any action of this sort would not occur until the signing of a separate
peace treaty between the GDR and the Soviet Union scheduled later
that fall. The actual erection of the massive Berlin Wall did not com-
mence until after the Western allies had decided that no military or
economic response was appropriate. See also GRENZTRUPPEN;
SEIFFERT, WOLFGANG.ROSENHOLZ. The index cards of the central data system of the
Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA) retrieved after its dissolution,
Rosenholz was a designation given by an official of the Bundesamt
für Verfassungsschutz (BfV). In 1992, the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency obtained these microfilmed documents under circumstances
not yet clarified. The following year, BfV officials were allowed to
come to Langley, Virginia, and take handwritten notes on versions
that had been transferred to computer discs and dealt with German
citizens. Of the 1,929 people investigated, 66 eventually received a
prison sentence of more than two years. Despite repeated requests for
access to the originals, the material remained in American possession
until 2000. An arrangement was finally reached whereby, for the
next three years, a total of 381 CD-ROMS were sent to the Federal
Republic of Germany (FRG).
Because the HVA had succeeded in destroying nearly all of its
operational files, the Rosenholz data—last updated in 1987–1988—
proved crucial to researchers from the Bundesbeauftragte für
die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen
Deutschen Demokratischen Republik seeking to document the full
scope of East German espionage in the FRG. Essentially a reference
tool containing no full-text submissions, Rosenholz comprises three
types of recorded information: F 16 index cards, F 22 index cards,
and statistical sheets. The names of some 200,000 people (includ-
ing both agents and persons of interest) and 57,464 incidents were
recorded. Rosenholz further provided the key to the tapes of the Sys-
tem der Informationsrecherche der Aufklärung (SIRA), which
listed merely a registration number and the agent’s code name. See
also REISSWOLF.
ROTE DREI. The Abwehr designation for three radio transmitters based
in Switzerland that conveyed high-level German military information
378 • ROSENHOLZ