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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Fidel Castro.md
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@ -3,8 +3,9 @@ title: Fidel Castro
aliases:
- Fidel Castro
- Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz
- Fidel Castro Ruz
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-10-07
category: "Political Figure"
tags:
- KeyFigure
@ -14,21 +15,147 @@ tags:
- Politician
- Military
- ColdWar
summary: "Leader of Cuba targeted by CIA assassination plots involving organized crime figures Sam Giancana, Johnny Rosselli, and Santos Trafficante."
- AntiCastro
- ChurchCommittee
summary: "Cuban revolutionary leader who was the target of CIA assassination plots from 1960 to 1965, including plots run through Robert Maheu and organized-crime figures, as the Church Committee documented."
born: 1926-08-13
died: 2016-11-25
location: "Birán, Oriente, Cuba"
relations:
- type: head_of
with: "[[Cuba]]"
start: 1959-01-01
fn: 1
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Robert Maheu]]"
start: 1960-08
fn: 8
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Sam Giancana]]"
start: 1960-09
fn: 13
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Johnny Roselli|Johnny Rosselli]]"
start: 1960-09
fn: 12
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Santos Trafficante, Jr.]]"
start: 1960-09
fn: 13
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Operation Mongoose]]"
start: 1961-11-30
fn: 21
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Rolando Cubela]]"
start: 1963
fn: 19
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Church Committee]]"
start: 1975-11
fn: 6
---
Fidel Castro was the leader of [[Cuba]]. In 1960, the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] initiated a series of assassination attempts against him. These operations involved [[Robert Maheu]] as a "cut-out," who contacted organized-crime leaders [[Sam Giancana]], [[Johnny Roselli|Johnny Rosselli]], and [[Santos Trafficante, Jr.]]. These individuals, in turn, enlisted the direct assistance of Cuban exiles in the assassination plots.[^1]
### Dark Alliance Investigation
Fidel Castro was the Cuban revolutionary who took control of the government of [[Cuba]] in January 1959 and held the country's highest office in the decades that followed.[^1] The [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] planned and attempted to kill him from 1960 onward, using organized-crime figures recruited through [[Robert Maheu]].
Fidel Castro was the Cuban president whose government served as a foil for U.S. anti-Communist operations in [[Central America]], including the [[Contras|Contra]] war. The anti-Castro Cuban exile networks built during the [[Bay of Pigs|Bay of Pigs]] era were later repurposed by the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] for Contra operations.[^2]
### Mexico, 1956
When the CIA needed operatives for the Contra war, it drew from the pool of anti-Castro Cuban exiles who had been trained and organized since the failed 1961 invasion. [[Felix Rodriguez]], who participated in the capture and execution of Che Guevara in [[Cuba]] under Castro's government, was sent to [[San Salvador]] to manage the Contra resupply operation at Ilopango Air Base. [[Manuel Noriega|Noriega]] brokered deals with Castro, acting as liaison between the Cuban government and U.S. intelligence. The [[Sandinistas]] in [[Nicaragua]] maintained close ties with Castro's government, which the Reagan administration cited as justification for the Contra war.[^3]
In June 1956, agents of the Mexican [[Dirección Federal de Seguridad]] (DFS) arrested Castro and other members of a group preparing a revolution against [[Fulgencio Batista]]. An account of the case quotes a two-page DFS report, prepared three days after the arrest by [[Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios]], chief of DFS Control, that describes the detentions.[^2] The account gives the arrest date as June 21, 1956, on Mariano Escobedo street in [[Mexico City]], and says the men were taken to the DFS building on Miguel Shultz street.
### Washington visit, 1959
Castro visited [[Washington, D.C.]] in April 1959. On April 19, [[Richard Nixon]], then vice president, met him in the Vice President's formal office in the Capitol. Nixon's draft summary of the conversation, which he sent to [[John Foster Dulles]] on April 24, read in part: "He seems to be sincere" and "He is either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline."[^3] A State Department memorandum recorded a Latin American newspaperman's account that Castro said Nixon had reprimanded him for revolutionary activity against the governments of [[Nicaragua]] and [[Panama]].[^4]
### Assassination plots, 1959 to 1965
The Senate Select Committee's chronology records that on December 11, 1959, [[Allen Dulles]] approved "thorough consideration be given to the elimination of Fidel Castro."[^5] The [[Church Committee]]'s 1975 interim report summarized the Cuba plots in these words: "United States Government personnel plotted to kill Castro from 1960 to 1965."[^6] The report also stated that the committee had "concrete evidence of at least eight plots involving the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro from 1960 to 1965."[^7]
According to the Church Committee, [[Richard Bissell]] asked [[Sheffield Edwards]], director of the [[CIA Office of Security|Office of Security]], to locate someone who could assassinate Castro. Edwards and the operational support chief decided to rely on Maheu, a former FBI agent who had become a private investigator, to recruit someone "tough enough" for the job. The support chief testified that the CIA had used Maheu in earlier sensitive operations in which "he didn't want to have an Agency person or a government person get caught."[^8] The committee reproduced a summary, sent by [[J. Edgar Hoover]] to Attorney General [[Robert Kennedy]] on May 22, 1961, of what Edwards told the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]]: that he contacted Maheu in the fall of 1960 "for the purpose of using Maheu as a 'cut-out' in contacts with Sam Giancana, a known hoodlum in the Chicago area."[^9] [[Cheri Seymour]] wrote that Maheu served as the cut-out between the CIA and the organized-crime figures, and that they in turn enlisted Cuban exiles in the plots.[^10]
The Inspector General's report of 1967 states that Edwards and Maheu agreed that Maheu would approach [[Johnny Roselli|Johnny Rosselli]] "as the representative of businessmen with interests in Cuba who saw the elimination of Castro as the essential first step to the recovery of their investments," and that Maheu "was authorized to tell Roselli that his 'clients' were willing to pay $150,000 for Castro's removal." The same report places [[James P. O'Connell]] and Maheu with Roselli in New York City on September 14, 1960, where Maheu "made the pitch," and records an Edwards memorandum for the record of May 14, 1962: "No monies were ever paid to Roselli and Giancana."[^11] Rosselli recalled meeting Maheu in [[Beverly Hills]] in early September 1960, and the Inspector General's report placed a meeting of Maheu, Rosselli and the support chief at the Plaza Hotel in [[New York City|New York]] on September 14, 1960.[^12] The committee wrote that [[Sam Giancana]] and [[Santos Trafficante, Jr.]] entered the operation under the names "Sam Gold" and "Joe," and that the support chief identified them from an article on the attorney general's ten-most-wanted criminals list.[^13]
A CIA memorandum to the Director of Central Intelligence dated November 1970, included in the Agency's 1973 "Family Jewels" compilation, begins: "In August 1960, Mr. Richard M. Bissell approached Colonel Sheffield Edwards to determine if the Office of Security had assets that may assist in a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was Fidel Castro." It records that "Sam" suggested that they "not resort to firearms but, if he could be furnished some type of potent pill," that could be placed in Castro's food or drink, and that he proposed as a "nominee" Juan Orta, a Cuban official who had been receiving kickback payments from the gambling interests. The memorandum states that the Anthony Verona project "was canceled shortly after the Bay of Pigs episode" and the pills were retrieved.[^14]
According to the Church Committee, Edwards rejected the first batch of poison pills prepared by the CIA's [[Technical Services Division]]. The Inspector General's report records that four pills were given to the support chief on April 18, 1962, passed to [[William Harvey]], and then given to Rosselli.[^15]
