Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

The first attempt to discredit Brandt after his election as Berlin Bürgermeister in 1957 was a lengthy operation carried out jointly by the KGB and HVA in 1958-9 to use tendentious versions of his wartime record and other fabrications to show him as an agent of British and American intelligence. But, as the file on the operation acknowledges, “This did not produce the desired result, and Brandt’s position as a politician was not undermined.” 27Wolf next proposed reviving the old slander that Brandt had been a Gestapo agent during his Norwegian exile, but the East German leadership ordered the plan to be aborted due to lack of credible evidence. 28

In the 1961 West German elections Brandt stood as the SDP candidate for the chancellorship. The campaign was the dirtiest in the history of the FRG. Brandt was assailed by what he denounced as “a right-wing barrage of mud.” The fact that he had spent the Nazi years in exile led to accusations that he was unpatriotic, while his background as a left-wing socialist gave rise to insinuations that he was a crypto-Communist. Brandt was deeply depressed by the “political pornography” used to discredit him. “My opponents,” he later admitted, “were sometimes successful to the extent that they kept me from my work for days on end.” Sensing his vulnerability, the Stasi gave secret but, in Brandt’s view, “vigorous encouragement” to some of the charges fabricated against him. 29

Though the SDP succeeded in cutting the Christian Democrat majority (thanks largely to the building of the Berlin Wall during the campaign), the Centre decided to threaten Brandt with far more damaging evidence than had surfaced during the elections. On November 16, 1962 Semichastny, the KGB chairman, formally approved a blackmail operation proposed by Sakharovsky, the head of the FCD. Though there is no mention of it in the file seen by Mitrokhin, the operation was also, almost certainly, approved by Khrushchev, still smarting from the humiliating outcome of the Cuban missile crisis in the previous month. 30The operational plan was for Brandt to be approached by the Izvestia correspondent, Polyanov, to whom he had given an interview earlier in the year. On this occasion, Polyanov would be accompanied by an undercover KGB operations officer who would tell Brandt, “We would like to resume our confidential relations with you in order to develop together sensible solutions to the West Berlin question.” If Brandt refused, he was to be told, “We have sufficient means to cause you unpleasantness, and therefore assume that you will reconsider your position.” The threat was in fact largely bluff. Sakharovsky had been annoyed to discover that the original documents in Brandt’s wartime operational file had been destroyed in 1959 (an inconceivable action had he actually been an agent), among them such apparently compromising items as his receipt for 500 kroner for the Stockholm residency. Brandt, however, would be unaware of this. The operational plan approved by Semichastny confidently asserts that Brandt must believe that “there are materials in our possession which could compromise him.” 31

Mitrokhin did not see the report on the meeting with Brandt. 32It is clear, however, that—if it went ahead—Brandt brushed the attempted KGB blackmail aside. Semichastny and Sakharovsky had almost certainly intended, with Khrushchev’s approval, to soften up Brandt before a meeting with the Soviet leader. In January 1963, while on a visit to East Berlin, Khrushchev duly invited Brandt to a meeting. Already convinced of the need to reach a modus vivendi between the FRG and GDR as well as to settle the Berlin question, Brandt was willing to accept. Opposition to the proposed meeting from the Christian Democrats in the ruling West Berlin coalition, however, persuaded him to refuse. According to Brandt:

Khrushchev must have taken my refusal as an affront. Ambassador [Pyotr Andreyevich] Abrasimov later gave me a vivid description of the total dismay that overcame his erstwhile master when the news was communicated to him. Khrushchev, caught in the act of changing, almost dropped his trousers with surprise… 33

