• Federal Republic of Germany Federal Intelligence Service (BND), 1956
• German Democratic Republic Ministry for State Security (Stasi), 1950

 

The Bundesnachrichtendienst (English: Federal Intelligence Service; BND) is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, directly subordinated to the Chancellor's Office. Its headquarters are in Pullach near Munich, and Berlin (planned to be centralized in Berlin by 2014). The BND has 300 locations in Germany and foreign countries. In 2005, the BND employed around 6,050 people, 10% of them Bundeswehr soldiers; those are officially employed by the "Amt für Militärkunde" (Office for Military Sciences). The annual budget of the BND for 2009 was €460,000,000.

The BND acts as an early warning system to alert the German government to threats to German interests from abroad. It depends heavily on wiretapping and electronic surveillance of international communications. It collects and evaluates information on a variety of areas such as international terrorism, WMD proliferation and illegal transfer of technology, organized crime, weapons and drug trafficking, money laundering, illegal migration and information warfare. As Germany’s only overseas intelligence service, the BND gathers both military and civil intelligence. However, the Kommando Strategische Aufklärung (Strategic Reconnaissance Command) of the German Armed Forces also fulfills this mission, but is not an intelligence service. There is close cooperation between the BND and the Kommando Strategische Aufklärung.

The domestic secret service counterparts of the BND are the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, BfV) and 16 counterparts at the state level Landesämter für Verfassungsschutz (State Offices for the Protection of the Constitution); there is also a separate military intelligence organization, the Militärischer Abschirmdienst (lit. military shielding service, MAD).

The BND is a successor to the Gehlen Organization. The most central figure in its history was Reinhard Gehlen, its first President.

The predecessor of the BND is the German eastern military intelligence agency during World War II, the Abteilung Fremde Heere Ost or FHO Section in the General Staff, led by Wehrmacht Major General Reinhard Gehlen. Its main purpose was to collect information on the Red Army. In 1946 Gehlen set up an intelligence agency informally known as the Gehlen Organization or simply "The Org" and recruited, initially quite modestly, some of his former co-workers, operatives of Wilhelm Canaris' Abwehr, but he also recruited from the former Sicherheitsdienst, SS and Gestapo. The organization worked almost exclusively for the CIA, which contributed funding, equipment, cars, gasoline and other materials. On 1 April 1956 the Bundesnachrichtendienst was created from the Gehlen Organization, and transferred to the West German government. Reinhard Gehlen became President of the BND and remained its head until 1968.

In the first years of oversight of the Pullach operation by the State Secretary in the federal chancellery of Konrad Adenauer, the BND hustled along in the mode of its forerunner, the Gehlen Organization. For the average West German citizen, concerned at the time mainly with improving his existence, espionage was a questionable business, better left for shady characters. In that light, the BND racked up its initial East - West cold war successes by concentrating on East Germany. The BND’s reach encompassed the highest political and military levels of that regime. They knew the carrying capacity of every bridge, the bed count of every hospital, the length of every airfield, the width and level of maintenance of the roads that had to be traversed by Soviet armor and infantry divisions in a potential attack on the West. Almost every sphere of eastern life was known to the BND.

Unsung analysts at Pullach with their contacts in the East, were figuratively flies on the wall in ministries and military conferences. When an East German army intelligence officer, a Lieutenant Colonel and BND agent, was suspected as spy by the Soviet KGB and was investigated and shadowed, the BND was positioned and able to inject forged reports to ascertain that the loose spy was actually the KGB investigator, who was then arrested by the Soviets and shipped off to Moscow. Not knowing how long the caper would stay uncovered, the real spy was told to be ready for recall and he made his move to the west at the appropriate time.

The East German regime, however, fought back. With still unhindered flight to the west a possibility, infiltration started on a grand scale and a reversal of sorts took hold. During the early 1960s as many as 90% of the BND's lower level informants in East Germany were double agents for the East German security service, later known as Stasi. Several informants in East Berlin reported in June and July 1961 of street closures, clearing of fields, accumulation of building materials and police and army deployments in specific parts of the eastern sector, as well as other measures that BND determined could lead to a division of the city. However, the agency was reluctant to report communist initiatives and had no knowledge of the scope and timing because of conflicting inputs. The erection of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 thus came as a surprise, and BND’s performance in the political field was thereafter often wrong and remained spotty and unimpressive.