The Inspector General's report records that Dr. [[Edward Gunn]], chief of the Operations Division of the Office of Medical Services, had a notation that on August 16, 1960 he "received a box of Cuban cigars to be treated with a lethal material," which he understood to be "Fidel's favorite brand." Edwards did not recall the incident. A Technical Services Division officer (name redacted in the released copy) was "positive" that he had contaminated a full box of fifty cigars with botulinus toxin, and Gunn's notes show that he reported the cigars as ready for delivery on October 7, 1960; the report states that the notes do not show actual delivery until February 13, 1961. The report's comment states that others recalled the cigar scheme "only as an idea that was considered and then discarded."[^16] The Church Committee reported the same episode in these words: "The record does not disclose whether an attempt was made to pass the cigars to Castro."[^17] The committee's summary said the plans to assassinate Castro "using poison cigars, exploding seashells, and a contaminated diving suit did not advance beyond the laboratory phase."[^18]
The CIA regarded AM/LASH, the cryptonym for [[Rolando Cubela]], as an important "asset" inside Cuba.[^19] The Church Committee recorded that [[Desmond FitzGerald]] and a case officer assured AM/LASH of support on November 22, 1963, the day of the [[JFK Assassination|Kennedy assassination]]. The committee also recorded that a ball-point pen rigged to deliver poison was offered to AM/LASH.[^20]
### Operation Mongoose, 1961 to 1962
In November 1961 President [[John F. Kennedy]] issued a memorandum to begin [[Operation Mongoose]], directing the government to "use our available assets * * * to help Cuba overthrow the Communist regime."[^21] [[Richard Goodwin]] advised the President that Robert Kennedy "would be the most effective commander" of the operation. The President instead gave [[Edward Lansdale]] the task of coordinating it, and Robert Kennedy sat on the [[Special Group (Augmented)]] that oversaw it.[^22] The Church Committee stated that Harvey was put in charge of the CIA's [[Task Force W]] in late 1961 or early 1962, a unit that employed about 400 people at headquarters and at the Miami Station.[^22]
A memorandum for the record in the Taylor report file of the Kennedy Library records Allen Dulles's reply that "we did have a policy, which was to overthrow Castro in one way or another."[^23]
### Inspector General report and the Church Committee
A CIA Inspector General report on the plots, signed by John S. Earman and dated May 23, 1967, ran 143 pages including its cover memorandum.[^24] The Church Committee cited the report throughout as the "I.G. Report."
### House Select Committee on Assassinations, 1978
On April 3, 1978, staff of the [[House Select Committee on Assassinations]] met Castro in [[Havana]]. The committee's record states that Castro "assured the Committee that neither he nor his government had any involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."[^25] In its March 1979 staff report on the CIA-sponsored plots, the committee quoted Castro's interview of that day. On the question of whether his government would have killed the President, Castro said: "We just tried to defend our folks here, within our territory." On Kennedy's speech of September 7, 1963 he said: "For 3 years we had known there were plots against us," and "all these plots or attempts were part of the everyday life."[^26]
### Marita Lorenz and Frank Sturgis
A Review Board research memo on [[Marita Lorenz]] describes her as a woman who allegedly was involved in a plot to poison Castro, and states that she was reported to have hidden poison pills in a jar of cold cream with the intention of killing him, and that the pills dissolved.[^27] The memo lists [[Frank Sturgis]] as also involved. It records that [[New York Daily News]] articles from 1975 and 1976 provided the basis for an independent account of the plot, and that [[Drug Enforcement Administration]] files described Lorenz as unreliable and not credible. The memo also records Lorenz's account, as told in [[Gaeton Fonzi]]'s book The Last Investigation, of a meeting at the home of [[Orlando Bosch]] before November 22, 1963, where, she said, the talk was of "take another armory."
### Escalante's count
[[Fabián Escalante]], who had responsibility for Castro's security, calculated a total of 638 attempts on Castro's life.[^28]
### Bolivia, 1967
[[Felix Rodriguez]] took part in the capture and execution of [[Che Guevara]] in [[Bolivia]] in October 1967. Rodriguez wrote that on October 9, 1967, at 2:15 p.m. local time, he was in a helicopter above the Bolivian jungle with Guevara's dead body tied to a stretcher on the skid, and that earlier that day he had spoken to the wounded Guevara in a small dark room, opening with the words "Che Guevara, I want to talk to you."[^29] A Director of Central Intelligence memorandum of October 11, 1967 reports that the Bolivian Second Ranger Battalion captured Guevara on October 8, that at 11:50 a.m. on October 9 the battalion received orders from Bolivian Army headquarters in [[La Paz]] to kill him, and that the orders were carried out at 1:15 p.m. A footnote to that document quotes a message sent by an officer on the scene (name not declassified) that Guevara's fate would be decided on October 9 by the highest Bolivian military authorities: "I am managing to keep him alive," he reported, "which is very hard." The volume's editorial note states that CIA contract personnel assigned to the battalion as advisers unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the execution.[^30] [[Gary Webb]] wrote that Rodriguez had been "in on the capture and execution of Che Guevara" among other paramilitary operations.[^31]
### Central America and the Contra war
The independent counsel's report on the [[Iran-Contra affair]] identifies Rodriguez, also known as "Max Gomez," as active at the [[Ilopango]] air base in [[El Salvador]], near [[San Salvador]]. The report describes meetings there among [[Oliver North]], [[Salvadoran Air Force]] general [[Juan Bustillo]], Colonel [[James J. Steele]] and Rodriguez, which resulted in agreements on use of the base as a transshipment point for humanitarian assistance to the [[Contras]].[^32] Former CIA official [[Alan Fiers]] testified in 1992 that Rodriguez "was put into" El Salvador, in early 1985, "to work in the areas where we had left a void," and Webb wrote that Rodriguez, by his own account, "eventually became the overseer" of North's Contra resupply operation at the base.[^33]
Webb wrote that in the build-up to the Contra war in [[Central America]] the Contra recruiting in [[Miami]] joined the Nicaraguan and Cuban exile communities, that Cuban veterans of the [[Bay of Pigs]] operation put up training camps for the Contras' recruits, and that Castro "had been giving the Sandinistas aid and comfort since the mid-1970s," with Cuba providing advisers to the [[Sandinistas]] on building up their army and intelligence services.[^34] Webb also wrote that the CIA director [[William Casey]] gave Congress the halting of Sandinista arms shipments to the Salvadoran guerrillas as the reason for the Reagan administration's decision to turn the CIA loose in Nicaragua, and that the Sandinistas had admitted supplying the guerrillas with arms.[^35] In 1999, according to Webb, Donald Winters, the former chief of CIA operations in Panama, told the judge hearing [[Manuel Noriega]]'s appeal that Noriega "brokered deals with South American leaders, acted as a liaison to Cuba's Fidel Castro, provided details on guerrilla and terrorist activities, and even gave the former Shah of Iran a safe haven."[^36]
### Cocaine charges and the 1989 trials
Julia Preston reported that General [[Arnaldo Ochoa]] was arrested in Havana on June 12, 1989, and that at an honor tribunal he confessed to the charges against him. She quoted his testimony that "one pays for treason with one's life." A summary court-martial began June 30, and four men convicted of high treason, including Ochoa and [[Antonio de la Guardia]], were shot on July 13, 1989.[^37] Preston wrote that the treason charge "was not shown by the facts." She also reported that the Cuban government charged that de la Guardia's group had arranged for six tons of cocaine to be sent from [[Colombia]] through Cuba to the United States in the two years after April 1987. Castro said that he and [[Raul Castro]] learned of the drug activity only after the June arrests, and Preston noted that many observers doubted this.[^37]
Preston also described a separate federal case: [[Reinaldo Ruiz]] and his son Rubén were indicted in Miami in February 1988 for smuggling cocaine supplied by the [[Medellin Cartel]] through Cuba. The two pleaded guilty and received reduced sentences for cooperating. U.S. reports said they had worked with Cuban officials but did not publicly name de la Guardia.[^37]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010.
