The Godfather

Now this is a man worth blogging about if ever I saw one. Below is an article on the deceased Markus Wolf, cool name. The former Stasi cheif who ran one of the largest spy networks to ever grace the planet. I should add that before his death there was an article that came out saying that he was employed or asked to work for the United States Government. http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2004/061204wolfhired.htm

The following two articles should shed a lot of light on the mentality behind this former icon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6132684.stm

(He completely looks like one of those CEO's you see on the magazine covers of Forbes or other such mags.)

What I find really interesting is on of his motivations for starting up the Stasi.[quote]The experience was to have a lasting effect on him. In a BBC interview last year he revealed that a dislike of fascism became one of the driving forces in his life, convincing him he had to protect his country from any repetition of the Nazi regime.
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[quote]He took great care of his staff, winning their steadfast loyalty. But he also used his warmth to exploit and manipulate others.[/quote]

He seriously could have made a good CEO. There is an article about this kind of person, and how they move up the corporate ladder. I can see why the US government wanted to hire him, he is just the type they look for.

[quote]But Wolf also recruited West Germans - his agents often seducing them with sex or money.
He boasted in his memoirs that if he went down in espionage history, it should be for perfecting the use of sex in spying.[/quote]

Just like how the snitches who spy on us are recruited. Sex money, bribes, blackmail, they are told they are doing something good. :eyeroll:

http://web.mac.com/guywalters/Site/Journalism/Entries/2006/11/10_Superspy.html
[quote]Markus Wolf, who died on Thursday, was a legendary Communist spy chief who masterminded some of the most brilliant and diabolical feats of espionage for well over three decades.[/quote]

A man who liked his job and performed it well.

[quote]Born in Germany in 1923, Wolf 's father was an eminent physician and writer who was not only an ardent Communist, but also had Jewish ancestry.
After Hitler came to power in 1933, the Wolf family emigrated to Moscow to escape persecution, and soon the young Markus was studying at an aeronautical college.[/quote]

It's funny, his family fled persecution, and he so desperately wanted to prevent this stuff from happening again that he created the Stasi. I would say it's ironic, and it is, but how many others in history have done the same thing? The more I think about it, I start to see that even if this cold tyrannical empire were defeated tomorrow, another would just rise up and take it's place. Humans are all too willing to lay themselves down and present their neck to be trampled on by others. Just some observances that I have seen throughout history. Still there are those who are happy to not be ruled over, and who do not want regimes of any kind. Those truly have my sympathy, because they are often the ones who are brutalised the most by these dictatorships.

[quote]Although the job was a cover, Wolf reported on the Nuremberg trials.
There, he set eyes on some of the most evil men of the last century and was astonished by how ordinary they appeared.
'Perhaps I was naeve,' he later wrote, 'but I had seen the photograph of all these Nazi leaders, in all their former pomp and glory. Then, in Nuremberg, I saw normal, simple people sitting in the dock.
They seemed like staff in a railway station or in a post office.' The trial left a huge impression on the 22-year-old. In his final report for the radio station, Wolf hoped for a 'time without war, aggression or crimes against humanity' - a wish all too ironic in the light of his later career in the dreaded Stasi.[/quote]

Do you know why? Because even evil dictators had to start someplace. Hitler a failed painter. Many had humble beginnings, and many would still if the right circumstances had not come into play. Many of the worms that stalk and terrorise targets are of such class, or less, but under these fertile grounds, they are slowly being allowed to act out in these ways. We see this all the time in war. Young males, some church going, God fearing. They are at home with their mom's and sisters one day, the next they are in some war torn battle ground raping 7 year old girls, actions they would most likely not openly commit back home, but on the battle grounds with no rules, regulations, or morals to prevent it, you get those situations all too frequently. What changed between saying good bye to their families, and going to another country to being able to devastate and rape another's family? It's all in the what they can get away with. Just like out society currently is condoning, snitches/civilian spies actively torturing innocent people in their homes. Sick and crazy, but that's how it is.

[quote]
In 1949, Wolf was appointed a member of the East German mission in Moscow, where he acted as the press and cultural attache. It was during this time that he was further groomed to become an intelligence officer.
He was clearly well-suited to the task, because by 1953, at the immensely young age of 30, he was appointed head of the innocuously titled 'German Reconnaissance Administration', which was nothing less than the East German equivalent of the CIA or MI6.
A department of the Stasi, the state apparatus that spied upon and brutally tortured its own people, the GRA quickly came under Wolf's leadership, and was shaped it into perhaps the most ruthless and impressive intelligence gathering organisation the world has ever seen. [/quote]

I will say it one last time. This guy would have made an amazing CEO. He has all the right skill sets.

