Interview

By DANIEL BENJAMIN and JAMES O. JACKSON BERLIN and Markus Wolf

Tales of a Master Spy From the Other Side The former chief of East German intelligence and the model for John le Carre's Karla, MARKUS WOLF talks about espionage in the bad old days of the cold war, why he returned from Moscow to face possible imprisonment and what he likes best about his favorite spy novelist

Q. You worked for the East German foreign intelligence agency for more than three decades. What were your U.S. operations like?

A. Our work concentrated mainly on U.S. targets in West Germany and in West Berlin. It was only at a relatively late stage that we began to establish contacts within the U.S. Our initial efforts were to send in so-called sleepers, or undercover agents. Unfortunately, the first one was uncovered, and he revealed everything he knew. This was a major setback. After the German Democratic Republic opened its embassies in Washington and at the United Nations, we established contacts, but most of the material we managed to obtain by these sources was legal or semilegal. It was not top-secret information. If you are wondering whether we had contacts on a very high level -- no, there was no American Senator or higher official on our payroll.

Q. Were you really so unsuccessful?

A. In the 1950s and 1960s we did have a very good source in the American mission in West Berlin -- a German in the political section. So I don't want to present a picture of us being completely harmless. But except for this, I believe I do not merit praise for our work in the U.S.

Q. Are the rumors true that you recruited high-ranking West Germans as your agents?

A. Last year I was informed that a letter had been sent by the last East German government to the West German side giving a guarantee that in the last few years there was no agent activity above the level of ministry director ((the top civil-service rank)). There have been questions about whether a state secretary ((the level just below Cabinet rank)) was involved. There wasn't.

Q. Are any of the estimated 400 ex-agents who have not yet been uncovered working now for the KGB or another spy service?

A. Where that 400 figure comes from is a mystery to me. But I can say that I did not pass on a single one to the KGB, nor did my successor. The head of the intelligence service in the Soviet Union would not want to continue any form of contact. The risk would be too great. One cannot rule out, however, that some adventurers might try to profit from their knowledge.

Q. Do you merit praise for work elsewhere?

A. The most important reason for the successes of our intelligence service was that I focused our activities on West Germany and West Berlin. Once the G.D.R. began opening embassies, we had more contacts in more countries, but I tried to avoid too great a fragmentation of our activities.

Q. Which intelligence service do you rate the most successful?

A. The U.S. services could draw upon knowledge they gained in West Germany and West Berlin. At least in quantitative terms, I could say that they were successful. As far as quality is concerned, I don't know. We had considerable success against the West German intelligence services, as the heads of those services themselves have confirmed. I probably know less than you about Mossad or the British intelligence services.

Q. Just before unification between East and West Germany last year, you took refuge in the Soviet Union. Why have you returned to Germany, where you may be held accountable for your actions as head of the East German foreign intelligence service?

A. I am not very happy with the situation. But this is the reality, and I have to live with it. I could have been given asylum in the Soviet Union -- I have friends there -- but I wanted to live in Germany. My parents, my brother and I $ left for 11 years during the Nazi era. I did not want to be an emigre for a second time.

Q. Your return was prompted by the failed Soviet coup in August, was it not?

A. My decision had nothing directly to do with the coup.

Q. Did you feel you would be in danger if you remained in Moscow?

A. No I didn't. The situation was anarchic, and nobody seemed to be in control. But I did not want to make myself a burden for the Soviet Union, for Russia or for the people who would turn out to be the leaders of this emerging country. I considered myself a guest. I did not want to cause any trouble.

Q. Doesn't it seem ironic to you that you are free on bail because of the liberal laws of a country you tried to undermine?

A. We will have to wait for the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court to find out if I and the other members of my service go free, and whether the court will impose severe sentences upon the people who worked for us within West Germany. Should this happen, it would be a heavy moral burden for me. I believe that the way they are treated should reflect the end of the cold war.

Q. What do you mean by "moral burden"?

A. I believe that many of our agents in the West were there because of a conviction that what we were doing was right, not because of money or blackmail. It would not be logical for the heads of the service to go free while those who believed in the Warsaw Pact and what we were doing went to prison. In the past, when agents were arrested, we tried to arrange exchanges for them, but suddenly this is no longer possible.

Q. If the shoe were on the other foot and we were all now living under East German law, what would have happened to West German agents who had infiltrated your service?