[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 6: "They were doing their patriotic duty"
[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 6, Chapter 10
[^1]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Book V: The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies, S. Rept. 94-755 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1976), Appendix C, Chronology, entry for 1959 (January 1, 1959). https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_V.pdf
[^2]: María Idalia Gómez, "Fidel Castro: tres días con la DFS," EjeCentral (undated article quoting the DFS report). https://www.ejecentral.com.mx/fidel-castro-tres-dias-con-la-dfs. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^3]: U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, vol. VI, Cuba, editorial note preceding Document 288, quoting Nixon's draft summary (Department of State, Central Files, 711.12/4-2459). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d287
[^4]: U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, vol. VI, Cuba, Document 288, memorandum by the Director of the Office of Mexican and Caribbean Affairs (Department of State, Central Files, 033.3711/4-2159), April 1959. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d288. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^5]: Book V, S. Rept. 94-755, Appendix C, Chronology, entry for December 11, 1959, PDF p. 98. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_V.pdf
[^6]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1975), p. 6. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^7]: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, p. 72. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^8]: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, pp. 75-76 (testimony of Bissell, June 9, 1975; Edwards, May 30, 1975; the operational support chief, May 30, 1975, pp. 8 and 158; Maheu, July 29 and 30, 1975). https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^9]: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, p. 128, reproducing the summary of Edwards's statements to the FBI sent by Hoover to the Attorney General on May 22, 1961. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^10]: Cheri Seymour, The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal (TrineDay, 2010). Sole source for the passages so cited; the book's text was not available for page citation.
[^11]: Central Intelligence Agency Inspector General John S. Earman, "Report on Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro," May 23, 1967, pp. 16-17 (National Archives, JFK Assassination Records, Record Number 104-10213-10101). https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10213-10101.pdf
[^12]: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, p. 76, citing the Inspector General's report pp. 16 and 17 and testimony of Johnny Rosselli, June 24, 1975. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^13]: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, p. 78, citing the Inspector General's report p. 19. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^14]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum for the Director of Central Intelligence, subject "ROSELLI, Johnny," stamped November 1970, in "Family Jewels," 1973 (CIA MORI DocID 1451843, pp. 00044-00045), as reproduced in National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book 222. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/family_jewels_full_ocr.pdf
[^15]: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, p. 81 (Edwards rejected the first batch of pills) and p. 85 (four pills given to the support chief April 18, 1962, citing the Inspector General's report pp. 46-47). https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^16]: Earman, "Report on Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro," pp. 21-22 (National Archives, Record Number 104-10213-10101). https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10213-10101.pdf
[^17]: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, p. 74, citing the Inspector General's report pp. 21-22. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^18]: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, p. 255, summary of findings on the assassination plots. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^19]: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, p. 87. The identification of Rolando Cubela with the AM/LASH cryptonym rests on the table of contents of the Earman report (below). Earman, "Report on Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro," CIA Inspector General, May 23, 1967, outline page, "Project AMLASH - Rolando Cubela (March 1961 - March 1966)." https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10213-10101.pdf
[^20]: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, pp. 89-90. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^21]: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, p. 140, quoting the presidential memorandum of November 30, 1961, and the memorandum of November 1, 1961 by Richard Goodwin. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^22]: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, pp. 140-141. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^23]: U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, Cuba, January 1961-September 1962, Document 169, memorandum for the record (Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Countries Series, Cuba, Subjects, Taylor Report). https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HistoryAtState/frus/master/volumes/frus1961-63v10.xml
[^24]: Central Intelligence Agency Inspector General John S. Earman, "Report on Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro," May 23, 1967, Secret/Eyes Only, 143 pp. including cover memorandum. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10213-10101.pdf ; also National Security Archive document 33578, https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/33578-document-19-cia-inspector-general-john-s-earman-report-plots-assassinate-fidel
[^25]: [[Lopez Report]] (2003), appendices, House Select Committee on Assassinations staff record of the April 3, 1978 Havana session, appendix page marked 264 in the scan. https://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/lopezrpt_2003/pdf/LopezRpt_2003_8_Appendices.pdf
[^26]: U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on Assassinations, "The Evolution and Implications of the CIA-Sponsored Assassination Conspiracies Against Fidel Castro," staff report, March 1979, in Appendix to Hearings, vol. X, paras. 69-71 (quoting Interview of Fidel Castro Ruz, April 3, 1978, pp. 38-39, J.F.K. document no. 011776). https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol10/pdf/HSCA_Vol10_CastroPlots.pdf
[^27]: Marita Lorenz wrap-up memo, JFK Assassination Records Review Board research file (NARA, JFK Assassination Records, ARRB research). https://documents3.theblackvault.com/documents/jfkfiles/NARA-Oct2017/ARRB/IMARR/WP-DOCS/RSRCH/LORENZ.WPD.pdf. Sole source for the passages so cited. The memo states that Lorenz's claims are reported ("reportedly") and cites Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (1993).
[^28]: "638 ways to kill Castro," Mail & Guardian, August 2006, citing Fabián Escalante. https://mg.co.za/news/international/2006-08-09-638-ways-to-kill-castro/. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^29]: Felix I. Rodriguez and John Weisman, Shadow Warrior: The CIA Hero of a Hundred Unknown Battles (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), Prologue.
[^30]: U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XXXI, South and Central America; Mexico, editorial note preceding Document 171, and Document 171, Memorandum from Director of Central Intelligence Helms, "Capture and Execution of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara," October 11, 1967 (Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Bolivia, vol. IV), including note 3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HistoryAtState/frus/master/volumes/frus1964-68v31.xml
[^31]: Gary Webb, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (Seven Stories Press, 1998), chapter 13.