Brandt’s four and a half years as West Germany’s first SDP chancellor, from October 21, 1969 to May 6, 1974, marked the high water mark of the HVA and KGB intelligence offensive in the FRG. Wolf’s greatest success was the penetration of the Chancellor’s office by Günter Guillaume (codenamed HANSEN). In 1956 Guillaume and his wife Christel, both HVA officers, had staged a carefully orchestrated “escape” from East Germany, set up small businesses in Frankfurt to act as cover for their intelligence work and become active, apparently staunchly anti-Communist, members of the SDP. By 1968 Guillaume had become chairman of the Frankfurt SDP and an elected member of the Frankfurt city council, thus becoming the only HVA officer (as opposed to agent) ever to hold public office in the FRG. In November 1969, three weeks after Brandt became chancellor, Guillaume gained a job in his office, initially as an assistant dealing with trade unions and political organizations. Hardworking and efficient, with a jovial down-to-earth manner, he was promoted in 1972 to become the Chancellor’s aide for relations with the SDP, as well as being put in charge of Brandt’s travel arrangements. His reports were so highly rated in the Centre that they were personally forwarded by Andropov to foreign minister Gromyko. 34

The key intelligence requirement placed on Guillaume concerned Brandt’s Ostpolitik, which he defined as having “a threefold aim: improved relations with the Soviet Union, normal relations with the east European states, and a modus vivendi between the two parts of Germany.” In his “Report on the State of the Nation” to the Bundestag at the beginning of 1970, Brandt called for “cooperative togetherness” between the FRG and GDR. In the course of the year he became the first chancellor to visit East Germany, and signed treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland. 35“Through Guillaume’s judgments,” writes Wolf in his memoirs, “we were able to conclude sooner rather than later that Brandt’s new Ostpolitik, while still riven with contradictions, marked a genuine change of course in West German foreign policy.” 36Moscow reached the same conclusion. After Brandt’s visit to East Germany, however, Karlshorst reported “a noticeable rise in his popularity,” 37which caused some concern to the GDR leadership. During his visit, as the crowds chanted, “Willy, Willy!,” Brandt mischievously asked the East German prime minister, Willi Stoph, whether the name being chanted was spelled with a “y” or an “i.” Stoph remained stony-faced. 38

With the Christian Democrats in open opposition to Brandt’s Ostpolitik, the Centre was now concerned not to compromise Brandt but to keep him in power. By the spring of 1972 a series of defections from the SDP and its Free Democrat allies had reduced Brandt’s majority to four. With more defections in the offing, the fate of Ostpolitik hung in the balance. In April 1972, confident of success, the CDU (Christian Democrat) leader, Rainer Barzel, tabled a motion of no confidence. 39With the blessing of the Centre, Wolf made a possibly critical secret intervention in the Bundestag with the aim of keeping Brandt in power.

Shortly before the crucial vote of confidence, the HVA had recruited a corrupt CDU deputy, Julius Steiner, as an agent with the codename SIMSON. 40Wolf paid Steiner 50,000 marks to vote for Brandt. 41Barzel’s no confidence motion failed by two votes. At a general election in November, Brandt won a more secure parliamentary majority, with the SDP for the first time beating the Christian Democrats in the popular vote. 42The HVA continued to run SIMSON as an agent in the new Bundestag. In February 1973 Steiner agreed to a contract with the HVA (euphemistically described as the “Structural Working Group of the GDR Council of Ministers”), under which he was paid a retainer of 3,000 marks a month. Soon afterward (the date is not recorded by Mitrokhin), Wolf reported to the Centre that Steiner was in contact with the BfV, the West German counter-intelligence agency, and thus useless as an agent. 43In June the Munich weekly Quick published a photograph of a bank deposit slip showing that 50,000 marks had been paid into Steiner’s account the day after the April 1972 vote of confidence, thus provoking a public scandal which was quickly dubbed “Bonn’s Watergate” or “Rhinegate.” Steiner acknowledged being recruited as an HVA agent but claimed that he had worked as a double agent with the approval of the BfV, and said that the 50,000 marks had come from the SDP chief whip, Karl Wienand 44—a charge denied by Wienand (who, it later transpired, was also an HVA agent). 45A parliamentary inquiry decided that there was no conclusive evidence of bribery. 46