How tentacles of spy network spread in West

Published on Sunday 5 June 2005 00:38

TOP secret computer disks have revealed the huge extent to which East German Stasi spies were able to infiltrate the West during the Cold War.

The Rosewood file reveals that universities, national sports and the civil service had many more East German spies on their payrolls than previously believed.

Now the authorities are under pressure to out former spies who continued to work in their jobs after reunification.

The file was acquired by CIA spies in the heady days after the Berlin Wall fell as the Stasi's paper shredders worked overtime to destroy 90% of the records detailing its activities over four decades.

The file was kept by Washington until 2003. Now being decrypted, it is highlighting the security gaps which enabled the communists to spy with ease on the capitalist enemy on a scale hitherto unimagined.

The Rosewood file is something of a holy grail in the world of international espionage. Under the aegis of the Stasi archive, named the Birthler Behoerde after its director Marianne Birthler, a research group is concluding work on what experts believe is the definitive source on East Germany's infamous secret police.

Helmut Mller-Enbergs, in charge of decoding the nicknames of spies and details of their work contained on Rosewood, revealed that in the late 1980s up to 18 agents with the Stasi's centre for foreign espionage were active in the West German Foreign Ministry.

West German universities were also infiltrated with informers more densely than previously believed, with 43 spies operating at Berlin's Free University, and another 12 at the Technical University. As well as containing names of West Germans working for the Stasi, the report also lists some 20,000 to 30,000 East Germans working unofficially as Stasi informers in the 40 years until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

"Clearly, a file like this can clear up a lot of mysteries," said Christian Booss, spokesman for the Birthler Behoerde.

"When the Rosewood file came to light, a lot of authorities decided they'd take a last opportunity before the statute of limitations runs out in 2006 to screen civil servants. Most of the applications have come from [opposition party] CDU-ruled states in eastern German states. Since early 2004, we've had over 100,000 requests."

The CDU is currently ahead in the opinion polls for an autumn general election. Among those getting hot under the collar will be numerous figures from the world of sport.

In the mid-1990s, the National Olympic Committee and the German Sport Association (DSB) set up a commission made up of sport representatives, administrators and former DDR civil rights activists. Its task was to investigate the extent of the Stasi's role in East German sport.

But as a recent report presented by Marianne Birthler and DSB president Manfred von Richthofen confirmed, many feel its mandate has been too limited. One key problem is that the commission can only investigate individuals in response to specific requests.

Athletes who had close links to the Stasi included Katarina Witt, who won gold medals for figure skating at the 1984 and 1988 Winter Olympics. Her Stasi files were published in 2002 and revealed she co-operated with the organisation and had thanked them for their support just a week before the Berlin Wall came down.

Academics, politicians and Stasi victims have now joined forces to call for a more extensive investigation on similar lines to the three-year probe into communist infiltration of public broadcaster ARD.

Winfried Hermann from the Green Party agreed that the existing commission's research had been inadequate.

"Whitewashing the past is not fair to the victims," he said. "There is evidence to suggest that individuals who have been identified as Stasi agents are returning to sports."

Giselher Spitzer, initiator of the Berlin Declaration, a project set up in September 2004 by victims of Stasi intrigue and doping, maintains that by 1989 the Stasi had enlisted some 3,000 informers from within East Germany's sporting ranks. How many of them are still working in the industry today is unknown, mainly because few authorities have ever launched investigations.