[^32]: Lawrence E. Walsh, Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, vol. I, chapter 19. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/chap_19.htm
[^33]: Webb, Dark Alliance, chapter 13, quoting the testimony of Alan Fiers Jr., 1992.
[^34]: Webb, Dark Alliance, chapter 4.
[^35]: Webb, Dark Alliance, chapter 6.
[^36]: Webb, Dark Alliance, Epilogue, quoting Donald Winters's statement to the court in the 1999 proceeding on Noriega's sentence.
[^37]: Julia Preston, "The Trial that Shook Cuba," The New York Review of Books, December 7, 1989. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1989/12/07/the-trial-that-shook-cuba/. Sole source for the passages so cited.

178
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/George W. Bush.md
View file

@ -8,37 +8,181 @@ tags:
- CIAOperations
- TortureProgram
- NSASurveillance
summary: "George W. Bush was the 43rd President of the United States (2001-2009), son of former CIA Director and President George H.W. Bush; his presidency initiated the War on Terror following the September 11, 2001 attacks, launched the 2003 Iraq invasion based on false WMD intelligence, authorized the CIA's 'enhanced interrogation' torture program and black site network, and approved the NSA's warrantless mass surveillance program."
- ArbustoEnergy
- HarkenEnergy
- TexasRangers
- Caterair
- SkullAndBones
- BCCI
aliases:
- "George Walker Bush"
summary: "George W. Bush was the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009; his administration launched the Iraq invasion, authorized the CIA detention and interrogation program and the NSA's Stellar Wind surveillance program."
created: 2026-05-15
updated: 2026-05-15
updated: 2026-10-07
born: 1946-07-06
location: "New Haven, Connecticut"
relations:
- type: relative_of
with: "[[George H.W. Bush]]"
role: "son"
fn: 1
- type: member_of
with: "[[Skull and Bones]]"
start: "1968"
fn: 3
- type: member_of
with: "[[Texas Air National Guard]]"
start: "1968-05"
end: "1973-10"
role: "111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron"
fn: 8
- type: head_of
with: "[[Arbusto Energy]]"
role: "partnerships controlled by Bush"
start: "1979"
fn: 5
- type: funded
with: "[[James R. Bath]]"
reverse: true
start: "1979"
role: "$50,000 investment in Arbusto '79 and Arbusto '80"
fn: 5
- type: director_of
with: "[[Harken Energy]]"
start: "1986"
end: "1993-10-26"
fn: 7
- type: investigated
with: "[[Securities and Exchange Commission]]"
reverse: true
start: "1991"
end: "1993-10"
role: "inquiry into Bush's June 1990 sale of Harken stock; no enforcement action"
fn: 15
- type: owned
with: "[[Texas Rangers]]"
start: "1989"
end: "1998"
role: "limited partner in the group that bought the club; stake rose to 11.8 percent"
fn: 16
- type: director_of
with: "[[Caterair International]]"
fn: 17
---
George Walker Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, the eldest son of [[George H.W. Bush]] and Barbara Bush. He served as the 43rd President of the United States from January 20, 2001 to January 20, 2009, and previously as Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. His presidency was defined by the [[September 11]] terrorist attacks of 2001 and the subsequent "[[War on Terror]]," which produced two wars, a comprehensive expansion of U.S. domestic surveillance authorities, and an authorized program of torture that constituted the most significant institutional violation of U.S. legal and treaty obligations in the modern intelligence era.[^1]
George Walker Bush was the 43rd President of the United States, serving from January 20, 2001 to January 20, 2009.[^1][^2] He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on July 6, 1946, the eldest son of [[George H.W. Bush]] and [[Barbara Bush]],[^1][^2] and was elected Governor of Texas on November 8, 1994 and re-elected on November 3, 1998.[^1] His presidency is associated with the [[September 11]] attacks and the "[[War on Terror]]" that followed. Under his administration the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] ran a detention and interrogation program, the [[National Security Agency|NSA]] conducted surveillance under presidential authorizations outside the warrant procedure of the [[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]], and United States forces invaded [[Iraq]] in March 2003.
### Pre-Presidential Background
### Education and early business career
George W. Bush attended [[Yale University]] (B.A. 1968) and [[Harvard]] Business School (M.B.A. 1975). He served as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard from 1968-1973, a period characterized by disputed questions about fulfillment of service obligations that became a recurring political issue. He entered the oil industry in Texas ([[Arbusto Energy]], later merged into [Harken Energy]]) before entering politics. His father George H.W. Bush had served as CIA Director (1976-1977), Vice President (1981-1989), and President (1989-1993), giving the younger Bush direct family familiarity with the intelligence community at the highest levels.[^2]
Bush received a bachelor's degree in history from [[Yale University]] in 1968 and a Master of Business Administration from [[Harvard]] Business School in 1975.[^1] He entered Yale in 1964 and became president of the [[Delta Kappa Epsilon]] fraternity.[^2] Yale's Class of 1968 included Bush and the journalist [[Jacques Leslie]].[^3] He enlisted in the [[Texas Air National Guard]] in 1968, two weeks before graduation, at the end of his draft deferment,[^2] and served as an F-102 fighter pilot.[^1] He was discharged from the Air Force Reserve on November 21, 1974.[^2]
### 9/11 and the Decision for War
After Harvard he moved back to Midland, Texas, and began a career in the energy business.[^1] [[Craig Unger]] wrote that Bush's company, [[Arbusto Energy]], did not start operations until March 1979, several months after Bush lost his 1978 congressional race, and that Bush had listed Arbusto on his resume during that campaign.[^4] The [[Houston Chronicle]] reported in 1992 that [[Bush Exploration]], the general partner in the Arbusto limited partnerships, "went through several mergers, eventually evolving into Harken Energy Corp."[^5] Unger wrote that in 1986 the Dallas energy firm [[Harken Energy]], then known as Harken Oil and Gas and partly owned by Harvard University and [[George Soros]], bought Bush's company for $2.25 million in stock, and that Bush received roughly $600,000, a seat on the board, and a consultancy paying between $50,000 and $120,000 a year.[^4] Harken's 1993 annual report states that Bush had served as a consultant to Harken since April 1987.[^6] Unger quoted Harken founder Phil Kendrick: "His name was George Bush. That was worth the money they paid him."[^4] Bush resigned from Harken's board of directors effective October 26, 1993, and terminated the consulting agreement; Harken's proxy statement of April 25, 1994 and its annual report of March 28, 1994 record the resignation, and the annual report lists a Form 8-K filed November 19, 1993 on the subject.[^7][^6]
The September 11, 2001 attacks, in which [[al-Qaeda]] operatives hijacked four commercial aircraft and killed approximately 2,977 people, defined the Bush presidency. Within weeks of the attacks, Bush authorized the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] to build a global counterterrorism infrastructure including the detention and interrogation program that would become the source of the most serious legal controversies of his administration.