[quote]Wolf was an idealist, and saw his spies as agents of world peace. 'I tried to instil a different motivation,' he said, 'to give them the security and conviction that they were doing something good, something necessary, something useful.' Nevertheless, like spy masters the world over, Wolf found that agents were more readily recruited when vast sums of money were flashed in front of them. He was also a pioneer of the classic method of the 'honeytrap' to lure well-placed foreigners into the Stasi's clutches.
What distinguished Wolf was that he was not averse to using 'Romeo' agents to woo women informers. The results of this policy were all too often tragic, as Wolf himself was to admit.[/quote]

No different now targets. This is how many of our stalkers see themselves. They are doing something good, they are keeping watch on dangerous individuals. It's giving them a sense of community like nothing else. It's breaking down barriers. That skin head that might not talk to that ethnic minority otherwise, the one handed snitch speak, breaks down all barriers, and suddenly all citizens are created equal, or at least equal enough to be snitches for the state. Then they can go back to hating each other right afterwards.

Oh and don't forget boys and girls, it's not just the Romeo agents out there anymore, no this is an equal opportunity society now, in this day of cheap, free, easy sex, and loose morals, you get many Juliette spies, who are all too willing to give it up to get information, or to recruit that next spy into the fold.

[quote]'There were cases of women whose love was abused, who for a certain time procured important documents or information, not knowing who for, or what service they worked for, and for a variety of reasons, were tried and jailed.' Typically, Wolf would not admit that sometimes the results were even more disastrous.
In the late 1950s, Leonore Heinz, the secretary to a West German foreign ministry official, was seduced by one of Wolf's agents, Heinz S'tterlin.
SO SUCCESSFUL was this honeytrap that the couple got married in 1960, and over the next few years Leonore unwittingly passed on secrets to the East via her spyhusband.
However, the couple were arrested in 1967, and when it was revealed to Leonore that S'tterlin had, in fact, married her on orders, she hanged herself in her cell.
Such an occurrence would have been of little consequence to Wolf, who worked closely with some of the world's most despicable terrorists.[/quote]

How many people out there are married, or in relationships and have no idea that that is why their other half sought them out? As a target I have now seen this enough to be disgusted by it. Remember they know more about you than you might even know about yourself. Those accidental meetings on the street, or as your car breaks down, not so accidental. There are some really great Targeted Individual stories about accidental meetings of targets and love or sexual interests, who later turn out were just there to hurt the target more. It's all too common. The interesting thing is without a society like this, one where the family is broken down, looser morals and values, you could not have as successful a campaign.

Now think about how many people find this out after they have kids, and are themselves eventually asked to take part in the snitching and spying? Some will go along with it, others however might rather not have anything to do with it, and then what do you do with yourself and the children that are the spawn of yourself and that spy that just had to trick you and use you?

As you can see in the above article, some people take it rather badly finding out that their better half is a spy who lied to them for years. Go figure. The heartless creatures behind these networks are so far removed they are not affected and really don't care, what's a little heartbreak for the greater good?

[quote]He was involved with Carlos the Jackal, the PLO, ETA, the IRA, and even the Red Army Faction that murdered its way through West Germany.
The aim was to create panic and fear in the West - and to that end, the terrorists were thoroughly trained by Wolf 's men at clandestine camps in East Germany, where they were taught the skills of an assassin.

In one exercise, a live sheepdog was used as a dummy passenger in a Mercedes and was riddled with bullets before the car was blown up.
As well as abetting terrorists, Wolf's department became astonishingly adept at industrial espionage and thoroughly penetrated IBM.In fact, as Wolf was to admit, the East German electronics firm, Robotron, was 'so heavily dependent on surreptitiously acquiring IBM's technological advances that it was an illegal subsidiary of that company'.[/quote]

Just like any executive, he clearly knew how to command authority, and keep people loyal. The corporate world will miss him.

[quote]However, perhaps Wolf 's greatest success was the agent Günter Guillaume, who was sent to West Germany in 1956 with orders to inveigle himself into the political system.
Guillaume rose through the Social Democratic Party, and by the early 1970s he had become a close aide to the Chancellor Willy Brandt, who was seeking closer ties with the East.
It was an incredible coup the modern-day equivalent of one of Tony Blair's aides reporting to Al Qaeda - 13 although it was not to last.
In the spring of 1973, Guillaume fell under suspicion and was placed under surveillance.

He was arrested a year later and the ensuing scandal, coupled with revelations about the chancellor's penchant for prostitutes, forced Brandt to resign.
Some thought that Wolf had deliberately forced Brandt's downfall, as the Chancellor was becoming too popular spreading the message of democracy in the Communist East.
Wolf denied this, and admitted that the resignation was something of an own goal.
His organisation, he said, 'had unwittingly helped to destroy the career of the most farsighted of modern German statesmen'.[/quote]

No comment.

