STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

The American Spy Who Came Out of the Cold—Thrown Out Of Germany—Congrats to the CIA Station Chief Whomever You Are!

Many of you may have heard that the American Station Chief in Berlin was summarily thrown out of Germany because he/she was running human assets right in the middle of the German Ministry of Defense.  In my world,  that is the equivalent of hitting a home run with bases loaded!

Why?

German intelligence has always been a problem for the USA  since WWII.

Contrary to the admirable Angela Merkel’s disingenuous protests that ‘friends don’t spy on friends’,  she knows all too well that had the CIA and other USG intel organizations not spied on Germany qua West and East Germany, she, Angela Merkel,  born in East Germany of an activist Lutheran Minister father,  would have never ended up as the future Prime Minister of a United Germany!

Some background….
Many of you know about Operations Paperclip where US intel Officers in the OSS (precursor to the CIA) brought over prominent Nazi scientists like Werner von Braun to enlighten us on the merits of the V2 rockets when not aimed at London.  The U.S. helped to create a West German Intelligence system based on ex-Nazi,  Abwehr intelligence officers.  Despite our penetration of the formidable German system,  the greatest intelligence obstacles that I and many others in five American administrations had to deal with was East Germany’s Stasi,  operated by the Master Spy—Markus Wolfe.  From the 1950’s through the 1990’s he was the spy of all spies.

Wolfe ran a Romeo Operation through West German intelligence where East German Operatives seduced the female and male secretaries in West German intelligence.  So  anytime we were supposed to debrief the West Germans, we knew that it went to Marcus Wolfe and then straight to Moscow.   Clearly,  you can ascertain my hidden admiration for this Spy Master,  personally chosen by Stalin to oversee approximately over 100, 000 official and non-official spies in East Germany. 

When Bush Sr/Baker brought East and West Germany together [a geopolitical phenomena for which neither man received the deserved credit],  they had to ignore or exclude the thousands of East German citizens that had worked ‘officially‘ or ‘unofficially’ for Stasi.   This exculpation of guilt for collaboration was not new.  The Americans had done the same thing with the countless number of French Collaborators who had worked for and with the Nazis in WWII.  The numbers were so great that there would have been a major discontinuity in the evolution of post WWII democracy in France and Germany.

So Angela Merkel is clearly no ‘ANGEL’ when it comes to intelligence or spying on us or on the Russians,  French and other EU countries.

She has no choice.

Germany is now at a strategic point of ‘breaking out of the EU’ so it must balance it’s relationship with Russia from which it receives most of its gas and the USA which is the de facto military/political guarantor of Germany’s sovereignty.   In the words of my favorite Polish Bolshevik,  Felix Dzerzhinsky,  father of the Cheka,  predecessor of the NKVD, and the infamous KGB:
“Trust is good. But control is better!”

In the world of intelligence and geopolitical strategic interests,  Americans have no friends and no enemies.  What we have are “INTERESTS”.   That means if Germany is courting Russia while at the same time ‘screwing over’ France;  we Americans want to know –What? How? Why? When? Where? and How Much? 

Without answers to these questions,  we Americans can never be certain of where our real allies or interests and counter-forces may lay.  And nothing irritates or exacerbates an intelligence officer or community more than the fact that ‘they don’t know’ or ‘there are no human assets on the ground’.

I have fired plenty of intel officers and transferred more Station Chiefs over my thirty year career in the State Department.   Intelligence is to the policy maker and operational officer what X-rays are to the surgeon before an operation.   The doctor never wants to go into a bloody situation without some inkling of what, why, when or where.  If the patient dies and the operation is a success… in my world of intelligence…. that is still a success.

So congratulations to the weather beaten CIA whom I have mercilessly attacked over the years for a job well done!

A little advice from an old pro:  Next time,  try to get PNG’d out of Germany.  That’s the gold standard for intel excellence!  Labeled as PERSONA NON GRATA!  I have been there so many times that I was shocked when the Syrians and Iranians allowed me to enter their respective countries.  However, Thailand was right on the ball!  I was PNGd there, when I was a mere civilian. 

Memo to ex-CIA Station Chief:  take a break and do what all the other CIA operatives do—write a Book!  Make a movie!  HBO and Netflix are looking for new content!