A. It is a paradox when the person who was head of the subdivision under me for counterintelligence is standing trial in Munich together with an agent who infiltrated the West German federal intelligence service. It is the job of an intelligence service to infiltrate the services of other countries. And if a person succeeds in this, he should not be condemned under laws in a new country for actions undertaken under laws that were valid in his country. I cannot accept the idea of good and bad, black and white, that East Germany was an illegal state and West Germany was a constitutional one. It is hard for me to say what would have happened if the situation had been reversed. Important / West German agents would not, I believe, have remained in that kind of united Germany.

Q. Did you aid Abu Nidal, Carlos, the Red Army Faction and other international terrorists?

A. Our agency and I myself had nothing to do with the Red Army Faction. The P.L.O. and Yasser Arafat were recognized by East Germany as representing a state, and there were agreements on military and security training. We provided some of that training, but at no time did our agency work on terrorist activities. I cannot say anything definitive about the Ministry of State Security as a whole, but I can say that every effort was made to avoid terrorist activities being initiated from East Germany. It has become known that Arab individuals did prepare certain activities in East Germany that were then carried out in West Berlin.

Q. You are referring to the bombing of La Belle discotheque in Berlin ((in 1986, killing three people, including two U.S. soldiers))?

A. Yes, La Belle. This is one example. But I do not believe that the Ministry of State Security or the foreign intelligence agency was informed in advance about it. After the bombing they were able to reconstruct what happened.

Q. You come from a family of intellectuals. Did you and your late brother Konrad ((a leading East German filmmaker)) become so involved with the system that you became totally blind to its faults?

A. This is, for me, the central question, more important than even the criminal prosecution that I may be facing. Nobody who had a prominent position can be free of responsibility for the wrongs that occurred and for the failure of the experiment of socialism on German territory. My father, who died in 1953, believed in this experiment. Some people have asked how someone who had experienced the Moscow trials of the 1930s could remain silent. I believe that one develops an ability to ignore, an ability that my brother and I developed. We believed that in our own areas of work -- my brother in the arts, I in the intelligence service -- we could achieve something. We simply ignored what was happening around us. In the years before my brother's death ((in 1982)), I began to reflect more deeply. We did not use the word Stalinism to describe it, but we did believe that the socialist system had been deformed. We wanted to introduce reforms similar to those of Gorbachev in the Soviet Union -- glasnost and perestroika. It was at this time that my opposition to the regime began.

Q. In what way?

A. With my first book, Troika, in which I tried to present ideals of humanism or tolerance. I am working on another book to try to examine what happened and why and also to examine our responsibility. Gorbachev, Shevardnadze and Yeltsin were fortunate in that they had an opportunity to reflect on what had happened and also to introduce reforms. We had no opportunity to prove that we too could learn from the past. But we did in fact want to move along a path toward democracy.

Q. Do you still consider yourself a communist?

A. Yes. When one is as old as I, one does not easily change one's ideological hats. My father, who had a Jewish bourgeois background, became a pacifist after his experience in World War I. He soon saw that after the failure of the revolution in Germany in 1918, society could only be changed if a communist ideology were adopted. I believe that mankind's striving for justice and freedom led to the creation of the communist ideology. I reject what always has been a central issue in communism: power, the struggle to obtain it and to keep it. I believe that this is one of the main reasons for the failure of the communist system.

Q. What do you think when you look at a united Germany and the demise of East Germany?

A. I do not wish to turn back the clock, but I, like many other people living in this part of united Germany, am not happy about the way the unification took place. I do not believe that the state and society in which I am now living have discovered absolute truth. I do not believe that this society will be able to solve the major problems facing mankind either in Germany or elsewhere. Communism and socialism have been so compromised that an alternative left-wing movement has been fragmented and deprived of its inherent force. I do not expect to live to see the emergence of a new alternative, but I do still believe one will develop to correct the dark sides of this society.

Q. Among readers of spy novels you may be better known as Karla than as Markus Wolf. Have you read the novels of John le Carre? Do you see yourself in his Karla character?

A. At first I had read only The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, but now I have read some others as well. I am not sure that I am the model for Karla. Maybe I will have a chance to put that question to Mr. Le Carre.

Q. When do you expect to meet him?

A. I am not sure. Some TV people are planning something. I am not pushing for it, but it may happen. I have been reading his books, and Tom Clancy's too. I'm trying to read Clancy in English to improve my command of the language, and maybe we can have a talk sometime.

Q. What do you think of the Le Carre novels? Are they realistic?

A. Yes, especially his first book. The classic espionage book for me is Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana. That is the best. I recently read Le Carre's The Russia House, and I have some criticism. If we had done it together, I think it would have been better.