Former East German Spymaster Dies

Former East German spymaster Markus Wolf poses in this September 1995 file photo. Markus Wolf, the "man without a face" who outwitted the West as communist East Germany's long-serving spymaster, has died Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006. He was 83. (AP photo/Jan Bauer, File) (Jan Bauer - AP)

The Stasi _ which at home enlisted spouses and lovers to spy on their partners _ sent seductive "Romeo" agents to the West to steal secrets from lonely government secretaries.

Wolf said in his memoirs that "if I go down in espionage history, it may well be for perfecting the use of sex in spying."

Wolf said his first "Romeo," an engineering student code-named Felix, started work in 1952 and operated under the cover of a traveling shampoo salesman.

He struck up a friendship with a secretary in West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's office at a Bonn bus stop; the relationship lasted for several years until East Berlin was tipped off that West German authorities were running a security check on the agent and hastily withdrew him.

Wolf, detailed a string of such sagas in his 1997 book "Man Without a Face."

"It was wrong," he told reporters as he promoted the book. "Nobody has the right to spoil an innocent person's life."

Wolf emerged as a supporter of reforms as East Germans took to the streets to press for change in the fall of 1989. A few days before the Berlin Wall fell, he drew applause at a pro-democracy rally in East Berlin when he denounced violent police attacks on earlier demonstrations.

In May 1990, with German reunification approaching, Wolf said two men appeared at his dacha near Berlin with an offer from then-CIA director William Webster to work for the U.S. spy agency.

One of the two was Gardner Hathaway, who had just retired as assistant CIA director for counterintelligence, Wolf said. They offered a "seven-figure sum," a new identity and a house in California.

Wolf said he turned down the offer because he would never have betrayed his ex-agents _ even though it would have put him out of the reach of German prosecutors, who were seeking him for espionage, treason and bribery.

Later in 1990, Wolf fled to Moscow. With Bonn pressing for his return, he unsuccessfully sought political asylum in Austria and then surrendered to German authorities at a rural border crossing in Bavaria.

In the years of legal wrangling that followed, Wolf avoided lengthy prison time.

A 1993 conviction and six-year prison sentence was overturned in 1995 by an appeals court. It ruled that Wolf was acting on behalf of a sovereign country, East Germany, and could not be tried for treason against West Germany.

In a second trial, Wolf was given a two-year suspended sentence in 1997 for four kidnappings carried out by his agents during the Cold War. A stony-faced Wolf listened as the judge branded him an accomplice in "state-ordered crimes" against "helpless victims."

Wolf is survived by his wife, Andrea, three sons and his stepdaughter. Wall said he would be buried in the presence of only his closest relatives, on a date that was not released.