The first time I met Erich Mielke, the notorious chief of the communist East German secret police, was in February 1965, during a reception for Alexei N. Kosygin, successor to Nikita S. Khrushchev as premier of the Soviet Union. Kosygin had come to East Germany to help celebrate the 700th anniversary of the Leipzig industrial fair and to provide a visible display of Soviet support for the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), the German Democratic Republic. As I was then Berlin correspondent for the Associated Press, it was my job to cover this event. At the time, the fair was the only opportunity for a Western journalist, especially an American, to catch a glimpse of life inside the "workers' and peasants' state." The communist regime had cleared me for travel to the event, but I still lacked the official credentials guaranteeing access to the new Soviet leader. I eventually obtained the necessary documents through Oleg Panin, who served as chief of protocol at the Soviet embassy in East Berlin. I had first met Panin during the highly charged days in October 1962 when U.S. and Soviet tanks faced off, gun barrel to gun barrel, at Checkpoint Charlie on Berlin's east-west border. Panin had begun to court me assiduously -- at the outset, probably because he enjoyed the lavish lunches in West Berlin for which I paid because he had no West marks. later he suddenly had the West marks to spend, and it became obvious that he thought he could recruit me as a spy. Panin did not know that I was on to him. I knew he had been a captain in the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, when he first came to Berlin at the end of World War II. Years later he returned as a "diplomat" and a full colonel in the KGB. Panin oozed politeness when I told him what I needed, and he eagerly provided me Soviet passes and invitations to all events attended by Premier Kosygin.

On February 28, I headed for the Altes Rathaus, the Leipzig city hall built in 1556 -- still the most beautiful Renaissance-period city hall in Germany. East German Premier Willy Stoph was hosting a reception for his Soviet counterpart. With my Soviet invitation, I was quickly waved through by the guards and passed into the narrow, dark ceremonial hall. Centuries of grime and communist neglect had made it a dingy place. Like all East German public buildings, the place reeked of lavatory disinfectant and cheap tobacco. Tables laden with crystal bowls of caviar, plates of sturgeon and other delicacies, and the inevitable liters of iced vodka had been strung together in a fifty-foot line through the center of the hall. At the end, the hall widened into a larger room, which was cut off by another long table bearing food and drink. There, looking down the dingy hall at a hundred or so East German apparatchiks stuffing themselves and guzzling vodka, stood Kosygin with a small entourage including Soviet Ambassador Piotr A. Abrassimov and Stoph. General Pavel Koshevoi, commander of Soviet forces in East Germany, was spooning caviar into his mouth from a crystal bowl and taking bites from a slab of dark bread, washing it down with vodka. Between the right end of the long table and the wall was a gap through which one could pass to the VIP area. It was guarded by East Germans and Soviets.

When Panin spotted me, he motioned to join him in front of the VIP enclave. "I want you to meet a friend of mine," he said, leading me toward a group of goons, one of whom I recognized from photographs. It was Erich Mielke, a three-star general (awarded four stars in 1980) and head of the Ministry for State Security (MfS), the secret police, popularly referred to as the "Stasi." Mielke was already the most feared man in East Germany. Wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, and somber tie, Mielke, although broad-shouldered and stocky, looked about two inches shorter than my five feet nine and a half. His hairline was receding and his dark, graying hair was combed straight back. His flabby jowls sported a five-o'clock shadow, and the bags under his dark eyes were huge.

"Herr Mielke," Panin said, "this is Mr. Koehler of the Associated Press and a friend of mine. Jack, please meet Herr Mielke." As we shook hands, I said, "Oh, I know Herr Mielke very well." Mielke looked puzzled. "I don't think we have met before," he said. "How do you know me?" I smiled and replied, "A wanted poster with your picture has been hanging at Checkpoint Charlie for years." Panin's eyes widened. "Please don't say things like that to our guest," he admonished me. But Mielke smiled, and with a wave of his hand, said, "Ach, I am only a journalist like you." I could not suppress a grin. "Yes, I know, you were a reporter for the Rote Fahne (1) but that was before you were involved in the murder of those two police captains." Panin was squirming uncomfortably, but Mielke seemed to take my taunt in stride. "You are right; after that, I had to move to the Soviet Union."(2) Then he picked up a bottle of vodka, filled two glasses, and handed one to me. "Prost! It is good to meet a friend of Oleg's."

After I finished the drink, Mielke apparently expected me to leave. But I still had a job to do for the Associated Press (AP). I asked Panin to tell Ambassador Abrassimov that I wanted an interview with the Soviet premier. Panin did so reluctantly. The white-haired envoy conferred with Kosygin, then turned and motioned me into the VIP area. Mielke watched and listened intently as I talked to Kosygin for about thirty minutes. It was the first interview the new Soviet leader had granted a Western journalist.

The following day Kosygin visited the fairgrounds. Panin had instructed me to meet the official party in the East German pavilion. When I reached the entrance, there stood Mielke, personally checking the credentials of those who were trying to enter. It was an astounding sight -- after all, he held a cabinet post and a general's rank. When he saw me, he grinned and exclaimed loudly, "Aha, it's you! Because of the nasty things you said last night, you are not going to get in here!" I shrugged and held out my Soviet pass for his inspection. "Well, then, our friends will be disappointed if they don't see me." I said, placing special emphasis on our. "Oh, yes, I remember now, you are a friend of Oleg's, so please come in," Mielke said, waving me toward the door obsequiously. I felt more than a bit queasy later that day when I reflected on my encounter with the secret police chief.

