ENIGMA 2000 Newsletter - Issue 36

September 2006
Articles, newsreports and Items of interest :enigma2000-owner@yahoogroups.com

ENIGMA 2000 Article - If it had not been for 15 minutes (5/6)

We continue with Thomas Wagner’s most interesting true story, with his full permission. Thanks Thomas,

If it had not been for 15 minutes (5/6)

Wednesday, January 17th 1979

Markus Wolfe is lecturing in the officers mess in front of an audience of elite party members of the the MfS. Schroeders report later describes that Stiller was seen taking copious notes. Stiller was the party representative for his section, a post given only to most ideologically trusted indivduals. You had to be a 1000% communist in order to represent your section or division.

Thursday, January 18th 1979

At 5PM Stiller makes a phone call from the Stasi safehouse to his wife. She had been threatening divorce again. He asked if she would reconsider. She doesn't. "Thats it then" Stiller says as he hangs up the phone in an uncharacteristically short manner. The plan, according to the BND was for Stiller to get on a train that crosses the border with West Germany and simply leave the country as a tourist. BND courier Dietrich Nestroj had left a new set of papers at the dead letter drop. To illustrate how thoroughly infiltrated the BND had been at this point in time, after the fall of East-Germany several files were discovered that showed the Stasi knew something was being planned - and knew exactly where. According to file G/318/1/79 eastern double-agents reported that the BND had rented several rooms at the Hotel "Koerner" and in the motel "Atlas" in Hannover. According to the report, between 2PM and 3 PM that afternoon several members of the BND's central office in Pullach are seen arriving these locations under the protection and cover of local members of the BND.

Officially Stiller is supposed to be on a business trip to Halle. After 6PM he makes his way into the HvA offices and up to his section on the fifth floor. He has a large briefcase with him. The keys to the office of his boss are unprotected in a metal case along the wall. Stillers goal is to leave with as much "stuff" as possible. The material he wants to get is located in a reinforced steel filing cabinet of his boss Guenther Jauck. Stiller had tools inhis briefcase.

He attempts to open the reinforced file cabinet He takes a hammer and steel chisel and attempts to break into the steel cabinet with mighty blows. Just picture this. Here is a defector in the middle of the offices of the equivalent of the CIA making a huge racket by attempting to break into a steel cabinet. Can you believe it?

Stiller's plan was to bring not only the names of his own agents whom he was recruiting and running in the West, but the names of all the western agents working for the five sections of this division. He continues to deliver blow after blow, but the cabinet doesn't budge. (The crime scene report of the Stasi noted on the next day that a 3 centimeter section of the upper left door had been bent). Stiller gives up. The cabinet is impenetrable.

As he turns to leave his eyes fall on the steel cabinet in the secretaries office. A quick push and turn moves this much less reinforced piece on an angle and a shake causes the lock-pins to drop out of place. He opens the cabinet. The following items were quickly transferred into the briefcase (According to the Stasi crime scene report).

A summary list of all the material that had been obtained by this division between 1975 and 1978
several files and microfilms about contact persons in the West
top secret orders and their current progress status
educational material as well as the text of a secret address made by Erich Mielke
the names of all employees in his department as well as photo's of many
7,180 West German Mark

The keys were located in a small unsecured metal box Stillers most important discovery was a set of blank forms used to give agents the permission to cross into West Berlin via the "baggage channel" at the Friedrichstrasse trainstation. He decides right then and there to change the enire defection plan and to take his fate into his own hands.

Just for background information, West Berlin has a public transportation system, similar to the BART in San Franscisco (only older), which crosses into East Berlin in several places. Its trains run in sub-terrenean tunnels or across the surface much like the BART.

Stiller completes the empty forms back at the Stasi safehouse. Its a routine he has done many times already. Next her jumps into his Wartburg and drives to the trainstation at Friedrichstrasse. He knows the way. His destination is a very nondescript looking door at the south side of the The keys were located in a small unsecured metal box train station. It has a sign that reads "Service Entrance - Only Employees of the German Train Service allowed". Of course the sign is merely a camouflage that hides a channel point for agents being sent into the West.

The keys were located in a small unsecured metal box Behind the door is a baren foyer, at the wall immediatly to his right was another door - this one without any handles - to the right of the door a small window with drawn curtains and further to the right a doorbell. Stiller pressed the bell briefly.