"This negative view of BND was certainly not justified during ... [1967 and] 1968." BND’s military work "had been outstanding," and in certain sectors of the intelligence field the BND still showed brilliance: in Latin America and the Middle East it was regarded as the best informed secret service.

The BND offered a fair and reliable amount of intelligence on Soviet and Soviet bloc forces in Eastern Europe, regarding the elaboration of a NATO warning system against any Soviet operations against NATO territory, in close cooperation with the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces). It also detected the deployment of Soviet missiles to Cuba in 1962, and subsequently warned the United States, resulting in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

One high point of BND intelligence work was perhaps its early June 1967 forecast – almost to the hour – of the outbreak of the Six - Day War in the Middle East.

According to declassified transcripts of a United States National Security Council meeting on 2 June 1967, Secretary of State Dean Rusk was interrupted by CIA Director Richard Helms that he had reliable information – contrary to Rusk’s presentation – that the Israelis would attack on a certain day and time. Rusk shot back: "That is quite out of the question. Our ambassador in Tel Aviv assured me only yesterday that everything was normal." Helms replied: "I am sorry, but I adhere to my opinion. The Israelis will strike and their object will be to end the war in their favor with extreme rapidity." President Lyndon Johnson then asked Helms for the source of his information. Helms said: "Mr. President, I have it from an allied secret service. The report is absolutely reliable." Helms' information came from the BND.

A further laudable success was BND’s activity during the Czech crisis in 1968. With Pullach cryptography fully functioning, the BND predicted an invasion of Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia. CIA analysts on the other hand did not support the notion of "fraternal assistance" by the satellite states of Moscow; and US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Llewellyn Thompson, quite irritated, called the secret BND report he was given "a German fabrication." At 23:11 on 20 August 1968, BND radar operators first observed abnormal activity over Czech airspace. An agent on the ground in Prague called a BND out-station in Bavaria: "The Russians are coming." Warsaw Pact forces were in motion as forecast.

However, the slowly sinking efficiency of BND in the last years of Reinhard Gehlen became evident. His refusal to correct reports with questionable content strained the organization’s credibility, and dazzling achievements became an infrequent commodity. A veteran agent remarked at the time, that the BND pond then contained some sardines, though a few years earlier the pond had been alive with sharks.

The fact that the BND could score certain successes despite East German communist Stasi interference, internal malpractice, inefficiencies and infighting, was primarily due to select members of the staff who took it upon themselves to step up and overcome then existing maladies. Abdication of responsibility by Reinhard Gehlen was the malignancy; cronyism was still pervasive, even nepotism (at one time Gehlen had 16 members of his extended family on the BND payroll). Only slowly did the younger generation then advance to substitute new ideas for some of the bad habits caused mainly by Gehlen's semi - retired attitude and frequent holiday absences.

After Gehlen’s departure, his successor Bundeswehr Brigadier General Gerhard Wessel immediately called for a program of modernization and streamlining. With political changes in the West German government and a reflection that BND was at a low level of efficiency, the service began to rebuild.

In 1986, the BND deciphered the report of the Libyan Embassy in East Berlin regarding the "successful" implementation of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing.

In 2005, a public scandal erupted (dubbed the Journalistenskandal, Journalists scandal) over revelations that the BND had in the mid 1990s placed under surveillance a number of German journalists, in an attempt to discover the source of information leaks from the BND.

Yet another scandal came to light in early 2006, when it was alleged that the BND supplied targeting information to American forces to facilitate the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The BND claimed that it only supplied information on so-called non - targets, targets which must not be attacked.

Following the 2006 Lebanon War. the BND mediated secret negotiations between Israel and Hezbollah, eventually leading up to the 2008 Israel - Hezbollah prisoner swap.

Another scandal is one where the BND (partially) admitted to using journalists to spy on fellow journalists. This supposedly was done to protect the security and authenticity (i.e., the truth) of the BND's investigations. It was quickly decided to set up a parliamentary investigation committee ("Parlamentarischer Untersuchungsausschuss") to investigate the allegations. The affair quickly became controversial, and if the allegations are substantiated, it would be tantamount to a violation of freedom of speech which is protected under the German constitution.

