Like Guillaume, Nollau was a refugee from East Germany. He was a former lawyer and had been a member of the Nazi administration in occupied Poland. After the fallout of the Guillaume Affair, some journalists were quick to suggest that this head of counterintelligence was in fact an eastern agent: a feeling shared by the French. It was impossible to find the truth, however, as after all the tumult, Nollau was forced to resign in order to avoid scandal.When told of the charges against Guillaume, Nollau, an eastern agent or not, had to inform the chancellery. He did not confirm that Guillaume was definitely a spy, merely suggesting that there were suspicions against him. Willy Brandt remained sceptical: contrary to what might have been said, the Chancellor was not particularly intimate with Guillaume. They were work colleagues, that was all. But what if he was actually a spy? Brandt did not believe it. Yet as a responsible statesman, he asked the head of the BfV what he thought he should do. Nollau's response was outrageous: he told him to keep him close by so that he could keep a constant eye on him. This was a considerable risk and a whole year went by before the BfV decided to take action by arresting Guillaume and his wife - a year during which the spy continued to send secret information back to his masters in the East.
How can one explain this mistake by Nollau? If he had been more adamant, Brandt would have immediately separated himself from his personal aide and any subsequent investigation would have quickly shown that Guillaume was indeed a spy. Also, it is hard not to imagine a conspiracy against the Chancellor, with someone hatching a plot on the very day that he was informed of the suspicions surrounding his aide. By keeping a man who had been suspected of spying with him for so long, Brandt condemned himself. It is true that he had merely followed the advice of the head of the BfV, but could he prove that? There were others who already knew that Guillaume was a spy, and had been told so personally by Nollau.These men included the liberal Interior Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher, as well as Herbert Wehner, the president of the Social Democrats and a politician who had little sympathy for Brandt and who was secretly trying to bring him down. It was Wehner, for example, who told the party elite after Guillaume's arrest that the personal aide might make some very embarrassing revelations about Brandt's private life, which could be harmful to the SPD.
Wehner was undoubtedly the soul of the plot, which is why it was only Brandt's closest friends who tried to dissuade him from resigning. Yet the story is even more interesting as Wehner himself had a very revealing past: before the war, he had been a Communist and a great friend of Erich Honecker, who in 1973 became the leader of the GDR. It is possible to suggest from this that Wehner too was a spy, although perhaps more of an informer rather than an agent in the strictest sense of the term, but still enough for the KGB to have a file on him. He was in Moscow during the great Stalinist Terror, and denounced a certain number of his comrades, in fact so many that at one point the Soviets suspected him of being a Gestapo agent. It is likely that after this, he was manipulated by the KGB.
Did the Kremlin wish to topple Willy Brandt, the man of Ostpolitik, while at the same time sacrificing Gunther Guillaume, a man who had rendered such good service? In Moscow, not everyone was in favour of the German Chancellor's Ostpolitik. In the highest echelons of power was a clan who had a great deal of influence in the KGB and they feared that this Ostpolitik might one day or another lead to the reunification of Germany. They therefore had to fight it and ensure that its promoter, Willy Brandt, was forced to leave power. Moscow must therefore have devised this plot against Willy Brandt, with the active participation of Herbert Wehner, who was unable to refuse his Soviet friends. Even the East Germans were kept ignorant of the plan, with the KGB keeping it a secret from Markus Wolf and the HVA. Indeed, Wolf later confessed that the Soviets did sometimes keep things secret from him and it was through his western sources - his spies in West Germany - that he learned about the secret contacts between the Soviets and politicians in Bonn. As for Gunther Guillaume, despite his excellent record, he still received a life sentence. He had merely been a scapegoat for Moscow, but his East German masters had lost an informant of the highest order.
Markus Wolf93
The fall ofWilly Brandt, which closely followed that of Guillaume’s, was a serious political defeat. We knew that Brandt was committed to his Ostpolitik, which overlapped with our own strategic interests.We had no interest in aiding his downfall. Quite the contrary!
Chapter 17
Espionage, Science and Conscience
The story starts like all the best spy novels set in the days of the Cold War: a man, accompanied by a woman and a young girl, heavy suitcases in hand, slowly walk down a dark hallway. The low rumble of the subway trains can be heard ahead. Suddenly, the man stops in front of a metal door. Laying down his suitcase, the man takes a key from his pocket and puts it into the lock. The door creaks open; the man woman and child all pushing it. On the other side is the West: the free world. Werner Stiller had made it. Soon the western intelligence agencies will be racing to see the hundreds and hundreds of documents and microfilms contained in his suitcase.