Behind the curtain the border patrol officer of the day, Colonel Manfred Bruekner rose to his feet and opened the window to be faced with a Stasi ID card, held by Stiller. Bruekner pressed the automatic door lock, a brief buzzing sound and Stiller pushed the handleless door open.

Bruekner examines the man in front of him. He has two bags. Bruekner checks the mans papers which consist of typical Stasi forms used to allow an agent to enter the West. Bruekner eyes glide across the form and stop at the box titled "Purpose". It reads "operational reasons" - but according to orders from the MfS, the proper wording should include the note "Baggage Channel".

This form clearly didn't. Stiller didn't loose his cool "It might take until next year for our retarded secretary to get it" he reasoned. Bruekner evaluated the situation. Should he call the officer of the day at the MfS? Would it be a problem to call for such a small discrepancy? Should he really keep a soldier of the invisible war from his important mission? Certainly that would be an invitation for trouble. (Many years later a former colleague of Bruekner explains that the agents of the MfS where practically demi-gods to the border patrol. They could not do anything wrong and their word was practically law).

Bruekner pushes another buzzer and a steel door at the end of the office opens with a metallic click. Stiller steps through the door and enters into a remnant of the twilight zone of cold war - with a single step he was in a labyrinth of halls, stairs and doors that even though located practically smack dab in the middle of East Berlin was indeed Western territory and freely accessible to western train passengers. In short it was an ideal place to make an agent of the East dissappear while crossing into the West.

It is 8:41 PM when Stiller stepped onto the train platform of the No 6 Train, which traversed between the West Berlin city sections of "Kreuzberg" and "Wedding" - with an intermediate stop right underneath the East Berlin city section "Mitte".

The platform is empty. Above Stiller, built into the ceiling, the Stasi surveillance cameras are recording all of his moves.

"These were the longest minutes of my life, it was almost as though I stood beside myself and watched myself act" Stiller recalled at a later date. Funny, I used almost exactly the same choice of words in describing a moment in our defection a few days later. The train arrives, and with a couple of steps Stiller enters the closest compartment. "Watch your step" a voice rings out over the trains PA system as the doors close.

What happened next during this eventful night was never officially released by the West Germans, except the Stasi did find out in detail what transpired via a Western agent who defected to East Berlin in 1982. He described in minute detail the absolute chaos that ensued when Stiller took matters into his own hands. Nobody in West Berlin had any incling what was going on, nobody knew about the defection that Pullach Central had been working on. The official Stasi version of what was told did not include one small detail. As Stiller was riding along on the subway the train West Berlin Airport Tegel slowed down considerably. "They have to know by now " Stiller reasoned with himself, his fear returning full force. And in order not to get caught he jumped off the train as it puttered along ever so slowly. In retrospect, nobody at the Stasi knew that anything was amiss - not for several hours anyway.

Stiller jumped of the train in close proximity to the West Berlin airport "Tegel". He makes his way into the airport and enters the office of the airport police shortly after 9 PM. Upon closing the door he proceeded to astonish the "desk seargent" and assorted airport police on duty by reaching into his coat and producing a gun. He explained to the thunderstruck officers that he is defecting. Everybody was completely frozen. It took several seconds for reality to return to the small office in Tegel. While the airport police was completely out of their league and had no idea what to do next, they did manage to contact representatives of the CIA and the French intelligence services. As you may recall Berlin was divided among the victorious nations after WW2 and the allieds still maintained a considerable presence in West Berlin in 1979.

By now the small office of the airport police contained no less than 10 CIA and French intelligence agents. Stiller astonished the group even further by producing a small case of beer and two bottles of vodka from one of his traveling bags. Everyone is googeling from afar, trying to get their hands on the material that Stiller brought across. He did not let anyone outside of the BND touch it. "Even the file with microfilms and micro-fiches was at least 2 centimeter thick" recalled an eyewitness to the event. Stiller atempts to reach a contact in Coburg via telephone, but the line continues to be busy for what seemed like hours. Finally he gets to speak to someone at the BND. After appropriate congratulations he is told that our defection is not going very Heribert Hellenbroich well.

