Ex-Spymaster Calls Trial Absurd, Says Public Wants Scapegoat

The Cold War’s most notorious spymaster, Markus Wolf, went on trial Tuesday in united Germany, contending that he faces “absurd” charges of treason, bribery and espionage “because the public wants to see a scapegoat.”

Cool and occasionally wry, the former chief of Communist East Germany’s embarrassingly successful espionage network defended his 30-year career of stealing the West’s most precious secrets as an honorable duty to a sovereign state whose laws he did not break.

“Which country am I supposed to have betrayed?” the silver-haired Wolf asked during a 20-minute prepared statement he read before the court.

“I respect the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, whether I like them or not,” he said, “but I did not become a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany until Oct. 3, 1990”--the date of unification.

The five-judge panel dismissed defense motions to suspend the trial until the nation’s highest court rules on the constitutionality of cases such as Wolf’s, which, in effect, hold former East Germans accountable to West German laws.

Most of Tuesday’s session dealt with the motions to dismiss, and with Wolf’s formal statement, which was not open to cross-examination or rebuttal. Asked by the presiding judge whether he would be making any further statement during the trial or providing any details about his past, Wolf answered with a simple “ Nein .”

The 398-page indictment against Wolf recounts some of the boldest exploits of some of the estimated 4,000 agents he is believed to have run, including hundreds of “moles” who penetrated every nook and cranny of West German intelligence. Several of the high-ranking double agents Wolf “turned” in Bonn’s own spy agencies are now behind bars.

Wolf decried what he perceives as a double standard by the federal prosecutor.

“One result of this inequality before the law is that I, as the former head of the intelligence agency of one German state, stand before the court while the former head of exactly the same agency in the other German state is now foreign minister of united Germany,” Wolf said.

Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel is the former chief of the Bonn government’s federal intelligence agency.

When he asked the prosecutor after his arrest why he was being charged, Wolf asserted, he was told “with astounding candor that the public wanted to see a scapegoat.”

The East German Ministry of State Security, or Stasi, which Wolf served as a major general and deputy chief, was reviled by many East Germans because of its brutal secret police and their oppressive network of informants.

None of the charges against Wolf involve murder, but Western intelligence experts allege that he should hold ultimate responsibility for the unexplained death of at least one East German double agent who was caught and died in a Stasi jail.

If convicted, Wolf could face life in prison on the treason charge alone.

Wolf scoffed at his romanticized image as “the man without a face,” a moniker born of Western intelligence agencies’ frustration over not being able to sneak a photograph of Wolf until 1978, when he let down his guard and took his second wife on a shopping trip to Stockholm.

“I’ve always had my face,” Wolf joked. The colorful description belongs “with the other legends--like the one that I only smoke navy-cut Players and wear only English suits,” he said.