East German Foreign Intelligence: Myth, Reality and Controversy Studies in Intelligence

Thisedited book examines the East German foreign intelligence service (Hauptverwaltung Aufklrung, or HVA)as a historical problem, covering politics, scientific-technical and military intelligence and counterintelligence. The contributors broaden the conventional view of East German foreign intelligenceasdriven bythe inter-German conflict to includeits targeting of the United States,northern European and Scandinavian countries, highlighting areas that have previously received scant attention, like scientific-technical and military intelligence.The CIA's underestimation of the HVA was a major intelligence failure.

As a result, East German intelligence served as a stealth weapon against the US, West German and NATO targets, acquiring the lion's share of critical WarsawPact intelligence gathered during the Cold War. This book explores how though all of the CIA's East German sources were double agents controlled by the Ministryof State Security, the CIA was still able to declare victory in the Cold War.

Themes and topics that run through the volume include the espionage wars; theHVA's relationshipwith theRussian KGB;successes and failures of theBND (West German Federal Intelligence Service) in East Germany; the CIA and the HVA; the HVA in countries outside of West Germany; disinformation and the role and importance of intelligence gathering in East Germany.

This book will be of much interest to students of East Germany, Intelligence Studies, Cold War History and German politics in general. Kristie Macrakis is Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. Thomas Wegener Friis is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern Denmark's Centre for Cold War Studies. Helmut Mller-Enbergs is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Southern Denmark and holds a tenured senior staff position at the German Federal Commission for the STASI Archives in Berlin.