The scene itself took place in the Berlin metro system at Friedrich-Strasse station, on the border between East and West. At the same time, an East German intelligence officer discovered that a security box at Department XIII (scientific espionage) had been forced open and that a special permit for crossing the Berlin Wall had disappeared. The head of the agency, Markus Wolf, was immediately alerted. But it was too late: he could only see that one of his deputies, Lieutenant Werner Stiller, had probably defected to the West. The damage was likely to be considerable: Stiller knew the names of several spies who had infiltrated western laboratories and research centres. They needed to act quickly and activate the long-prepared plans to get the men out. Some of the spies were able to be warned in time and slip through the nets. But in France, a top-level scientist was apprehended the very next day. His arrest was to ignite the world of scientific research, sparking violent protests and asking a fundamental question: where does the free and necessary exchange of scientific information between scientists worldwide end, and where does spying begin? A question that is still relevant today, in a time when intelligence agencies share more and more of their endeavours with scientific research.
One of the spies denounced by Werner Stiller was called Sperber, or ‘Hawk', to use the codename given to him by the East German intelligence service.94 He was a scientist, like his informer, and a physicist by training. Stiller had a very important role in the HVA, the intelligence agency in the GDR, as he was responsible for coordinating scientific information, with fifty agents at his disposal.
He crossed over to the West on the night of 18/19 November 1979.Yet Sperber was arrested in France on the morning of the 19th. Even if he had acted quickly to prevent Sperber from running away, it must be noted that the communication here between Berlin and Paris was too fast. However, this can be explained: Stiller had been in contact with West German intelligence agencies for some time and had already provided names of spies hidden in the scientific facilities of various western countries.
Sperber was therefore probably already in the DST's (the French counterintelligence agency) sights. However, there was always an obstacle in the way if he was to be arrested, which was the risk of jeopardising Stiller as the source. When Stiller decided to defect, however, the DST could take action as he was no longer in harm's way. This means that just hours after his journey to the West, arrests were made in both France and Germany.
The pseudo-Sperber was born in East Germany around the time that Hitler came to power. After the war, he remained in what would become East Germany and completed his studies. Gifted in mathematics and physics, he seems to have been approached very quickly by the intelligence services. At the time, the Stasi, which was not quite the powerhouse it was later to become, nevertheless, kept a close eye on this young student in these turbulent years. As a result, Sperber was enlisted, but this bright hope in the field of scientific research did n
ot have much spare time to devote to spying on his classmates or teachers.
At the time, Markus Wolf95 was already the head of the East German intelligence service, despite being barely thirty. He was good at looking ahead and knew that espionage was a long process: even though pawns were put in place years in advance, it may be a long time before they could become useful. So he sent hundreds, maybe even thousands, of sleeper agents, first to West Germany and then further west, who would one day be activated at a time when their professional or social positions enabled them to be useful to their mother country.96 He also dispatched the ‘Romeos', men charged with seducing the West German secretaries who worked in sensitive departments, especially the government ministries.
Sperber had first been spotted by the Stasi and then by Markus Wolfs men. At the same time he was pursuing scientific studies at the highest level at Humboldt University, the young man was also undergoing spy training. He readily acknowledged this when later questioned by the police officers from the DST, but in Stalinist Germany, where the security bodies were all-powerful, could he really have refused to cooperate? If he had, he risked jeopardising his career and his family. Many East Germans had to work for the Stasi because they had no choice. In a totalitarian society, people were pawns to be manipulated at will and the means of coercion mattered little.
What is more, it should not be forgotten that the young Sperber, at least initially, was truly convinced that he was working for his country and for socialism. Yet after all the training, both scientific and technical, the hard fact remained: this brilliant student was ready to infiltrate the West!
In 1999 the Berliner Zeitung devoted an article to Werner Stiller, the man who denounced Sperber. It stated that even before his defection, the former East German was working for the BND, the intelligence agency of West Germany. Elegant and cynical and attributed him the following words: ‘When the world is as bad as it is now, it is best to make the most of it!'. Stiller underwent plastic surgery on his face in case he would be recognised and risk the possible revenge of his former employers. In the 1980s he wrote his first memoirs, In the Middle of Espionage, which he wrote in collaboration with BND experts. He would publish another book ten years later.
He lived for a long time in the United States, where he had successful careers in real estate and the stock market and now lives in Budapest, under a false name, of course. The German television channel ARD intends to produce a drama about his life called The Red Jackal.
An interesting title, but those who knew him say that Stiller often portrayed himself as a real James Bond. After reading the article one might question the reliability of Stiller and consequently the authenticity of the information he passed to the West. But will we ever know the truth? While most of the Stasi archives were recovered by the German authorities, and sometimes even made public, the same cannot be said for those files belonging to the HVA, the intelligence service led for so long by Markus Wolf. There are so many secrets that have been lost, which according to some experts, is one of the greatest achievements of Wolf's men.
On the orders of the HVA, Sperber first travelled to West Germany. The Berlin Wall had not yet been built in 1959, and there were many crossings between East and West. The aim was to make Sperber a West German. This was easy as at the time, any East German who chose to travel to West Germany automatically received West German citizenship. This mean that he was now a German citizen who had all the correct paperwork in order to enter French territory. Many people might have thought that he had voluntarily crossed the Iron Curtain in search of freedom. He was not even obliged to hide the fact that he had completed his scientific studies in East Germany. Once in France, Sperber was able to show his excellent knowledge and qualifications that he had gained from his time at Humboldt University. He quickly found work and became a fellow in the laboratory of Louis de Broglie, who had won the Nobel Prize for physics. He was soon hired by the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) and was to work at the University of Paris-Jussieu, even writing a thesis whilst there.