In the beginning of 2008, it was revealed that the BND had managed to recruit excellent sources within Liechtenstein banks and had been conducting espionage operations in the principality since the beginning of 2000s. The BND mediated the German Finance Ministry's $7.3 million acquisition of a CD from a former employee of the LGT Group - a Liechtenstein bank owned by the country's ruling family. While the Finance Ministry defends the deal, saying it would result in several hundred millions of dollars in back tax payments, the sale remains controversial, as a government agency has paid for possibly stolen data (2008 Liechtenstein tax affair).

In November 2008, three German BND agents were arrested in Kosovo for allegedly throwing a bomb at the European Union International Civilian Office, which oversees Kosovo's governance. Later the previously unheard of "Army of the Republic of Kosovo" (ARK) had accepted responsibility for the bomb attack. Laboratory tests had shown no evidence of the BND agents’ involvement. However, the Germans were released only 10 days after they were arrested. It was suspected that the arrest was a revenge by Kosovo authorities for the BND report about organized crime in Kosovo which accuses Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi, as well as the former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj of far reaching involvement in organized crime.

The MfS was founded on 8 February 1950. It was modelled on the Soviet MGB, and was regarded by the Soviet Union as an extremely loyal and effective partner. Wilhelm Zaisser was the first Minister of State Security of the GDR, and Erich Mielke his deputy. Zaisser, who tried to depose SED General Secretary Walter Ulbricht after the June 1953 uprising was after this removed by Ulbricht and replaced by Ernst Wollweber. Wollweber resigned in 1957 after clashes with Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, and was succeeded by his deputy, Erich Mielke.

Early on the Stasi waged a campaign against Jews, who were already subject to widespread discrimination and violence in the Soviet Union. The Stasi censored the fact that Jews had been victims during the previous regime and in one instance, took gold from the bodies of Jews. The Stasi labeled Jews as capitalists and criminals. Gypsies were also blamed.

Between 1950 and 1989, the Stasi employed a total of 274,000 people in an effort to root out the class enemy. In 1989, the Stasi employed 91,015 persons full time, including 2,000 fully employed unofficial collaborators, 13,073 soldiers and 2,232 officers of GDR army, along with 173,081 unofficial informants inside GDR and 1,553 informants in West Germany. In terms of the identity of inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (IMs) Stasi informants, by 1995, 174,000 had been identified, which approximated 2.5% of East Germany's population between the ages of 18 and 60. 10,000 IMs were under 18 years of age.

While these calculations were from official records, according to the federal commissioner in charge of the Stasi archives in Berlin, because many such records were destroyed, there were likely closer to 500,000 Stasi informers. A former Stasi colonel who served in the counterintelligence directorate estimated that the figure could be as high as 2 million if occasional informants were included.

Full-time officers were posted to all major industrial plants (the extensiveness of any surveillance largely depended on how valuable a product was to the economy) and one tenant in every apartment building was designated as a watchdog reporting to an area representative of the Volkspolizei (Vopo). Spies reported every relative or friend who stayed the night at another's apartment. Tiny holes were drilled in apartment and hotel room walls through which Stasi agents filmed citizens with special video cameras. Schools, universities, and hospitals were extensively infiltrated.

The Stasi had formal categorizations of each type of informant, and had official guidelines on how to extract information from, and control, those who they came into contact with. The roles of informants ranged from those already in some way involved in state security (such as the police and the armed services) to those in the dissident movements (such as in the arts and the Protestant Church). Information gathered about the latter groups was frequently used to divide or discredit members. Informants were made to feel important, given material or social incentives, and were imbued with a sense of adventure, and only around 7.7%, according to official figures, were coerced into cooperating. A significant proportion of those informing were members of the SED; to employ some form of blackmail, however, was not uncommon. A large number of Stasi informants were trolley conductors, janitors, doctors, nurses and teachers; Mielke believed the best informants were those whose jobs entailed frequent contact with the public.

The Stasi's ranks swelled considerably after Eastern Bloc countries signed the 1975 Helsinki accords, which Erich Honecker viewed as a grave threat to his regime because they contained language binding signatories to respect "human and basic rights, including freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and conviction." The number of IMs peaked at around 180,000 in this year, having slowly risen from 20,000 – 30,000 in the early 1950s, and reaching 100,000 for the first time in 1968, in response to Ostpolitik and protests worldwide. The Stasi also acted as a proxy for KGB to conduct activities in other Eastern Bloc countries, such as Poland, where the Soviets were despised.