[quote]In 1986, Wolf finally resigned, stating that he wanted to become an author. However, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the former Stasi chief began to worry for his future security and he sought refuge in Russia. In October 1990 he pleaded to Gorbachev for sanctuary.
'We were your friends,' he wrote. 'We wear a lot of your decorations on our breasts. We were said to have made a great contribution to your security.
Now, in our hour of need, I assume that you will not deny us your help.'
GORBACHEV refused, and after reunification Wolf was arrested, convicted of treason and sentenced to six years in prison. This was overruled by the German Supreme Court, which judged that Wolf had not committed an act of treachery against the country he was living in at the time the old East Germany.[/quote]

After such a successful career, who would not wish to sit back and write their memories. Gorbachev, I have always liked him.

[quote]Nevertheless, he was convicted in 1997 for his involvement in the 1955 kidnapping of a woman who worked for the American mission in Berlin.
The woman had been subjected to severe psychological torture during her kidnapping, and Wolf was given a two-year suspended sentence.[/quote]

Just like any good dictator or CEO, he serves no time for his crimes. Freaking awesome. Crime, corruption, they pay, big time. They seem to be the only thing that does, no wonder so many choose this path. I am finding it harder and harder to blame them or judge them, because the world is just so continually willing to reward them, and their misdeeds. Why would they choose anything else? The world is one big example of this sort continually getting off, for their crimes and misdemeanors.

[quote]For the rest of his life, Wolf appeared on countless television programmes plugging his books - one of them on his favourite hobby, cooking - and never appeared to show any regret for heading one of the most loathsome organisations of the 20th century.[quote]

Truly he missed his calling as the host of who wants to be a Stasi spy cheif. He could have offered the world so much in that capacity. Game show host extraordinaire. It's nice to see that he did not let his celebrity go to his head, and he found time for the finer things. Why shouldn't he, after a 30 year successful career of state oppression. Herding sheepish people, many of who to this day believe that they were doing something for the greater good. Many of them also did not, and will never pay for their crimes. After the fall of the Berlin wall, many of the former Stasi got off scott free, many moved to the West Germany and got good jobs, and rose to the top. The only ones left behind to suffer were the victims of the Stasi, many of them never recovered, proving once again that crime and state oppression does pay.

http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/1199.cfm

[quote]In fact, he boasted that he had brought peace to the West. 'When it's recognised that this service contributed to securing and protecting peace in Europe for 45 years, then I can perhaps be proud.' But there was to be one last surprise.[/quote]

Shocking he feels he did the world a service. Below are some of his quotes. I am less and less surprised that men like this get off. The world consistently welcomes this sort. They consistently herald them into power, and then when they get the result of this, can they be surprised?


Markus Wolf Quotes.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/markus_wolf.html
[quote]At our college we were taught a universal approach to find out about a person: what problems the person has, what difficulties, what personal tendencies and likings. Markus Wolf
I feel that I, and the people under my command, tried to use all the traditional methods of recruiting agents which were also used by other intelligence services; adopting also means like pressure, money, sex - but that did not characterize my service. Markus Wolf
I tried to instill a different motivation, to give them the security and the conviction that they were doing something good, something necessary, something useful - if you want to use a grandiose expression, that they were doing something for peace. Markus Wolf
Making use of human weaknesses in intelligence work is a logical matter. It keeps coming up, and of course you try to look at all the aspects that interest you in a human being. Markus Wolf
Most of the results of using technical bugging devices were of little importance for my service. It may have been different in counter-intelligence, where bugs in flats, etc., were used to obtain a lot of information about what counter-intelligence was interested in. Markus Wolf
One person can take papers, photograph them without getting excited, return them, and give them away without any scruples; while someone else has to overcome an enormous obstacle. Markus Wolf
The most important thing was that we tried to have a targeted approach - to attack where the side had its secrets, in the centers in Bonn where the major government institutions and the Chancellor were - you will know we were not quite unsuccessful there - and in NATO and NATO countries. Markus Wolf
The particular feature of Berlin - well, all you need to do is look at the map: the geographical position of the city right in the heart of Europe, and the separation of the most powerful two blocs we've ever had in history, which went all the way through Germany. Markus Wolf
There were some tragic cases of women whose love was abused, who for a certain time procured important documents or information, not knowing who for, what service they worked for, and for a variety reasons got jailed, were tried and sentenced. Markus Wolf
We planted bugs, microphones, in premises which interested us in the West. We weren't too successful - I would have said unfortunately in former years, but I don't care anymore now. Markus Wolf
What we wanted from an agent depended on what he brought in. Markus Wolf
You can't do anything if a person says no. In such a case, there's nothing you can do - unlike the popular cliche that pressure is exerted, or that maybe an unwilling source is done away with. Markus Wolf
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