Ex-Stasi Spy Chief Markus Wolf Hired By Homeland Security?

[theearthisround]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2004/061204wolfhired.htm

Political analyst Al Martin, who has in the past proven accurate in getting ahead of the news curve, is reporting that Homeland Security have hired former Stasi head, the 'Silver Fox' Markus Wolf.

Martin states,

"Wolf is the man that effectively built the East German state intelligence operation’s internal directorate," Martin continues. "He turned half the population into informants. That is his specialty, is taking a population, constructing the various state divisions, mechanisms of control, in order to organize informants within the population. That is his real specialty. And that is precisely, as Primakov has intimated, why Wolf is being brought in. The regime knows that once all of Patriot II is in law and they begin working on Patriot III, they will then begin to establish the internal mechanism to coordinate, as an official function of state, a system of informants. Wolf’s speciality was to turn East Germany into the greatest and most efficient informant state ever created."

On a radio appearance earlier today Martin stated that the admission that Wolf would be hired was made in a BBC radio interview given by the former head of the KGB, General Yevgeni Primakov.


Markus Wolf on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Wolf
In 1953, at the age of 30, he was among the founding members of the foreign intelligence service within the ministry of state security Stasi. As intelligence chief, Wolf achieved great success in penetrating the government, political and business circles of West Germany with spies. The most influential case was that of Günter Guillaume that led to the fall of chancellor Willy Brandt. He retired in 1986 in order to continue the work of his late brother Konrad about them growing up in Moscow in the 1930s. The book Troika came out on the same day in East and West Germany. For the people in the East he was a symbol of the ongoing changes, because he supported the Glasnost and Perestroika policies of Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 1997 he was convicted of unlawful detention, coercion, and bodily harm, and was given a suspended sentence of two years imprisonment.

Stasi on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
The Stasi was founded on February 8, 1950. Wilhelm Zaisser was its first leader, and Erich Mielke his deputy. In 1955, Mielke became head of the Stasi, and Markus Wolf became head of the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA), its foreign intelligence section. The Stasi was modeled on the Soviet KGB, which regarded the Stasi as an extremely loyal and effective partner among the intelligence services of the Warsaw Pact countries.

SVR on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SVR
SVR stands for Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, and is Russian for, "Foreign Intelligence Service". The SVR is the Russian intelligence agency, which evolved from the KGB after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The CSR, for Centralnaya Sluzhbza Razvedki (Central Intelligence Service) took over the intelligence gathering and analysis duties of the KGB's First Chief Directorate in October of 1991.

In December of that year, the former chief of the KGB First Chief Directorate, Yevgeni Primakov, was appointed head of the organisation, which was renamed SVR.

The SVR are suspected of assassinating Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, former leader of Chechnya.

[mdhunter]

1. Should we even bother keeping tally of the fascist elements anymore?

[Skink]

2. They're not Fascist anymore..

Were just to far left. Out of the mainstream. Cooky.:crazy:

[Kathy in Cambridge]

3. Now that the MAINSTREAM is to the right of Mussolini

it is kooky!

[Skink]

4. That's exactly what I was telling my buddy Fidel

the other day.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

5. Oh you're buddies with Fidel Castro?

;-)

We don't support Fidel here, BTW. Cuba is an oppressive regime.

[da_chimperor]

6. This is bullshit. Yevgeny Primakov was NOT the head of the KGB.

He was the PM of Russia for a while, less than a year methinks. He came to power after the Russian financial crisis in 1998.

http://www.rusnet.nl/encyclo/p/primakov.shtml

He was NOT the head of the KGB. This means it's all BS. This is too big of a mistake.

Edit: The last two KGB heads I can find were Colonel General Vladimir Kryuchkov, and General Vadim Bakatin.

[mazzarro]

You are right that Primakov was never head of KGB, but he did

head the Soviet foreign intelligence service before becoming the Prime Minister. You may want to recalibrate your BS meter.

[da_chimperor]

14. My bullshit detector is just fine. Primakov still wasn't head of the KGB.

Granted, he did head the SVR until '96 but that still means the author fucked up on a very important detail. The two are not the same. From what I can find, he was also never in the military, so why would be be named as a general? Some points for thought.

[UncleSepp]

15. Primakov was deputy director of the KGB and later director of the Federa

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/july-dec98/russia_9-14.html

Primakov was first deputy director of the KGB and later director of KGB successor, the Federal Intelligence Service. Primakov was a Middle Eastern specialist, and was involved with foreign intelligence, not domestic surveillance. Apparently he had a good relationship with Albright, too. His career in Russian politics is a bit older than 1998 - he was also a representative to the Duma, and was already cutting a large figure in 1991. I think his party was Rodina.

It's still a pretty big mistake, and shows poor research on the author's part.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

7. If this is true (and I hope it's not),

this is the final step in what is the total failure of the American ideal as spelled out for us by the founding fathers in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the New Deal, and all the other progressive and humanitarian legislation that's defined our country.

History may prove the Mossad to be the most evil intelligence group ever to exist on this earth, but, for now, the Stasi was the worst.

