provincial East German cities. Russian President Vladimir Putin
served for five years as a KGB liaison officer in Dresden, where the
Stasiand the KGB targeted Western businesspeople to collect scien-
tific, technical, and industrial intelligence. Stasi also had a large sig-
nals intelligence service, which also collected intelligence and coun-
terintelligencefor the KGB.
Stasi and Wolf provided the KGB with detailed reporting of polit-
ical developments in West Germany. Wolf’s service recruited and ran
Gunter Guillaume, West German Premier Willy Brandt’s aide. The
HVA also recruited agents in the right-wing Christian Democratic
Party to serve as sources of information and clandestine agents of in-
fluence. The HVA also used “romeo spies,” illegals dispatched
specifically to seduce and recruit female secretaries of senior politi-
cians, including the president of the German Republic.
Another of Wolf’s gifts to his Soviet allies was the penetration of
the West German intelligence and security services. Bonn had no se-
crets from Moscow in the Cold War. The first chief of the West Ger-
man security service, Otto John, was lured into defectingin 1954,
and senior intelligence and counterintelligence personnel were re-
cruited as agents from the 1950s to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Three
of these were particularly important. Gabriele Gast was recruited by
a “romeo spy” in 1973. A brilliant analyst, she was at the time of her
arrest in 1987 deputy chief of the West German intelligence service’s
Soviet bloc division. Klaus Keron, of the West German counterintel-
ligence service, offered his services to Stasi for money. A senior
counterintelligence officer, he was paid 700,000 marks over eight
years. Hans-Joachim Tiedge, the chief officer in West Germany’s
counterintelligence service, the BfV, defected to East Germany in- He was close to being charged with manslaughter in the death
of his wife in a household brawl.
Stasitradecraftwas quite sophisticated and reminiscent of the
Cheka, GPU, and OGPUin the first decades of Soviet power. Rather
than depend on case officers under diplomatic cover, East German
citizens were frequently dispatched as illegals to handle agents. Turn-
ing adversity to opportunity, Wolf’s Stasiseeded the stream of émi-
grésleaving East Germany with dedicated agents. Wolfe was able to
use this tactic because he knew that punishment for espionage in
West Germany was light, and that Stasicould use spy swapsto ex-
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