researchers and intelligence officials in Europe and elsewhere.

(based on abstracts of papers)