The Stasi spies in science
OCT 01, 2009
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.023730
Nature : In 1992, three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall , a spy walked into the US embassy in Warsaw and offered to sell the CIA the real and code names of all intelligence agents from the HVA ( Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung )—the foreign department of the Stasi , the East German Ministry for State Security. The CIA bought the highly sensitive information for a mere US$75,000.The spoils—released to the Berlin Stasi archive and made available to history professor Kristie Macrakis at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in 2005—have the potential to alter popular perceptions of the activities of the East German intelligence agency and secret police.Macrakis’s analysis of the CIA material reveals that about 40% of all HVA sources planted in West German companies, research institutions, and universities were stealing scientific and technical secrets.
© 2009 American Institute of Physics