The MfS infiltrated almost every aspect of GDR life. In the mid 1980s, a network of IMs began growing in both German states; by the time East Germany collapsed in 1989, the MfS employed 91,015 employees and 173,081 informants. About one of every 63 East Germans collaborated with the MfS — one of the most extensive police infiltrations of a society in history. In 2007 an article in BBC stated that "Some calculations have concluded that in East Germany there was one informer to every seven citizens." Additionally, MfS agents infiltrated and undermined West Germany's government and spy agencies.

Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal once stated: "The Stasi was much, much worse than the Nazi Gestapo, if you consider only the oppression of its own people. The Gestapo had 40,000 officials watching a country of 80 million, while the Stasi employed 102,000 to control only 17 million." One might add that the Nazi terror lasted only twelve years, whereas the Stasi had four decades in which to perfect its machinery of oppression, espionage, and international terrorism and subversion.

To ensure that the people would become and remain submissive, East German communist leaders saturated their realm with more spies than had any other totalitarian government in recent history. The Soviet Union's KGB employed about 480,000 full time agents to oversee a nation of 280 million, which means there was one agent per 5,830 citizens. Using Wiesenthal's figures for the Nazi Gestapo, there was one officer for 2,000 people. The ratio for the Stasi was one secret policeman per 166 East Germans. When the regular informers are added, these ratios become much higher: In the Stasi's case, there would have been at least one spy watching every 66 citizens! When one adds in the estimated numbers of part time snoops, the result is nothing short of monstrous: one informer per 6.5 citizens. It would not have been unreasonable to assume that at least one Stasi informer was present in any party of ten or twelve dinner guests.

In an extreme case, Stasi informant Knud Wollenberger (code name Daniel), who was married to civil rights and peace activist Vera Lengsfeld, kept watch on her.

People were imprisoned for such reasons as trying to leave the country, or telling political jokes. Prisoners were kept isolated and disoriented, knowing nothing of what was going on in the outside world.

After the mid 1950s, Stasi executions were carried out in strict secrecy, and were usually accomplished with a guillotine and, in later years, by a single pistol shot to the neck. In most instances, the relatives of the executed were not informed of either the sentence or the execution.

After the Berlin Wall fell, X-ray machines were found in the prisons. Indeed, three of the best known dissidents died within a few months of each other, of similar rare forms of leukaemia. Survivors state that the MfS intentionally irradiated political prisoners with high dose radiation, possibly to provoke cancer in them.

Other files (the Rosenholz Files), which contained the names of East German spies abroad, led American spy agencies to capture them. After German reunification, it was revealed that the MfS had secretly aided left wing terrorists such as the Red Army Faction, even though no part of the RAF had ever been ideologically aligned with the GDR.

Directorate X was responsible for disinformation. Rolf Wagenbreth, director of disinformation operations, stated "Our friends in Moscow call it ‘dezinformatsiya'. Our enemies in America call it ‘active measures,’ and I, dear friends, call it ‘my favorite pastime'".

