Kohl Seeks to Bar Use of Stasi Files in Probe Into Campaign Funding

Evidence has surfaced that could answer the most burning political question in Germany today: Who slipped at least $1 million to former Chancellor Helmut Kohl and what did they expect in return for their secret contributions?

The problem with the evidence is that it comes from a source more dubious than the undeclared campaign donations: clandestinely wiretapped conversations gathered by the former East German intelligence service, the notorious Ministry for State Security known as the Stasi.

Excerpts from Stasi eavesdropping have been published by German media. They were obtained through laws that allow some public access to evidence of secret police activities but that also are supposed to protect the privacy of citizens who were Stasi targets.

The government official administering Stasi records, Joachim Gauck, has apologized for the oversight that allowed publication last week of transcripts detailing illegally intercepted mobile telephone conversations between two former officials of Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union.

But now that word is out about the routine Stasi taping of West German leaders, curiosity threatens to outweigh commitment to the privacy of Kohl and others.

The tantalizing snippets published by Berlin’s daily Der Tagesspiegel have also spurred reports by Interior Ministry officials that Kohl’s government ordered Stasi records of political snooping destroyed shortly after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

Kohl and several other Christian Democrats implicated in the scandal are the subjects of parliamentary and criminal investigations. They could face jail terms if they continue to thwart efforts to identify the secret donors and their agendas. Kohl has refused to name the sources, claiming he gave his word of honor to keep his benefactors anonymous.

The former chancellor appealed to the Federal Constitutional Court this week to block release of further transcripts from wiretapped talks. The court has yet to indicate when or how it will rule.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democratic Party and governing partners from the environmentalist Greens are mostly opposed to treating Stasi records as reliable evidence. But some influential Greens and members of the reformed East German Communist party, now named the Party of Democratic Socialism, argue that Stasi evidence has been used to convict former East German leaders and should be given equal credibility when implicating those from the west.

“We can’t accept that documents be sealed if they relate to politicians from the old Federal Republic [West Germany] when these same people exposed them to tie the hands of politicians from the new [eastern] federal states,” Greens parliamentary leader Rezzo Schlauch insists.

The Social Democratic governor of Saxony-Anhalt state in the east, Reinhard Hoeppner, agrees. “It would be disastrous for democracy in eastern Germany if there were exceptions made for Helmut Kohl and other prominent West German politicians,” he told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung newspaper.

Those leading the parliamentary probe have decided against entering the tapes as evidence that Kohl directed his party’s shady financial dealings during his 25 years as Christian Democratic leader. But federal Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin has observed that, because the excerpts are public knowledge, they are legitimate grounds for questioning witnesses summoned by investigators.

The criminal investigation is still in a fact-finding stage.

Recording conversations without the consent of participants is illegal in Germany, but information gleaned from such tapes can be entered as evidence in some cases.

Figures across the political spectrum are raising alarms concerning the precedent such a high-profile use of Stasi intelligence would set.

“The desire to raid this pantry is huge because it contains so many tasty morsels, but I can only advise against it,” says Helmut Baeumler, head of the privacy protection office in the western state of Schleswig-Holstein.

“This is not about Helmut Kohl,” the influential Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warned in an editorial. “The real issue is: Do we want to demean ourselves by fencing stolen words with those thieves of freedom?”

East Germany’s former spymaster, Markus Wolf, weighed in this week, confirming that his agents had amassed information on Kohl and other West German officials.

He told Der Tagesspiegel that the Stasi had gathered enough intelligence related to the financing scandal “to put a quick end to the investigative proceedings.”