With all the excitement the night passes by fast and the BND moved Stiller to Munich very early the next morning . Later that same day he is taken to Cologne where he met with Heribert Hellenbroich who at that point in time was in charge of the "Verfassungsschutz" department, which roughly translates to "protection of the constitution". I suppose the closes similar organization in the States might be the Dept. of Treasury or perhaps FBI. Hellenbroich went on to become the director of the BND in 1985.

"There he stood before me" recalled Hellenbroich " still dressed in classic East-German "communist" clothing. My very first decision about Stiller was to send him to a men's clothing shop to pick up something decent to wear." The longer Hellenbroich reminisces the more animated he becomes. " It was absolutely fantastic working with Stiller on that day. We had the BND, BKA and the Verfassungsschutz all meeting together with him in one room without any trace of the usual rivalries between departments. The thing that I noticed most about him was that even though he had just undergone an extreme level of stress, Stiller was still cool and collected. He was extremely bright with a memory that wouldn't quit. "

In an effort to misdirect any search efforts by the Stasi, the BND feeds a disinformation story to the West German TV stations. That night several news organizations reported that we had all made it across into the West. Even though mom and I were still stuck in Warsaw with no place to turn West German Newscast announcing the defection to, waiting for the next step.

Meanwhile in Warsaw time was running out for us. Several days passed without so much as a peep from West Germany. Not speaking any Polish didn't help matters very much at this point. With a lot of time on our hands, we reasoned that the STASI found our empty apartment after a couple of days and begun a search for us across the entire country. In addition, perhaps wrongly, we were afraid that at some point the STASI would find a way to look elsewhere, like Poland and Checkoslovakia. The days trickled by very slowly while we spent our time in the hotel room waiting for a Chiemsee in Bavaria (West Germany) phone call that didn't come.

Finally, two days after our departure deadline, the phone rings. Its my uncle. "There has been a change in plans. Please proceed to Dabrowiecka Street 30 ".

We are dumbfounded but not knowing the details of the situation we had to trust the information given by Herbert. We check out of the hotel and hail a taxi, that proceeds to take us across downtown to Dabrowiecka Street.

As the taxi slowed down in its approach to our destination I turned in the direction of the driver - just in time - because standing in front of a brown rough stone gate were several Polish soldiers. I practically yelled at the driver not to stop and to keep on going. We pulled around the corner. Mother and I were schook up. Where in the world were these people sending us? After a couple of minutes we decided that we should trust the message and asked the driver to go back. Again we came up on the soldiers and as we turned right into the driveway of the stone gate, much to my amazement the soldiers ignored us. The taxi made its way up a short driveway and stopped. We collected our baggage and approached a dark ornate door. Next to it was a sign with the West German flag hung. What sort of place was this?

We knocked. No answer. Mom rang a doorbell. No answer. She rang it again. This time the door opened via a buzzer. On the the inside the building was all business. A dark stairway arched upwards on the right. Immediatly in front of us was a reception desk manned by a man in a business suite. "How may we help you? " he asked as we approached. "My name is Helga and this is Michael" mom answered. The man looks distinctly puzzled. "Ummm ..Yes?" he hesitantly answers with a blank look on his face. "We were supposed to come here" my mother explained. The man's face contorts into an even deeper lack of understanding. I'm looking at him thinking gosh this is really embarrasing. In a minute we'll get kicked out. Mom looks at the man very intently and in a conspiratorial tone she says " Mother and Son? " . That was the ticket ! All of a sudden the man's face lit up "Oh yes yes ! Mother and Son ! They didn't tell us your names! Yes now I understand! Please come with me". he practically jumped around his desk and led us up the stairway. We were asked to wait in a small conference room. More men appeared and explained that because of the unforeseen circumstances the best they could do for us was a couple of field cots in a small closet like room. We needed to be very quiet in the daytime because the native Polish janitorial staff was sure to be Polish Intelligence. In later years mom recalls "They really were some unhappy diplomats. It was a total surprise for them and they had to hide us in this small room with fieldcots. We couldn't even turn on the lights...."

Time passed and our deadline had come and gone. Add to that the need to hide in the embassy, and our risk increased day by day. Yes, while we were on West German ground in the embassy we were safe, but we needed to leave the building st some point. Who knows what would be waiting for us.

While we were stuck in the embassy, a seperate drama began to unfold and culminate in our messed up schedule.

Part 6 next time…………………………….

My name in the hotel registry