Notes on the Relationship Between the Stasi and Terrorism

There are now no doubts, both in historical research and in the context of the massacre commissions, as well as in the assessments and convictions of the Italian judiciary, that during the Cold War – within the so-called strategy of tension – there was a very close collaboration between American security services, NATO structures, Italian security services (such as Sid and Uaar under the direction of Umberto Federico d’Amato), and far-right organizations – like Avanguardia Nazionale or Ordine Nuovo – for anti-communist purposes and/or authoritarian destabilization. However, the public – certainly not historiography – is less aware of the close collaborations that were established between the security services of the Warsaw Pact – the Stasi of East Germany and the KGB of Soviet Russia – with Middle Eastern terrorism and the far-left terrorism of the Raf.Starting with Middle Eastern terrorism, in the early 60s, the leading figure of Middle Eastern terrorism, Wadie Haddad – leader of the military arm of the Palestinian Liberation Front, initially a friend of Arafat and Habbash – set up in Beirut a real terrorist network that encompassed Western Europe and the Middle East with secret bases in Rome, Paris, Zagreb, Algiers, Baghdad, and Mogadishu. It was from 1970 that this terrorist network was able to implement its ruthless efficiency. Significantly, a coordination center for the actions of the liberation front in Western Europe was established in Paris. After conflicts with Arafat, the headquarters were moved to Baghdad and Yemen under Soviet control, where Haddad created a real training structure for terrorists. Beyond the expected and predictable collaboration with Iraqi and South Yemeni secret services, such as with his most famous student Carlos, declassified archives of the USSR demonstrated the close collaboration between this leader and the KGB through Soviet network chiefs or residents in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. Through these, Haddad kept the KGB informed of the attacks in preparation and at the same time collaborated with Moscow’s security services to monitor the presence of CIA and Mossad agents in the Middle East and, when necessary, eliminate them. In exchange for this collaboration, the KGB provided weapons, logistical support, and information. Historically, we know there was a very close relationship between Haddad and the then director of the KGB – we’re talking about 1974 – Yuri Andropov, who directly informed the Russian president Brezhnev. However, to say that the Russian and German secret services were not themselves victims of the internal feuds of the Middle Eastern terrorist galaxy would be a naive mistake. On the contrary: in fact, Middle Eastern terrorism had as its main sponsors Arab states like Syria, Lebanon, and South Yemen. With this necessary clarification, it must also be emphasized that the Stasi protected the leaders of Black September after the Munich attack of 1972 from Mossad’s retaliation. Indeed, the coordinator of the Munich attack, Abu Daoud, stayed several times in East Germany and built contacts with terrorists Carlos and Johannes Weinrich. Moreover, the same operational head of the Black September organization, Abu Hassan – who would be killed by Mossad in January 1979 in Beirut – was a guest of the East German government. A careful and scrupulous analysis of the archives of communist Germany shows how the collaboration between the security services of East Germany and Russia was anti-imperialist and especially anti-American, but also demonstrates how these two services were fully aware of the objectives of the Middle Eastern and European terrorist groups, knew their organizational charts, and how they were used or infiltrated to achieve their own objectives in a strategic choice mirroring that made by Western secret services with far-right groups for anti-communist purposes.Now, let’s talk about collaboration with European far-left terrorism. The Stasi was not only aware of the formation of the Raf from 1970, but the Baader Meinhof was the first to create conditions for close collaboration with the East German secret service. Indeed, the Stasi was interested in facilitating the creation of a clandestine organization that practiced armed struggle against West Germany. In short, the Stasi adopted towards the West German fighting organizations a combination of complicit indulgence, logistical support, and information exchange. Equally interesting are the methods of action of the East security service to favor the terrorist organization: the East German secret service contributed to misleading Western investigators, to warn militants in the imminence of a police operation, etc.Not only that: the Stasi massively infiltrated the youth revolt movement in West Germany because the aim of the East German regime was to covertly destabilize the Western political system. Even in East Germany – as in the West – the secret services of communist Germany often looked at terrorist organizations as friendly organizations, but also as irregular forces to be involved in a secret war against West Germany, to be collaborated with the paramilitary clandestine forces that had been created by the joint military commands of the Warsaw Pact for a potential clash with NATO. But even more interesting is what emerged from the archives: the system of weapon caches buried in forests used by the Raf was identical to that of the caches prepared by the Stasi for the Stay Behind of the Warsaw Pact. It is hard not to think of the Nasco caches of the Western Gladio.Even in the case of the June 2nd Movement, the main leaders of this organization, namely Till Meyer and Inge Viett, were confidants of the Stasi. When the June 2nd Movement merged with the Raf, Inge Viett was in very close contact with the head of the Stasi’s division XXII, Harry Dahl. Generally speaking – according to the detailed studies of Falanga – we can assert that when international terrorism was not countered, it was infiltrated and pragmatically used to counter American imperialism, its allies in the Middle East, and in Europe.What we have stated can also be easily applied to Western security services that, for similar reasons, made use of terrorism – for example, far-right terrorism, as extensively documented by judiciary investigations and historians – for political purposes. Another certain fact is that security services, both Western and Eastern, had a broad and in-depth knowledge of the organizational charts and purposes of all major terrorist groups. We must not forget that terrorism was a very important factor on the Cold War chessboard, which was largely an actual secret war of the services. The use of terrorism by secret services had no scruples, neither moral nor ideological.Returning to the Stasi, as proof of how efficient and deep its penetration in Italy was, the archives reveal that the Stasi knew that the mafia organizations had their contacts within law enforcement and the judiciary; moreover, the Stasi in a report noted the massive infiltration of the carabinieri and other units by the Italian secret services and the CIA.