### Texas Air National Guard
The decision to invade [[Iraq]] in March 2003 was based on intelligence assessments that [[Saddam Hussein]] possessed weapons of mass destruction (biological, chemical, and potentially nuclear). The intelligence case was built around the testimony of an Iraqi defector codenamed "[[Curveball]]" ([[Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi]]), whose claims of mobile biological weapons laboratories were assessed by the [[BND]] and passed to the [[CIA]], despite significant internal doubts about his reliability. The CIA's finished assessments - the October 2002 [[National Intelligence Estimate]] on Iraq's WMD programs - overstated certainty about Iraqi WMD capabilities in ways that subsequent investigations attributed to politicized pressure from the Office of the Vice President ([[Dick Cheney]]) and the Office of Special Plans established under Undersecretary of Defense [[Douglas Feith]].
The panel that reviewed the [[CBS News]] broadcast described Bush as having served in the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, commanded by [[Jerry B. Killian]], from May 1968 to October 1973.[^8] FactCheck.org reported in February 2004 that Bush's last recorded day of service was July 30, 1973 and that he was released with an honorable discharge eight months before the end of the six-year term for which he had signed up.[^9] In a February 2004 NBC interview Bush said: "I got an honorable discharge, and I did show up in Alabama."[^9]
No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq following the invasion. The Iraq Survey Group's final report (September 2004) concluded that Saddam Hussein's WMD programs had effectively ended in the early 1990s and that intelligence assessments had been fundamentally wrong.[^1]
The [[White House]] released summaries of Bush's Texas Air National Guard service records and pay documents on February 10, 2004. Democracy Now! reported that the documents included "payroll sheets never before made public," and that the release came amid questions about an alleged gap in his service between May 1972 and May 1973.[^10]
### Enhanced Interrogation and CIA Black Sites
On September 8, 2004, the CBS News program "60 Minutes Wednesday" broadcast a segment, produced by [[Mary Mapes]], that presented four documents allegedly from the personal files of Killian, commander of the squadron in which Bush served.[^8] An independent review panel of former Attorney General [[Richard Thornburgh]] and former Associated Press chief executive [[Louis Boccardi]], appointed by CBS on September 22, 2004, dated its report January 5, 2005, and CBS issued it on January 10, 2005.[^8][^11] The panel wrote: "The Panel has not been able to conclude with absolute certainty whether the Killian documents are authentic or forgeries." It also wrote that the problems with the segment "were caused primarily by a myopic zeal to be the first news organization to broadcast what was believed to be a new story about President Bush's TexANG service." The first of the panel's listed defects was "The failure to obtain clear authentication of any of the Killian documents from any document examiner."[^8] The panel identified the source of the documents as retired Texas Army National Guard Lieutenant Colonel [[Bill Burkett]].[^8] In a statement of January 10, 2005, CBS chairman [[Leslie Moonves]] announced that Mapes was terminated, and that [[Josh Howard]], Mary Murphy and [[Betsy West]] were relieved of their duties and asked to resign.[^11]
Following the capture of al-Qaeda operatives beginning in 2002, the CIA requested and received legal authorization from the [[Department of Justice]]'s [[Office of Legal Counsel]] (OLC) for a program of "[[enhanced interrogation techniques]]" that included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, confinement in small spaces, stress positions, and other methods that the U.S. government had previously characterized as torture when used by other states. The OLC memos authorizing these techniques (the "[[Torture Memos]]," authored primarily by [[John Yoo]] and [[Jay Bybee]]) redefined the legal standard for torture in ways that senior legal scholars and international law experts subsequently condemned as bad-faith legal analysis.
### Arbusto, Harken and the Texas Rangers
The CIA operated a network of "black sites" - secret detention facilities in countries including [[Poland]], [[Romania]], [[Thailand]], and [[Afghanistan]] - outside normal legal accountability. Approximately 100 detainees were held in the black site network; a smaller number, including [[Khalid Sheikh Mohammed]], were subjected to waterboarding and the full enhanced interrogation program. The [[Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]]'s study of the CIA's detention and interrogation program, released in summary form in December 2014 after years of controversy, concluded that the program produced little to no actionable intelligence not available through other means and that the CIA had systematically misled Congress, the [[White House]], and the public about its effectiveness.[^2]
In 1992 the Houston Chronicle reported that [[James R. Bath]], a Houston investor, had put $50,000 into limited partnerships "controlled by George W. Bush," Arbusto '79 and Arbusto '80.[^5] The newspaper wrote: "There is no available evidence to show whether the money came from Saudi interests." The Chronicle reported that Bush said that, to his knowledge, Bath's investment was from personal funds and that no Saudi money was invested in Arbusto.[^5] Unger quotes Bath on the same point: "One hundred percent of those funds were mine. It was a purely personal investment," and Bath adds that Salem bin Laden and Khalid bin Mahfouz "never met Bush."[^4] Unger wrote that Bath "put up $50,000 for 5 percent of the stock" of Arbusto and describes him as Bush's National Guard friend, and that critics have asserted that money may have gone from Khalid bin Mahfouz and Salem bin Laden through Bath into Arbusto, but that "no hard evidence has ever been found to back up that charge."[^4]
### NSA Warrantless Surveillance
The same Chronicle article reported that, in sworn depositions, Bath said he "represented four prominent Saudis as a trustee," one of whom was Saudi Sheik Salem M. Binladen. According to a 1976 trust agreement, as the newspaper reported it, "drawn shortly after Bush was appointed director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi Sheik Salem M. Binladen appointed Bath as his business representative in Houston." The Chronicle reported that Bath was the sole director of Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd., which a court document showed to be owned by [[Khalid bin Mahfouz]], and that Bath purchased the Houston Gulf Airport on behalf of Binladen in 1977. It also reported that Bath had "previously denied having worked for the CIA," and that according to [[Bill White]], a former real estate business associate of Bath who had litigated against him, Bath said he had assisted the CIA in a liaison role with Saudi Arabia since 1976. The Chronicle reported that the [[Financial Crimes Enforcement Network]] and the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] were reviewing accusations that Bath guided Saudi money to Houston to influence United States policy.[^5]
Bush authorized a program known as "[[Stellar Wind]]" (later "President's Surveillance Program") that allowed the [[NSA]] to collect telephone and internet communications of Americans in contact with persons overseas without obtaining the [[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]] warrants required by the [[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]] (FISA). The program was revealed publicly by the New York Times in December 2005. The revelation led to significant congressional controversy, emergency retroactive legal justifications, and later became the template for the bulk collection authorities expanded under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. [[Edward Snowden]]'s 2013 disclosures established that Stellar Wind was among the early programs in a broader NSA surveillance architecture that had expanded substantially beyond its original authorization.[^1]
