Spymaster Riddled The West With Agents
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 10, 2006
Markus Wolf, 83, who helped to oversee the growth of East Germany's espionage network and once wrote that he wanted to be remembered for "perfecting the use of sex in spying," died of undisclosed causes Nov. 9 at his apartment in Berlin.
Mr. Wolf led the foreign intelligence division of the East German Ministry for State Security, known as the Stasi, during much of the Cold War.
"Misha" Wolf's impact was undeniable. He was said to have been remarkably effective in stealing West Germany's weekly intelligence reports and was credited with planting thousands of moles in Western capitals, NATO headquarters and essential industries in science and technology.
One operative, Günter Guillaume, helped to topple the Social Democratic government of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1974. Another agent, Mr. Wolf said, became a secretary in the office of West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and provided details of communications between Schmidt and then-President Jimmy Carter.
Among Mr. Wolf's favorite spying methods was a forgery technique he called "seamless penetration," involving the reuse of passports confiscated from West Germans emigrating to the East.
Yet Mr. Wolf said he was likely to be remembered for his prolific use of sex to gain secrets, whether in the form of brothels to trap Westerners or by procuring wives and mistresses for loyal soldiers or by cultivating "Romeo spies" to target the lonely office secretaries and bureaucrats who had access to important, restricted documents. The intention was to steal hearts and then secrets.
He had sympathy for agents who fell in love while on the job, later writing in a memoir that he "had to develop my qualities as an agony uncle."
Mr. Wolf's avuncular manner was different from most Eastern bloc spymasters, such as his superior, the much-despised Stasi chieftain Erich Mielke. In retirement, Mr. Wolf made an attempt to redefine himself as a Gorbachev-style reformist by denouncing Mielke's methods and the reign of East German leader Erich Honecker.
However, this effort was widely regarded by his Stasi colleagues as an act more of expediency than of conviction.
Seeking political asylum, Mr. Wolf fled Germany before reunification in 1990, first to Russia and then Austria.
In 1993, a German court convicted him of treason and sentenced him to six years in prison, but the ruling was reversed by the country's high court on the grounds that Mr. Wolf could not be prosecuted for actions on behalf of what was a sovereign country. A later finding of guilt on kidnapping charges, related to his Stasi work, led to a two-year suspended sentence.
The publicity was ideal to help him sell his memoir, which was called "Man Without a Face" because of his reputation for avoiding being photographed for much of his life. He was eager to explain his career to Western reporters, telling one, "The morality of the intelligence world can never be compared with the normal moral thinking of normal people."
Markus Johannes Wolf was born Jan. 19, 1923, in Hechingen, a village in southwestern Germany.
His father, Friedrich, was a prominent doctor, playwright and Communist Party activist. He also was Jewish and relocated the family to Moscow soon after Hitler's rise to power in 1933.
As a young man, Mr. Wolf was educated at a Soviet Comintern school, where he became handy with weapons and propaganda techniques.
In Soviet-held Germany after the war, he befriended future East German leader Walter Ulbricht, who ordered him to abandon aeronautical studies to work as a Communist Party radio broadcaster.
Covering the Nuremberg trials of former Nazi leaders led Mr. Wolf to join the new Stasi. He later explained to the publication Tikkun, "Many other Jews took a similar path, becoming active in the Stasi to hunt down former Nazis."
He justified his decision on the grounds that Western powers used high-ranking Nazis, including Reinhard Gehlen, to build up their postwar intelligence services.
At 33, Mr. Wolf assumed command of the East German foreign intelligence service and wandered the world in disguise, under many names.
Ronald Payne and Christopher Dobson, authors of "Who's Who in Espionage" (1984), wrote: "He had a taste for travel, and has been seen in Aden, the capital of the People's Republic of South Yemen, where the East Germans control security and fill a prominent neo-colonialist role. It has been suggested that he played some part in attempting to destabilize the monarchy in Saudi Arabia."
In retirement, Mr. Wolf wrote a bestselling novel, "The Troika," based on his youth, and tried to revive his standing in a changing society that had little but contempt for the Stasi. He embraced Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of openness and appeared at rallies against Honecker.
Despite his public transformation, he was barred from entering the United States, which he found hypocritical, considering that Yasser Arafat and Gerry Adams, leaders aligned with violent political groups, were embraced by the White House. Partly to blame, he said, was his refusal to work for the CIA with the promise of a seven-figure salary, a home in California and a fresh identity.
Recounting his career in later years, Mr. Wolf could be charming and self-effacing. He noted that his best-known operative, Guillaume, was supposed to target only a West German labor leader but inadvertently took down Brandt's government.
Mr. Wolf's first two marriages, to Emmi Stenzer and Christa Wolf, ended in divorce. Survivors include his third wife, Andrea Wolf; three children; and a step-daughter.
Mr. Wolf was said to be an inspiration for the Soviet spy Karla, a character in John le Carre's espionage novels, but le Carre said he did not know of Mr. Wolf when he created Karla.
Le Carre was also unimpressed with Mr. Wolf's latter-day conversion, calling him "the modern equivalent of Albert Speer . . . a nasty little twerp."