• Stasi experts helped to build the secret police of Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia.
• Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba was particularly interested in receiving training from Stasi. Stasi instructors worked in Cuba and Cuban communists received training in East Germany. The Stasi chief Markus Wolf described how he set up the Cuban system on the pattern of the East German system.
• The Stasi's experts worked with building secret police systems in the People's Republic of Angola, the People's Republic of Mozambique, and the People's Republic of Yemen (South Yemen).
• Stasi experts helped to set up Idi Amin's secret police.
• Stasi organized, trained, indoctrinated Syrian intelligence services.
• Stasi experts helped Kwame Nkrumah to build his secret police. When Ghanaians overthrew the regime, Stasi Major Jurgen Rogalla was imprisoned.
• The Stasi sent agents to the West as sleeper agents. For instance, sleeper agent Günter Guillaume became a senior aide to social democratic chancellor Willy Brandt, and reported about his politics and private life.
• The Stasi operated at least one brothel. Agents were used against both men and women working in Western governments. "Entrapment" was used against married men and homosexuals.
• Martin Schlaff — According to the German parliament's investigations, the Austrian billionaire's Stasi codename was “Landgraf” and registration number "3886-86". He made money by supplying embargoed goods to East Germany.
• Sokratis Kokkalis — Stasi documents suggest that the Greek businessman was a Stasi agent, whose operations included delivering Western technological secrets and bribing Greek officials to buy outdated East German telecom equipment.
• Red Army Faction (Baader - Meinhof Group) — A terrorist organization which killed dozens of West Germans and others.
• The Stasi ordered a campaign in which cemeteries and other Jewish sites in West Germany were smeared with swastikas and other Nazi symbols. Funds were channeled to a small West German group for it to defend Adolf Eichmann.
• The Stasi channeled large amounts of money to Neo - Nazi groups in West, with the purpose of discrediting the West.
• The Stasi worked in a campaign to create extensive material and propaganda against Israel.
• Murder of Benno Ohnesorg — A Stasi agent carried out the murder, which stirred a whole movement of left wing protest and violence. The Economist describes it as "the gunshot that hoaxed a generation".
• Operation Infektion — The Stasi helped the KGB to spread HIV / AIDS disinformation that the United States had created the disease. Millions of people around the world still believe in these claims.
• Sandoz chemical spill — The KGB reportedly ordered the Stasi to sabotage the chemical factory to distract attention from the Chernobyl disaster six months earlier in Ukraine.
• Investigators have found evidence of a death squad that carried out a number of assassinations (including assassination of Swedish journalist Cats Falck) on orders from the East German government from 1976 to 1987. Attempts to prosecute members failed.
• The Stasi attempted to assassinate Wolfgang Welsch, a famous critic of the regime. Stasi collaborator Peter Haack (Stasi codename "Alfons") befriended Welsch and then fed him hamburgers poisoned with thallium. It took weeks for doctors to find out why Haack had suddenly lost his hair.
• Documents in the Stasi archives state that the KGB ordered Bulgarian agents to assassinate Pope John Paul II, who was known for his criticism of human rights in the communist block, and the Stasi was asked to help with covering up traces.
• A special unit of the Stasi assisted Romanian intelligence in kidnapping Romanian dissident Oliviu Beldeanu from West Germany.
• In 1975 Stasi recorded a conversation between senior West German CDU politicians Helmut Kohl and Kurt Biedenkopf. It was then "leaked" to the Stern magazine as a transcript recorded by American intelligence. The magazine then claimed that Americans were wiretapping West Germans and the public believed the story.

Recruitment of informants became increasingly difficult towards the end of the GDR's existence, and after 1986, there was a negative turnover rate of IMs. This had a significant impact on the Stasi's ability to survey the population, in a period of growing unrest, and knowledge of the MfS's activities became more widespread. The Stasi had been tasked during this period with preventing the country's economic difficulties becoming a political problem, through suppression of the very worst problems the state faced, but it failed to do so.

Stasi officers reportedly had discussed rebranding East Germany as a democratic capitalist country to the West, but which would be in practice taken over by Stasi officers. The plan specified 2,587 OibE officers who would take over power (Offiziere im besonderen Einsatz, “officers on special assignment”) and it was registered as Top Secret Document 0008-6/86 of March 17, 1986. According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, the chief intelligence officer in communist Romania, other communist intelligence services had similar plans. On 12 March 1990 Der Spiegel reported that the Stasi was indeed attempting to implement 0008-6/86. Pacepa has noted that what happened in Russia and how KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin took over Russia resembles these plans.

On 7 November 1989, in response to the rapidly changing political and social situation in the GDR in late 1989, Erich Mielke resigned. On 17 November 1989, the Council of Ministers (Ministerrat der DDR) renamed the MfS as the "Office for National Security" (Amt für Nationale Sicherheit – AfNS), which was headed by Generalleutnant Wolfgang Schwanitz. On 8 December 1989, GDR Prime Minister Hans Modrow directed the dissolution of the AfNS, which was confirmed by a decision of the Ministerrat on 14 December 1989.