Unger wrote that Bath, who served in the Texas Air National Guard, befriended the young Bush, who began pilot training in 1970 at [[Ellington Air Force Base]], that in the mid-1970s Bush introduced Bath to his father, and that by 1976 Salem bin Laden had appointed Bath his American business representative.[^4] Unger wrote that the press speculated about Bath's connections to the Bush family, to [[John Connally]], to the CIA, to [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International|BCCI]] and to figures in the Iran-Contra affair, and that Bath denied to Time that he was in the CIA but later said: "There's all sorts of degrees of civilian participation [in the CIA]."[^4] [[Pete Brewton]] wrote that in 1976 Bath started an airplane company, Jim Bath and Associates, with Johnson M. "Jack" Taylor, and that several months after its founding Bath "was named as a trustee for Sheikh Salem bin Laden of Saudi Arabia," with the job of handling all of bin Laden's North American investments and operations, citing Bath's resume.[^12] [[Jonathan Beaty]] and S. C. Gwynne wrote that Bill White, whom Beaty had flown in for debriefing during his research for Time magazine, alleged that his former business partner Bath "was a CIA agent with strange ties to both BCCI and President George Bush." In their account White told Beaty that Bath said he had been recruited "by George Bush himself in 1976, when Bush was director of the agency," that Bath and "George, Jr.," flew in the same Air National Guard unit, and that Bath said Bush wanted him involved with the Arabs and in the aviation business. They wrote that White also said Bath had been investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, and that most of Bath's investments, including Skyways Aircraft Company, "were really fronts for Mahfouz and other Saudis connected with BCCI." White's account of his falling out with Bath was an "admittedly adversarial relationship," in the authors' words.[^13]
### Footnotes
Harken, in Unger's account, drew investors linked to BCCI. Unger wrote that in 1987 Arkansas investment banker [[Jackson Stephens]] began raising $25 million from the [[Union Bank of Switzerland]] to invest in Harken, that the deal fell through, and that Stephens then introduced Harken to the Jeddah real estate investor [[Abdullah Taha Bakhsh]], whose investment gave him 17.6 percent of Harken's stock; Unger adds that Bakhsh, Khalid bin Mahfouz and Harken denied that Bakhsh's role had anything to do with BCCI.[^4] The Chronicle reported in 1992 that Bakhsh was among Harken's top shareholders and that Harken had been granted offshore drilling rights off [[Bahrain]].[^5] Unger wrote that in January 1990 Harken, which had never drilled outside the United States, won exclusive offshore drilling rights in Bahrain over [[Amoco]], that Bush said he thought the Bahrain deal "was a bad idea" and "had no idea that BCCI figured into Harken's financial dealings," and that Bush "went along with it when the final vote came."[^4] Unger wrote that neither Bush nor Harken had direct contact with bin Mahfouz or BCCI.[^4]
[^1]: Woodward, Bob. *Plan of Attack.* Simon & Schuster, 2004.
[^2]: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. *Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program.* December 9, 2014.
Bush sold 212,140 shares of Harken stock on June 22, 1990, at $4 per share, for $848,560.[^14][^15] Harken announced a loss of $23.2 million on August 20, 1990.[^15] A Securities and Exchange Commission memorandum drafted for the files on April 9, 1991, as the [[Center for Public Integrity]] reported it, noted that Bush had on four occasions filed late [[Form 4]] reports for Harken stock transactions worth more than $1 million. The tardiest, 34 weeks late, reported the June 22, 1990 sale.[^14] Salon reported that the SEC did not receive the Form 4 for the sale until March 4, 1991.[^15] In an October 1993 memorandum, the [[Securities and Exchange Commission|SEC]] stated that "the investigation has been terminated as to the conduct of Mr. Bush, and that, at this time, no enforcement action is contemplated with respect to him." The same memorandum said that the termination "must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result."[^15]
In April 1989 Bush and a group of partners bought the [[Texas Rangers]] baseball club from [[Eddie Chiles|Chiles]] for $86 million. Bush borrowed $500,000 from a Midland bank to buy a 1.8 percent stake.[^16] In 1998 [[Tom Hicks]] bought the team for $250 million. The partners had raised Bush's stake to 11.8 percent, and his share of the proceeds was $14.9 million on an investment of $606,302.[^16] The Center for Public Integrity also reported that [[Richard Rainwater]], who had put far more money into the club, received $25 million.[^16]
### Caterair and the Carlyle Group
The [[Carlyle Group]] co-founder [[David Rubenstein]] addressed the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association in April 2003, and the remarks were recorded. Democracy Now! broadcast the recording on July 3, 2003, and introduced it as concerning [[Caterair International]], on whose board of directors Bush served.[^17] Rubenstein said that Carlyle bought the airline catering business from [[Marriott]] and lost its investors' money after the Gulf War, that someone asked him to put on the board a man who was "down on his luck a bit," and that the man "spent three years" on the board. In the recording, Rubenstein said: "His name is George W. Bush. He became President of the United States."[^17] Joe Conason, writing in [[Salon]], called the arrangement "the comfy sinecure" that Carlyle provided to Bush.[^17] Briody, the author of [[The Iron Triangle]], stated on the same broadcast that George H.W. Bush had worked for Carlyle as a senior adviser since 1998, and that [[Fred Malek]] put Bush on the Caterair board as a favor and received in return favors from the administration, in Briody's words "certain F.A.A. restrictions and things like that for the airline business."[^17]
### Skull and Bones
Bush was a member of [[Skull and Bones]], the Yale senior society. Leslie wrote in Salon in March 2000 that "Bush, on the other hand, joined Bones."[^3] Leslie reported that [[Bill Minutaglio]], in his biography *First Son*, recorded that Bush considered joining a society called "Gin and Tonic" but was swayed when his father, then a congressman, conducted the tapping ritual himself.[^3] Leslie wrote that the elder Bush's membership in Bones "probably was the sole reason George W. was chosen," a view he presented as his own.[^3]
### September 11 and the August 6, 2001 briefing
The September 11, 2001 attacks were carried out by hijackers of [[al-Qaeda]]. On August 6, 2001, Bush received a [[President's Daily Brief]] item titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." The [[National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States]] reported that it was the 36th item briefed that year relating to Bin Ladin or al Qaeda, and "the first devoted to the possibility of an attack in the United States." The Commission wrote: "The President told us the August 6 report was historical in nature."[^18]
The [[Joint Inquiry]] of the House and Senate intelligence committees produced a final section, commonly called the "28 pages," that was classified after its 2002 publication. The [[House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]] announced on July 15, 2016 that the Obama administration had decided to declassify "the Joint Inquiry's only wholly classified section."[^19] The committee chairman, [[Devin Nunes]], said: "this section does not put forward vetted conclusions, but rather unverified leads that were later fully investigated by the Intelligence Community."[^19] The website 28pages.org states that when the joint inquiry report was published in 2002, the 28 pages "were fully redacted at the insistence of the George W. Bush administration."[^20]
### Detention and interrogation program
On September 17, 2001, Bush signed a covert action Memorandum of Notification "granting the CIA unprecedented counterterrorism authorities," including authority to capture and detain individuals. The [[Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]]'s study of the program, released in summary in December 2014, records that the memorandum "made no reference to interrogations or coercive interrogation techniques."[^21]
The [[Department of Justice]]'s [[Office of Legal Counsel]] issued two memoranda dated August 1, 2002. The first, from Assistant Attorney General [[Jay Bybee]] to [[John Rizzo]], Acting General Counsel of the CIA, concerned the interrogation of [[Abu Zubaydah]]. It states that it "memorializes our previous oral advice, given on July 24, 2002 and July 26, 2002, that the proposed conduct would not violate this prohibition," refers to ten techniques to be used in what the CIA had described as an "increased pressure phase," and concludes: "we conclude that the interrogation procedures that you propose would not violate Section 2340A." It states that the memorandum is "our best reading of the law" and that "there are no cases construing this statute."[^22] The second, addressed to White House Counsel [[Alberto Gonzales]], concluded that "Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death," and that "under the current circumstances, necessity or self-defense may justify interrogation methods that might violate Section 2340A."[^23] [[John Yoo]], then a deputy assistant attorney general, sent a July 13, 2002 letter to the CIA's acting general counsel on the subject.[^21] These opinions are commonly called the "[[Torture Memos]]."
