Unholy Alliances - Spies in the midst - a tight knit conspiracy

Der Speigel reports on a study in a book published this week, "BND Against the Soviet Army," by German historians Armin Wagner and Matthias Uhl who have had access to Germany foreign intelligence agency ( Bundesnachrichtendienst - BND) records covering the period between the formation of the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1949 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

At least 10,000 citizens in the Estern communist controlled part of pre-war Germany were spying for Bonn. For many the decision to spy was provoked by a deep-seated attitude of anti-communism. But others did so out of adventurism, or due to family ties, or simply as a favor to old army buddies from the war.

The Western powers placed a high priority on military espionage in East Germany at the height of the Cold War as 400,000 Soviet troops based in East Germany were the strongest Red Army divisions in the entire Eastern Bloc facing the West - threatening a pre-emptive strike against against West Germany and NATO.

The BND also increased its reliance on information passed on by West German tourists to the GDR.

The East Germans started building the divisive grey forbidding concrete Berlin Wall on Aug. 13, 1961.hrough their spies "The BND knew something was up that July and August," Wagner says. Even though the BND was a reality the Bonn based politicians say the authors didn't want to accept the idea. The BND couldn't pinpoint exactly when West Berlin would be sealed off and until a week before work commenced the authors claim only 60 people knew what was going to happen.

Of course there was spying by East German agents as well , up to 6,000 who were regularly paasing information eastwards. Before 1961 it was relatively easy to recruit spies and to access the information they gathered. According to Uhl, the BND had already recruited 5,000 East Germans by 1955, most of them from the ranks of the defeated German army. Although things got more difficult after the wall went up, a network had already been established and new spies were recruited, for example, by conservative professors at the universities or journalists.

Of course there was spying by East German agents as well , up to 6,000 who were regularly passing information eastwards. The spying game was a two way street (with no doubt many collecting pay packets from both sides) because there were many in West Germany, particularly the 1968 generation, who were attracted by communist ideology and were ready to help the GDR.

West German intelligence, for example, is not known to have managed to place agents high up in the East German government whereas it appears Bonn was riddled with agents. The most famous was Günter Guillaume, who became a top aide to Chancellor Willy Brandt. His discovery in 1974, resulted in Brandt's public humiliation and resignation.
What struck the study's authors as most surprising was how much all the snooping became a part of everyday life. These were not professional agents, but ordinary people, "housewives and students."... e.g pic of Alina Kabbaeva a typical housewifeguest with access to Russian oligarchs.

Which is of course how the Secret Services in so called Western democracies operate today recruiting, businessmen, journalists, academics, clerics entrapping the weak and the willing with honey traps, judicious blackmail on the vulnerable and relying on a deep seated sense of chauvinism blended with not a little xenophobia of others... plus a healthy dollop of ex-service (are they ever ex-service ?) people... not to mention the odd Jewish Russian billionaire and oligarch with UK citizenship or football club.

".....a tightly knit group of conspirators in Washington known by now to all as "the neoconservatives"--a group of warmongering fanatics morally equivalent to the Islamic fundamentalists they claim to be fighting. ..." "The Power of Nightmares." BBC