Sperber was a mathematician and a theorist, who specialised in plasma physics. Plasmas are unstable fluids obtained by heating gas, such as hydrogen, to extreme temperatures using powerful lasers. At the time, this area was at the forefront of research and although only still at the theoretical stage, it would eventually lead to the domestication of nuclear fusion.
The manufacture of H bombs certainly sprang from this technique, but for the scientists, it was about uncontrolled thermo-nuclear explosions. Scientists like Sperber wanted to control this fusion for civilian use, that is, to produce energy: the fusion of plasma atoms gives off a fantastic amount of energy, which practically inexhaustible as hydrogen is everywhere! Sperber was working with the plasmas and trying to mathematically translate the phenomena that occurred during their creation.
It may seem surprising that this theoretical research would fascinate the world of intelligence, but from the moment where they can be put to practical use, these scientific studies also interested spies. In addition, the research was very expensive, requiring considerable intellectual and technological investments. By secretly appropriating the work with a competitor meant substantial savings!
The idea must be tempered slightly, however: scientists all over the world constantly publish their work and exchange information at scientific conferences or via the internet, today. Yet there are times when they withhold information, such as the technological and mathematical tricks they used to help them to achieve their results. This becomes even more true when the theoretical research can have possible military applications.
Sperber thus settled in France and married a compatriot. He worked in the most prestigious and advanced laboratories, yet loyal to his country, he continued to submit the findings from his research to the intelligence services of the GDR. To send the documents, he used the complete panoply of a spy: coded messages, microfilms, invisible ink and even dead letterboxes. He even went so far as to hide some papers in fake dog poo, such as those found in a joke shop. He was paid for his services, but not much, receiving 500,000 francs in twenty years. Money was not his motive, but did he realise that in passing over this information, he was engaged in espionage work?
Even if he was using espionage tactics, the scientist always claimed that he was not a traitor. During his interrogation or the many trials he was later forced to appear at, he maintained that he had only handed over open documents, i.e. documents that were either already published or were going to be sooner or later. For him it was not a question of spying. So then why clandestinely transmit these ‘open' documents, when he could have just sent them in the post to his correspondents in East Germany?
Thierry Wolton97
As part of his scientific studies he joined a research group looking at thermo-nuclear fusion using lasers, driven by the various theoretical physics laboratories at the Polytechnic School, who were working for the army. He did not have access to secret documents, but he sent all the information he could get his hands on to the MFS (aka, the Stasi). He had been sent a Minox camera hidden in a clock and a Pentaka camera that had been concealed in a teddy bear. The orders from East Berlin were transmitted by shortwave message, as was the regular practice by the intelligence service for their ‘illegals'. Sperber also conducted several trips to the GDR via West Germany, Austria, Switzerland or Yugoslavia. The MFS even prepared an escape plan for him in case of danger: two postage stamps stuck to his letterbox at home should raise the alarm. He then had to go to Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, as fast as he could and board and East German ship. By arresting Sperber the day after Stiller defected, the DST prevented the MFS from alerting him to any danger.
Sperber was thus arrested at home just hours after Stiller defected and immediately confessed. It would have been difficult for him to deny it as the DST most likely knew all that had been going on and thanks to Stiller, the police now had an overwhelming case against Sperber.
The affair caused a stir
the moment it was made public: it is not every day that a physicist is accused of spying. The wildest rumours began to circulate immediately, with one journalist even claiming that Sperber sent the East secrets of a French death ray! It was a rather fanciful extrapolation: the atomic physicist, as he was called in the press, had indeed closely studied the actions of powerful lasers to achieve nuclear fusion, but he had not been working to develop a formidable weapon, the so-called ‘death ray'.
It is true though that this spy story had everything to excite the imagination, including that of a prolific thriller writer called Gerard de Villiers, who published an article about Sperber in Paris Match magazine, as well as other general articles on the infiltration of communist spies in France. He even accused a genuine scholar, Jean-Pierre Vigier of having favoured Sperber's entry into the CNRS, under the pretext that he was a communist. Vigier was a renowned physicist, a stalwart of the French university and a resistor, who had broken with the Communist Party a long time ago. He was now a member of the right-wing majority and had to stand before the National Assembly where he was accused of being complicit with Sperber. According to them, the physicist had been researching the neutron bomb and had sent all of its secrets to the East.
The affair, which was taking on an increasing political angle, became more and more important and was to upset the entire French research community. The French scientists were initially stunned. The accusations were serious: their German colleague was suspected of passing intelligence to a foreign power. But little by little their opinions changed, with the attack on Jean-Pierre Vigier being the real trigger and soon Sperber would benefit from a broad sense of solidarity from his colleagues.
Great Spies of the 20th Century Page 21