The Stasi's function in East Germany was identical to that performed by secret police organizations in other communist-controlled nations: It was the primary instrument by which the ruling party -- in this case, the Sozialistische Einheitspartei (SED), or Socialist Unity Party -- retained power. Mass arrests of the leaders' political opponents, including many veteran communists who disagreed with current policies, had been reported. It was rumored that half a dozen prisons were filled with tens of thousands of such political prisoners. East Germany had become a police state, and when the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, the entire population because the state's prisoners.

Because of the communists' penchant for extreme secrecy, and people's fear of the secret police, evidence of the extent of the oppression was hard to come by as were the details of intraparty struggles. However, the facts of East Germany's espionage operations began to surface more frequently in the West by the mid-1950s, when the number of spies arrested increased as a result of improved West German counterespionage methods. In addition, an occasional defector from the Ministry for State Security (MfS) revealed operational secrets.

Nonetheless, the true extent of the terror exercised by the Stasi over the German people, and the depth of its espionage apparatus, remained hidden until the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. The communist regime collapsed within weeks of that event, and the secret police organization quickly disintegrated. Although Stasi officers tried at the last minute to destroy incriminating documents, most of the organization's archives were saved. As the Stasi's secrets gradually were unveiled, German citizens became increasingly outraged.

Twice in the previous half century, a cabal of ruthless ideologues had claimed for itself the sole right to rule in the name of "social justice." After World War II, the western part of Germany had developed into a modern, economically powerful democracy governed strictly by the rule of law while the other Germany wallowed in a morass of government-sponsored crimes, its hapless citizens having passed from one dictatorship to another.

This book chronicles the distasteful and ruthless activities of the Stasi under the leadership of Erich Mielke -- activities without which the dictatorship could not have maintained its grip on power. To be sure, the East German regime also could not have existed without the backing of the armed might of the Soviet Union. In the same token, there would have been no West Germany without the protective shield of the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) allies.

Anticipating difficulties in obtaining accurate information on the activities of the MfS during the previous four decades, I sought assistance from Ambassador Georg Wieck, who until September 1990 had been president of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the West German Federal Intelligence Agency -- roughly equivalent to the U.S. CIA. Ambassador Wieck arranged a meeting for me with Rainer Wiegand, a former MfS colonel who had defected to the West in 1990 after two years of advance planning. The BND vouched for Weigand's sincerity and the veracity of his information. I was told that the CIA and the French and British intelligence services, which also had interrogated Wiegand, expressed a similarly high regard for his straightforwardness and frankness. (3)

In the MfS, Wiegand had been assigned to the counterespionage directorate and had reported directly to Mielke. His specific job was chief of Arbeitsgruppe Auslaender, a task force responsible for all matters involving foreigners. This allowed him unique access to nearly all of the MfS directorates and departments. Wiegand's headquarters was in Berlin, but he had officers stationed in each of the fifteen Stasi district offices in East Germany. He was in almost constant communication with KGB officials. The former colonel often traveled to Moscow and other European cities and the Middle East. During weeks of debriefing, Wiegand revealed the most closely guarded secrets of the MfS. He detailed espionage and subversive operations against the United States and other nations; the training and harboring of international terrorists; murder; kidnapping; blackmail; coercion; election fraud; and many other crimes and flagrant abuses of human and civil rights. Wiegand's erstwhile chief, former Lieutenant General Gunther Kratsch, confirmed much of this information in a separate interview.

Some of the most stunning testimony about East German espionage activities emerged during my interviews with Karl Grossmann, a former colonel who had retired in 1986. He had helped General Markus Wolf in the early buildup of the foreign intelligence department. He told of numerous Americans who had betrayed highly sensitive U.S. military secrets to the Stasi. Colonel Heinz Busch, who was Wolf's chief analyst, supplied rich detail about spies in the U.S. military forces and defense industry as well as in NATO. Another source produced samples of secret U.S. documents that these renegades had sold to the East Germans and that were subsequently found in the Stasi archives.

Although Wiegand provided rare insights into the personality and career of Erich Mielke, he was unable to fill in important gaps. "I always found it strange that he never said a word about what he did in the Soviet Union during his years before and during the war. The official biographies lacked significant details, which puzzled not just me, but my colleagues as well," Wiegand said.

Finally, in spring 1991, I obtained access to a dossier on Erich Mielke that had been found in his personal safe. This file contained materials assembled by a Berlin court in the 1930s, and included details of Mielke's activities as a young communist thug and agitator; police reports of his involvement in the 1931 murder of two police officers in Berlin; and records of his schooling in the Soviet Union. These documents bolstered information I had obtained from other sources, enabling me to assemble as accurate a profile of Mielke as it currently possible, given that the KGB has not yet opened its relevant files.

In August 1993, I was called to testify before a Berlin court that was trying Mielke for the 1931 murder of the two policemen. My earlier encounter with Mielke, during which he had not denied his involvement, was considered crucial evidence in this case. Mielke was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison -- a virtual life term for a man who was then eighty-six.

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Notes:

1. Meaning "Red Banner," the German Communist Party (KPD) newspaper in Berlin for which Mielke worked in 1921.

2. On August 9, 1931, two Berlin police officers were shot and killed during a communist demonstration. In a subsequent trial, Mielke and a compatriot were named by witnesses as the killers. The incident will be examined in detail later in this book.

3. In early 1991, a high-ranking German counterespionage official told the author that only about 100 out of more than 100,000 Stasi officers have been willing to reveal details of their activities.

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