The Committee found that the Office of Legal Counsel "relied on CIA representations," that the Department of Justice "did not conduct independent analysis or verification of the information it received from the CIA," and that "Those representations were inaccurate in material respects."[^21] Its first finding reads: "The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees."[^21] Its finding on the techniques reads: "The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others."[^21] Internal CIA records describe the waterboarding of [[Khalid Sheikh Mohammed]] as evolving into a "series of near drownings."[^21] The study reports that the CIA restricted access to the program until September 6, 2006, "by which time 117 of the 119 known detainees had already entered CIA custody."[^21]
On the President's knowledge, the Committee found: "According to CIA records, no CIA officer, up to and including CIA Directors George Tenet and Porter Goss, briefed the president on the specific CIA [[enhanced interrogation techniques]] before April 2006."[^21] The study records that, when briefed in April 2006, the president "expressed discomfort with the 'image of a detainee, chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself.'"[^21] Its seventh finding reads: "The CIA impeded effective White House oversight and decision-making."[^21] The CIA's June 2013 response to the study quotes Bush's memoir as stating that he discussed the program "with then-DCIA Tenet in 2002, prior to application of the techniques on Abu Zubaydah, and personally approved the techniques." The Committee's text adds that a memoir by former CIA acting general counsel John Rizzo disputes this account, and quotes Rizzo as writing that the one senior national security official of that period "who I did not believe was knowledgeable about the E.I.T.s was President Bush himself."[^21] The CIA's response states that "CIA records are contradictory and incomplete regarding when the President was briefed, but President Bush himself says he was briefed in 2002, before any techniques were used."[^21]
The CIA operated detention facilities outside the United States. The study redacts the host countries. The [[European Court of Human Rights]] ruled on July 24, 2014, in the case of [[Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri]], that [[Poland]] had hosted a secret CIA prison.[^24] Reports and litigation also associate detention sites with [[Romania]], [[Thailand]], and [[Afghanistan]].
### Warrantless surveillance
Bush authorized a program that the NSA protected under the cover term [[Stellar Wind|STELLARWIND]], which the inspectors general called the President's Surveillance Program (PSP).[^25] The Stellar Wind program was first authorized by the President on October 4, 2001, in a Top Secret Presidential Authorization issued to the Secretary of Defense, and the NSA General Counsel was read into the program on that day.[^25] The last Presidential Authorization expired on February 1, 2007.[^25] The inspectors general wrote that the President "authorized the NSA to intercept, without judicial approval or oversight, the content of international communications involving many U.S. persons."[^25] The program's collection portion was revealed in [[The New York Times]] and publicly confirmed by the President in December 2005.[^25] The NSA Inspector General was not read into the program until August 2002; according to the NSA General Counsel at the time, the President would not allow the Inspector General to be briefed before that date.[^25]
The Department of Justice Inspector General found it "extraordinary and inappropriate that a single DoJ attorney, John Yoo, was relied upon to conduct the initial legal assessment of the PSP," and that the lack of oversight of Yoo's work "contributed to a legal analysis of the PSP that, at a minimum, was factually flawed."[^25] The inspectors general concluded that the collection under the PSP and under FISA afterward "resulted in unprecedented collection of communications content and metadata."[^25] Title III of the [[FISA Amendments Act of 2008]] required reviews by the inspectors general of the DoD, DoJ, CIA, NSA and ODNI, and the joint report is dated July 10, 2009.[^25]
The collection was authorized by presidential orders rather than by the [[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]]. On June 27, 2013 The Guardian published a top-secret draft report by the NSA's inspector general and reported that the collection of bulk internet metadata began under the Stellar Wind program.[^26] The Guardian had identified [[Edward Snowden]] on June 9, 2013 as the source of its NSA disclosures.[^27]
### Iraq
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's 2004 report on prewar intelligence about the weapons programs of [[Saddam Hussein]] found that "A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence." The report concluded that the assessment that Iraq "is reconstituting its nuclear program" was not supported by the intelligence provided to the Committee. The report concerned the October 2002 [[National Intelligence Estimate]] on Iraq's weapons programs, and concluded that most of its key judgments were "either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting."[^28]
The [[Iraq Survey Group]]'s 2004 report, the Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence, stated that Saddam Hussein wanted to recreate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability, "which was essentially destroyed in 1991," after sanctions were removed, and that "Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program."[^29]
The [[Robb-Silberman Commission]], reporting on March 31, 2005, found that "Virtually all of the Intelligence Community's information on Iraq's alleged mobile biological weapons facilities was supplied by a source, code-named '[[Curveball]],' who was a fabricator."[^30] The Commission described "a story of Defense Department collectors who abdicated their responsibility to vet a critical source; of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts who placed undue emphasis on the source's reporting," and of Intelligence Community leaders who failed to tell policymakers about Curveball's flaws in the weeks before war.[^30] [[Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi]] told The Guardian in 2011 that he was Curveball, that he had told a German official about mobile bioweapons trucks throughout 2000 after the [[BND]], the German intelligence service, approached him, and that he fabricated the accounts to bring down Saddam Hussein's government.[^31]
The Senate Armed Services Committee minority staff report of October 21, 2004, prepared for Senator [[Carl Levin]], stated that the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy had inappropriately produced an alternative analysis, exaggerating a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida, as the Department of Defense Inspector General summarized it.[^32] The Robb-Silberman Commission concluded: "We conclude that it was the paucity of intelligence and poor analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure, that produced the inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments."[^30] It reported that "analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments," and also wrote: "it is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom." It summarized the post-war findings of the Iraq Survey Group: "The ISG found no evidence that Iraq had tried to reconstitute its capability to produce nuclear weapons after 1991."[^30]
