a correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt, the party directed him to
Department IV (intelligence) of the Red Army. Arriving in Warsaw
in 1932, Herrnstadt, known for expertise in Central European affairs,
cultivated members of the German community, including Ambassa-
dor Hans-Adolf von Moltke, who provided both advice and contacts.
Within several years, Herrnstadt’s formidable spy ring included Ilse
Stöbe, his mistress and a fellow journalist; Rudolf von Scheliha,
a counselor at the German embassy; Gerhard Kegel (code name
khvs); and Kurt and Margarita Völkisch (code names vs and ltsl),
embassy employees. By all accounts, the information they provided
to Moscow prior to World War II was of inestimable value.
Forced to spend the war years in Moscow, Herrnstadt returned to
Berlin in 1945 to establish its first postwar newspaper and later to
head the central party organ, Neues Deutschland. In the aftermath
of the Uprising of 17 June 1953, he and Wilhelm Zaisser were
accused of factional transgressions. Herrnstadt was stripped of his
position and party membership. Prior to his death on 28 August 1966,
he found employment at the State Central Archives in Merseburg
(Saxony-Anhalt).HESS, MARKUS. A computer hacker who sold stolen software
and information to the KGB, Markus Hess was based in Hanover
and worked with four other associates in the Chaos Computer
Club. In 1987, with the assistance of the U.S. Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, Clifford Stoll,
a systems administrator at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in
California, tracked the intruder whose object was the collection of
classified data from various American military defense facilities.
After West German authorities were notified, Hess was arrested
and tried, receiving a suspended sentence on 15 February 1990.
Two accomplices—Dirk-Otto Brzezinski and Peter Carl—were
likewise found guilty but served no prison time, while charges
were dropped against Hans Hübner because of his young age. Karl
Koch committed suicide on 23 May 1989 after being the first to
confess his role to the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz. Stoll’s
account of his dogged pursuit of the hackers appeared as The
Cuckoo’s Egg in 1989.
HESS, MARKUS • 185