That our country would even entertain the notion of having anything to do with this man was impossible to believe. (I first wrote "is impossible to believe," but the past four years have kicked that sort of optimism out of me.) Now, it seems like Business As Usual.

We are doomed. Our country has had its charter highjacked by the ugliest of thugs, and we are doomed.

[da_chimperor]

8. Don't freak out, it's BS. See my other post.

I seem to be a bit of a bullshit article debunker this evening. :eyes:

[OldLeftieLawyer]

9. Whew

Too close for comfort. Thanks.

What's horrifying, though, is that it's imaginable.

Imagine.

[da_chimperor]

10. My bullshit detector went off pretty strongly

I don't think even the US is obtuse enough to hire such a reviled old man. If they did, it would be via secret consultations that would never see the light of day.

[jmowreader]

11. While there's a 99-percent chance this is bullshit...

no one in America has any practical experience in running a full-blown KGB-style security apparatus of the kind Bush appears to be implementing. Hence, they need someone who won't fuck it up and quick, as in "before January 20."

Markus Wolf is the scum of the earth, but he's available--no one in Germany will touch a Stasi operative, and Wolf was one of the top men in the Stasi. And we have a history of hiring scumbags who are Germans when they meet our needs: Werner von Braun was no angel. (I was going to say "German scumbags," but thought that sounded a bit too FR-ish, as in "all Germans are scumbags." That's not the case.)

If Bush hired Markus Wolf, it wouldn't surprise me in the least. How's that for cynicism?

[Stinky The Clown]

12. Also, he's 81 years old

Not impossible he would able to consult, but not likley to be of much long term value to the junta. I go along with the notion that **if** they were to hire man like this, it would be in secret.

[jmowreader]

13. They don't need long-term value

Given the proper geriatric care and feeding, he could easily live to 85 or 90. All they really need is one good year out of him, just to get the ball rolling.

And hell yes they'd only hire him in secret. If they hired him in broad daylight the Republicans would impeach the boy wonder; Bush hiring the number three guy at the fucking Stasi would test the limits of tolerance.

[reorg]

18. well, actually, not really

Markus Wolf is quite an interesting person. He is an intellectual rather than a policeman or politician. His father Friedrich Wolf was a famous Jewish "worker's physician", campaigning against the anti-abortion legislation in the late twenties and early thirties. When Hitler came to power he naturally had to emigrate and chose to go to Moscow.

Markus' brother was an equally famous (in Eastern Germany at least, and for movie conoisseurs) film director, Konrad Wolf.

His strength is not in totalitarian control, but in intelligence, in the full meaning of the word. Had the East not merged with the West, he was tipped off as one of the leading candidates for president there, having (slyly) distanced himself years earlier from the old men in the party hierarchy and was in favor of the views of Gorbachev.

He has certainly a strong opportunist strain. And he would certainly cherish the thought to be a sought-after consultant by the CIA or some such agency - after having been condemned to prison - idiotically - for spying, for doing the same stuff his Western, less successful colleagues did, whose actions were never challenged in the course of "unification". But there is no way that he will counsel Mr. Bush on the so-called Patriot Act, or on measures to suppress popular revolt. No way. I don't believe this for one minute.

[reorg]

16. mostly BS

As you can see from your other links, Markus Wolf has been chief of the former GDR FOREIGN Intelligence Service, and a quite capable one at that, launching spies directly into the German chancellor's office and into the NATO headquarters. He had nothing at all to do with the Stasi's internal operations. The claim that:

"He turned half the population into informants. That is his specialty, is taking a population, constructing the various state divisions, mechanisms of control, in order to organize informants within the population."

is utter bullshit.

In recent years, he took part in various Anti-Terrorism conferences and - believe it or not - he makes quite reasonable statements. One example here:

http://www.mfs-insider.de/Presse/Spionage1.htm

(my casual translation)

Ex-HVA chief Markus Wolf added considerations on what means would not be suitable to fight international terrorism ("air craft carriers, rockets, bombers are wasted money") and what means were preferable ("Information from intelligence sources, undercover operations and special operations, if necessary"). At the same time he addressed ethical problems, such as those that would result from repealing the 1977 ban on killing undesirable persons by secret services, as discussed in the US (and in Israel normal practice by now). He stated his basic principle as follows: "Secret services must not have a license to kill".
---
Ex-HVA-Chef Markus Wolf schloss aktuelle Überlegungen an, welche Mittel zur Bekämpfung des internationalen Terrorismus untauglich (»Flugzeugträger, Raketen und Bomber sind nur rausgeschmissenes Geld«) und welche eher tauglich seien (»Informationen aus Geheimdienstquellen, verdeckten Operationen und wenn notwendig Spezialeinheiten«). Zugleich sprach er rechtliche und ethische Probleme an, wie sie sich etwa bei der in den USA diskutierten Aufhebung des Verbots von 1977, dass Geheimdienste unliebsame Personen beseitigen dürften (in Israel nunmehr gängige Praxis). Sein Grundsatz sei: »Kein Geheimdienst darf eine Lizenz zum Töten haben.«

edited for (hopefully) better translation

[Rochambeau]

17. Thank you , very interesting! M.Wolf was a master spy and he still knows

what he's talking about.