(FiveNation.com)- These are the words of the double agent “M,” who spent 22 years working against the East German Stasi for the Dutch intelligence agency and the CIA. Early in 1985, it seemed as though the Stasi had discovered his deceit and his actual allegiance to the west. The men had forcefully awakened M at approximately 4 am when he was in East Berlin. He was transferred from the safe home where he lived for debriefing meetings with his Stasi handlers to a vehicle with blacked windows that took him, under armed escort, to a jail. He was still wearing his pajamas.
They informed him that he was being held in the notorious Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Untersuchungshaftanstalt (pre-trial detention facility), which the Ministry of State Security ran during the Cold War (Stasi). Before being escorted into an interrogation room while still nude, M was made to endure a humiliating and excruciating cavity inspection.
Until the late afternoon, his kidnappers scared him by dousing him with cold water from a bucket. They taunted him, calling him a CIA spy and shouting, “You betrayed Marxism-Leninism.” However, M claimed these charges were vague and intended to incite him. He felt oddly reassured because he felt they had no evidence against him.
We conducted in-depth interviews with M between 2019 and 2021 on his work as a spy during the cold war. He spoke to us about his experience as a double agent and how his employers ultimately forsook him. His testimony was verified and cross-referenced, and we published our findings in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. We have attempted to draw attention to those points that are impossible to verify since it is challenging to know the whole truth about the hidden realm of espionage.
It’s critical to emphasize how uncommon a former secret service member is to share their experiences publicly. M provided us with a scarce look inside the covert operations of three separate intelligence services. He talked about topics that he hadn’t even discussed with his wife.
The second part of the 1960s saw the beginning of M’s espionage career when he was hired by the Dutch security service, the BVD (Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst), which was the forerunner of the current AIVD (Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst). He was employed by a Dutch multinational company that we have decided not to identify. His profession, which required a lot of travel abroad, would provide an ideal cover for his covert activity.
M spent many years working for the Dutch agency before moving on to the CIA. When the Americans learned that he had also been recruited by the famed Hauptverwaltung (Chief Administration) A, better known by its abbreviation HVA, the Stasi’s foreign intelligence division, they were eager to utilize him.
The HVA regarded M as their agent for more than 20 years, from the late 1960s until the end of the Cold War, during which he provided intelligence to the East Germans, much of it obtained through the multinational he worked for. But throughout this period, his primary allegiances were to the CIA and the Dutch service. M, as seen by the East Germans, was, in fact, a traitor.
