澳门六合彩

To understand Western security vetting during the Cold War, interrogate Stasi documents

The Cold War brought to West Germany .

To promote domestic stability and to gather intelligence about the Soviet Union, Germany鈥檚 western occupiers set up long-hidden interrogation systems. Sources from a most unlikely ally of transparency鈥攖he , or the Stasi鈥攈elp us to understand the questioning operandi of Western intelligence agencies.

The are so numerous, and so widely accessible, that the perspectives of the Soviet-inspired security organ will likely shape discussions of the bygone era of East-West tensions for years to come. We possess scant information obtained by East Germany鈥檚 agents abroad, owing to the destruction (or disappearance) of the records of the Stasi鈥檚 chief foreign operations branch (the Hauptverwaltung Aufkl盲rung). Aside from the Communist service鈥檚 foreign spies, however, other sources of Stasi 鈥渉uman intelligence鈥濃�攔eturnees, decoyed asylum-seekers, informants, defectors, and a range of opportunists鈥攍eft behind more documentary evidence than any single researcher will ever master.

To what ends can the mountains of documentary evidence today accessible at help us to grasp how security and intelligence agencies vetted migrants and asylum seekers during the Cold War?

Using collections assembled by East Germany鈥檚 Ministry for State Security to understand Western security practices is fraught with difficulty and less rewarding than one might imagine. As they serve both as a gauge of the Eastern service鈥檚 ability to infiltrate Western asylum questioning offices and as a source of documents generated by services active in Cold War Central Europe, the collections administered in the late 2010s by the Stasi Records Agency nonetheless warrant attention.

Among the more interesting material housed at the Stasi Records Agency is paperwork of Western origin brought eastward. Documents of Western provenance seized by Stasi operatives and subsequently included in their files range from letters from loved ones to internal correspondence produced by employees of the largest West German foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND).

A cache of documents seized by a Stasi directorate tasked with returnees provides insight into how the BND鈥檚 鈥渓iaison offices鈥� interacted with one other, as well as with other branches of West Germany鈥檚 best-known foreign espionage agency. Among the BND documents housed at the Stasi Records Agency is a six-page report entitled 鈥淎cquiring Leads and Research via the Reception Centers and the Interrogation Offices.鈥� Submitted in mid-July 1959 by 鈥�285鈥濃�攁 designation for an office apparently known as the Lead Representative for Operational Areas of the BND Headquarters鈥攖he document acknowledged the centrality of asylum and reception facilities 鈥渋n placing sources within the Soviet zone of occupation.鈥�

Among the revelations contained in this BND document are admissions of the absence of the West German service鈥檚 legal mandate and the intense competitive pressures of working alongside foreign intelligence allies. BND officials keenly felt these strains in West Berlin, where West German security officials operated at the discretion of French, British, and American services. Acknowledging the BND鈥檚 contested position at the end of an unenviably long pecking order, the document鈥檚 author nonetheless sought to ensure that his agency鈥檚 employees maximized their disadvantaged position by directing its 鈥淟iaison Office Seifert鈥� to conduct screening sessions lasting only several minutes, described as 鈥渇lushings,鈥� of those under age 24. The report states that the aim of these back-and-forths should be to compile leads that West German-based BND staff might take up at leisure in youth camps located in western Germany.

One way to assess the claims of intelligence and security officials is through comparison with documents produced by internal experts within opposing security organizations. While the overlap is unlikely ever to be truly satisfactory, access in Germany is currently improving.

A paucity of declassified source material has long hindered examination of refugee debriefing in Cold War West Germany. This is no longer the case. While many relevant collections within the Federal Republic remain off limits or have been destroyed in accordance with the country鈥檚 privacy and data-protection laws, access to documentation produced by security agencies has in recent years been extended at the German Federal Archives facility in Koblenz.

in recent years, both the West German BND and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt f眉r Verfassungsschutz, or BfV) have set up external scholarly commissions to examine their organizations鈥� early histories in order to reveal postwar continuities with the Nazi regime. With the approval of the commissioning agency, most of the documents cited in the BfV authors鈥� report were deposited in the German Federal Archives and made available to researchers from May 2016 onward. In 2018, classified documents cited by historians leading the commission investigating the BND鈥檚 Nazi links should be made available to qualified researchers, perhaps at the Koblenz facility or at a future 鈥渉istorical office鈥� housed in the Bundesnachrichtendienst鈥檚 headquarters in central Berlin.聽