As part of this decision, the Ministerrat originally called for the evolution of the AfNS into two separate organizations: a new foreign intelligence service (Nachrichtendienst der DDR) and an "Office for the Protection of the Constitution of the GDR" (Verfassungsschutz der DDR), along the lines of the West German Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, however, the public reaction was extremely negative, and under pressure from the "Round Table" (Runder Tisch), the government dropped the creation of the Verfassungsschutz der DDR and directed the immediate dissolution of the AfNS on 13 January 1990. Certain functions of the AfNS reasonably related to law enforcement were handed over to the GDR Ministry of Internal Affairs. The same ministry also took guardianship of remaining AfNS facilities.

When the parliament of Germany investigated public funds that disappeared after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, it found out that East Germany had transferred large amounts of money to Martin Schlaff through accounts in Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein, in return for goods “under Western embargo”. Moreover, high ranking Stasi officers continued their post DDR careers in management positions in Schlaff’s group of companies. For example, in 1990 Herbert Kohler, Stasi commander in Dresden, transferred 170 million marks to Schlaff for "harddisks" and months later went to work for him. The investigations concluded that “Schlaff’s empire of companies played a crucial role” in the Stasi attempts to secure the financial future of Stasi agents and keep the intelligence network alive. The Stern magazine noted that KGB officer Vladimir Putin worked with his Stasi colleagues in Dresden in 1989.

In the Soviet Union, about 50 billion U.S. dollars were transferred out of the country (FIMACO).

During the Peaceful Revolution of 1989, MfS offices were overrun by enraged citizens, but not before the MfS destroyed a number of documents (approximately 5%).

As the GDR began to fall, the Stasi did as well. They began to destroy the extensive files that they had kept, both by hand and with the use of shredders.

When these activities became known, a protest erupted in front of the Stasi headquarters. In the evening of 15 January 1990, a large crowd of people formed outside the gates in order to stop the destruction of personal files. In their minds, this information should have been available to them and also have been used to punish those who had taken part in Stasi actions. The large group of protesters grew and grew until they were able to overcome the police and gain entry into the complex. The protestors became violent and destructive as they smashed doors and windows, threw furniture, and trampled portraits of Erich Honecker, leader of the GDR. Among the destructive public were officers working for the West German government, as well as former MfS collaborators seeking to destroy documents. One explanation postulated as to why the Stasi did not open fire was for fear of hitting their own colleagues. As the people continued their violence, these undercover men proceeded into the file room and acquired many files that would become of great importance to catching ex-Stasi members.

With the German Reunification on 3 October 1990 a new government agency was founded called the Office of the Federal Commissioner Preserving the Records of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR (BStU). There was a debate about what should happen to the files, whether they should be opened to the people or kept closed.

Those who opposed opening the files cited privacy as a reason. They felt that the information in the files would lead to negative feelings about former Stasi members, and, in turn, cause violence. Pastor Rainer Eppelmann, who became Minister of Defense and Disarmament after March 1990, felt that new political freedoms for former Stasi members would be jeopardized by acts of revenge. Prime Minister Lothar de Maiziere even went so far as to predict murder. They also argued against the use of the files to capture former Stasi members and prosecute them, arguing that not all former members were criminals and should not be punished solely for being a member. There were also some who believed that everyone was guilty of something. Peter Michael Diestel, the Minister of Interior, opined that these files could not be used to determine innocence and guilt, claiming that "there were only two types of individuals who were truly innocent in this system, the newborn and the alcoholic". Other opinions, such as the one of West German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, believed in putting the Stasi behind them and working on German reunification.

Others argued that everyone should have the right to see their own file, and that the files should be opened to investigate former Stasi members and prosecute them, as well as not allow them to hold office. Opening the files would also help clear up some of the rumors that were floating around. Some also believed that politicians involved with the Stasi should be investigated.

The fate of the files was finally decided under the Unification Treaty between the GDR and Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). This treaty took the Volkskammer law further and allowed more access and use of the files. Along with the decision to keep the files in a central location in the East, they also decided who could see and use the files, allowing people to see their own files.

In 1992, following a declassification ruling by the German government, the MfS files were opened, leading people to look for their files. Timothy Garton Ash, an English historian, after reading his file, wrote The File: A Personal History while completing his dissertation research in East Berlin.

Between 1991 and 2011, around 2.75 million individuals, mostly GDR citizens, requested to see their own files. The ruling also gave people the ability to make duplicates of their documents. Another big issue was how the media could use and benefit from the documents. It was decided that the media could obtain files as long as they were depersonalized and not regarding an individual under the age of 18 or a former Stasi member. This ruling not only gave the media access to the files, but also gave schools access.

