ABSTRACT
The history of the HV A is widely untapped, even more so their intelligence priorities and especially the sources they used. The first part of this chapter is an attempt to answer the question: What were the objectives and which assets did various important HV A departments have at their disposal for conducting political espionage? Sources are usually people who gave, consciously or unconsciously, information to the HV A. These sources generally had an alias and were assigned a number, known as their registration number. With the help of this registration number, the source can usually be identified.1 It is located on an index card, of which approximately 300,000 have survived to this day. The index card files, now called ‘Rosenholz’ were obtained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and partially returned to the Stasi file authority in 2000, that is, they returned any cards containing information where German interests were involved.2 These index cards contained home, workplace and occupational information, information we shall use below. It is, therefore, sufficient just to cite the registration number after the respective alias name without further details on the origin of the source in order to locate a document at the Stasi archive in Berlin. The intelligence provided by the sources for the years 1969 to 1989 is now available in a database named SIRA.3 All information included a single eight-digit number, the system input number. Top HV A assets were usually not prominent in civic life. The belief that top assets were reputable politicians or high-profile party officials is a common misconception. In fact, they were usually people who were active at certain pivotal points of institutions that the public barely noted, but that had considerable importance for the gathering of operational intelligence. In order to support this argument, we shall examine the three most important sources of each of the three HV A departments primarily concerned with military policy or politics: HV A I, which dealt with the West German government and its ministries; HV A II, which was responsible for the operational handling of West German political parties; and finally HV A XI, which was entrusted with espionage against American institutions.4 In the following presentation, besides the examination of the operational foci, the main purpose is to determine time periods, the performance of agents and – last but not least – their quality.