Even though groups of this sort were active in the community, those who were tracking down ex-members were, as well. Many of these hunters succeeded in catching ex-Stasi; however, charges could not be made for merely being a member. The person in question would have had to participate in an illegal act, not just be a registered Stasi member. Among the high profile individuals who were arrested and tried were Erich Mielke, Third Minister of State Security of the GDR, and Erich Honecker, head of state for the GDR. Mielke was given six years for the murder of two policemen in 1931. Honecker was charged with authorizing the killing of would-be escapees on the East - West frontier and the Berlin Wall. During his trial, he went through cancer treatment. Due to the fact that he was nearing death, Honecker was allowed to spend his final time in Chile. He died in May 1994.

Document shredding is described in Stasiland. Some of it is very easy due to the amount of archives and the failure of shredding machines (in some cases "shredding" meant tearing paper in two by hand and documents could be recovered easily). In 1995, the BStU began reassembling the shredded documents; 13 years later the three dozen archivists commissioned to the projects had only reassembled 327 bags; they are now using computer assisted data recovery to reassemble the remaining 16,000 bags – estimated at 45 million pages. It is estimated that this task may be completed at a cost of 30 million dollars.

The CIA acquired some MfS records during the looting of the MfS archives. The Federal Republic of Germany has asked for their return and received some in April 2000 (Rosenholz files).

The Anti - Stalinist Action Normannenstraße (ASTAK), an association founded by former GDR Citizens' Committees, has transformed the former headquarters of the MfS into a museum. It is divided into three floors:

• Ground floor

The ground floor has been kept as it used to be. The decor is original, with many statues and flags.

• Between the ground and first (upper) floor:
  • Surveillance technology and MfS symbols: Some of the tools that the MfS used to track down their opponents. During an interview the seats were covered with a cotton cloth to collect the perspiration of the victim. The cloth was placed in a glass jar, which was annotated with the victim's name, and archived. Other common ways that the scents would be collected is through breaking into a home and taking parts of garments. The most common garment taken was underpants, because of how close the garment is to the skin. The MfS would then use trained dogs to track down the person using this scent. Other tools shown here include a tie camera, cigarette box camera, and an AK-47 hidden in luggage.
  • Display gallery of Directorate VII. This part of the museum tells the history of the MfS, from the beginning of the GDR to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

• First (upper) floor
  • Mielke's offices. The decor is 1960s furniture. There is a reception room with a TV set in the cafeteria.
  • Office of Colonel Heinz Volpert
  • Lounge for drivers and bodyguards
  • Office of Major General Hans Carlsohn, director of the secretariat
  • Secretariat
  • The Cafeteria
  • Kitchen
  • The Minister’s Workroom
  • The Conference Room with a giant map of Germany on a wall — one of the most impressive rooms.
  • The cloakroom

• Second (upper) floor
  • Repression — Rebellion — Self - Liberation from 1945 to 1989

Ex-MfS officers continue to be politically active via the Gesellschaft zur Rechtlichen und Humanitären Unterstützung e. V. (Society for Legal and Humanitarian Support) (GRH). Former high ranking officers and employees of the MfS, including the last MfS director, Wolfgang Schwanitz, make up the majority of the organization's members, and it receives support from the German Communist Party, among others.

Impetus for the establishment of the GRH was provided by the criminal charges filed against the Stasi in the early 1990s. The GRH, decrying the charges as "victor's justice", called for them to be dropped. Today the group provides an alternative if somewhat utopian voice in the public debate on the GDR legacy. It calls for the closure of the museum in Hohenschönhausen and can be a vocal presence at memorial services and public events. In March 2006 in Berlin, GRH members disrupted a museum event; a political scandal ensued when the Berlin Senator (Minister) of Culture refused to confront them.

Behind the scenes, the GRH also lobbies people and institutions promoting opposing viewpoints. For example, in March 2006, the Berlin Senator for Education received a letter from a GRH member and former Stasi officer attacking the Museum for promoting "falsehoods, anticommunist agitation and psychological terror against minors". Similar letters have also been received by schools organizing field trips to the museum.