The Department of Defense Inspector General's report of February 9, 2007, requested by Senators [[Pat Roberts]] and Carl Levin, reviewed the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy headed by [[Douglas Feith]], including the Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group and the Policy Support Office. The report states: "The actual Office of Special Plans had no responsibility for and did not perform any of the activities examined in this review." Its results section states that the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers. While such actions were not illegal or unauthorized, the actions were, in our opinion, inappropriate." The Under Secretary of Defense for Policy did not concur, stating that the actions were not intelligence activities and, even if they were, would be appropriate because they responded to direction from the Deputy Secretary of Defense.[^32] At the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing of February 9, 2007, Chairman Levin read the conclusion of his October 2004 report: "An alternative intelligence assessment process was established in the Office of Under Secretary for Policy, Douglas Feith, that was predisposed to find a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."[^33] Senators [[Chuck Hagel]] and [[Olympia Snowe]], in additional views to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's second report, wrote: "We endorse the DoD IG's finding that the OUSDP personnel's actions were inappropriate."[^34]
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's second report, on whether public statements by officials were substantiated, was approved by a vote of 10 to 5 on April 1, 2008 and released on June 5, 2008. The report reviewed five speeches, including that of Vice President [[Dick Cheney]] in Nashville on August 26, 2002, and states that the Vice President's August 2002 speech was not reviewed by the intelligence community and that intelligence officials could not find evidence that the President's September 2002 address to the United Nations General Assembly was reviewed by it.[^34] Its Conclusion 12 states: "Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence." Its Conclusion 15 states: "Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information."[^34] Senator [[Jay Rockefeller]] told the Senate that "the committee did conclude that the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact, when in reality it was unsubstantiated and often contradicted what they were saying, or even was nonexistent."[^35] Senator [[Orrin Hatch]], joined by Vice Chairman [[Kit Bond]] and Senator [[Richard Burr]], wrote in additional views that the Phase Two investigations "devolved from the beginning into partisan disagreement."[^34]
Mark Danner wrote in 2006 that the memorandum of a July 2002 meeting with [[Tony Blair]] recorded the head of British intelligence, "C," reporting on his Washington visit, and that Washington was engaged in a campaign to see to it that "the intelligence and facts" would be "fixed around the policy."[^36] The memorandum, dated July 23, 2002 and written by [[Matthew Rycroft]], was first published by [[The Sunday Times]] on May 1, 2005 and records: "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."[^37]
[^1]: White House, "Biography of President George W. Bush" (archived, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov). Sworn in January 20, 2001 and January 20, 2005; 46th Governor of Texas; born July 6, 1946, in New Haven; bachelor's degree in history from Yale University in 1968; F-102 fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard; Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1975; moved back to Midland to begin a career in the energy business; assembled the partners who bought the Texas Rangers in 1989; elected Governor of Texas on November 8, 1994 and re-elected on November 3, 1998. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/president/biography.html
[^2]: Biography.com, "George W. Bush." Eldest son of George H.W. and Barbara Bush, presidency, Yale enrollment in 1964, Delta Kappa Epsilon presidency, Texas Air National Guard enlistment in 1968, Air Force Reserve discharge on November 21, 1974. https://www.biography.com/us-president/george-w-bush
[^3]: Jacques Leslie, "Yale," Salon, March 1, 2000. Leslie identifies himself as a member of the Yale Class of 1968 who was asked to join Skull and Bones, and cites Bill Minutaglio's biography *First Son* for the account of Bush's tapping. Sole source for the Minutaglio account. https://www.salon.com/2000/03/01/yale/
[^4]: Craig Unger, *House of Bush, House of Saud* (Scribner, 2004), pp. 32 to 33 (Bath, Bush and the CIA denial), 100 (Bath's statement and the Arbusto allegation), 115 (Bath's $50,000 and the March 1979 start of operations), 116 to 117 (the 1986 Harken deal and Kendrick), 118 (no direct contact with BCCI), 119 to 120 (Stephens, Union Bank of Switzerland, Bakhsh), 121 to 122 (Bahrain). The Bath, Bakhsh and Bahrain passages rest on Unger's cited reporting, including the Wall Street Journal, 1991.
[^5]: Jerry Urban, "Bush Said Friend's Arbusto Investment Was His Own, Not Saudi Money," *Houston Chronicle*, June 4, 1992. Sole source for the sworn-deposition, trust-agreement and Bill White passages, which the newspaper attributes to court documents and to the litigants. Reproduced at https://911timeline.s3.amazonaws.com/1990s/houstonchronicle060492.html
[^6]: Harken Energy Corporation, Form 10-K for 1993, filed March 29, 1994 (SEC accession 0000950134-94-000289), Item 10, "Certain Matters Involving Directors and Executive Officers," and the list of Form 8-K reports. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313478/0000950134-94-000289.txt
[^7]: Harken Energy Corporation, Schedule 14A proxy statement filed April 25, 1994 (SEC accession 0000950134-94-000454): "Effective as of October 26, 1993 Mr. George W. Bush resigned as a Class B Director of the Company." https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313478/0000950134-94-000454.txt
[^8]: Report of the Independent Review Panel (Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi) on the September 8, 2004 "60 Minutes Wednesday" segment "For the Record" concerning President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service, January 5, 2005, pp. 1 (the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, May 1968 to October 1973, and the four documents), 3 to 5 (executive summary: "The Panel has not been able to conclude with absolute certainty whether the Killian documents are authentic or forgeries"; "myopic zeal"; defects 1 to 10). Archived copy of the CBS News posting: https://web.archive.org/web/2005id_/http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/CBS_Report.pdf
[^9]: FactCheck.org, "New Evidence Supports Bush Military Service (Mostly)," February 2004, including Bush's NBC interview. https://www.factcheck.org/2004/02/new-evidence-supports-bush-military-service-mostly/
[^10]: Democracy Now!, "White House Opens Bush Military Records, Questions Remain," headlines, February 11, 2004. https://democracynow.org/2004/2/11/headlines/white_house_opens_bush_military_records_questions_remain
[^11]: CBS News, statement of Leslie Moonves on the Independent Review Panel's report, January 10, 2005 (archived copy at cbsnews.com). The statement names the panel as Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi, notes the 224-page report, and announces that Mary Mapes was terminated and that Josh Howard, Mary Murphy and Betsy West were relieved of their duties and asked to resign. https://web.archive.org/web/20050115000000/http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/cbs_response.pdf
[^12]: Pete Brewton, *The Mafia, CIA & George Bush* (S.P.I. Books, 1992), p. 221, citing "Resume of Jim R. Bath." Sole source for the Jim Bath and Associates account as Brewton gives it.
[^13]: Jonathan Beaty and S. C. Gwynne, *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI* (Random House, 1993), pp. 226 to 230, giving the account of Bill White. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^14]: Knut Royce, "Bush violated security laws four times, SEC report says," Center for Public Integrity, October 4, 2000. The article describes the April 9, 1991 SEC memorandum and its figures. https://publicintegrity.org/politics/bush-violated-security-laws-four-times-sec-report-says/
[^15]: Salon, "Harken," July 13, 2002, quoting the SEC memorandum of October 1993 and the Harken loss announcement. https://www.salon.com/2002/07/13/harken/
[^16]: Center for Public Integrity, "How George W. Bush scored big with the Texas Rangers." https://publicintegrity.org/politics/how-george-w-bush-scored-big-with-the-texas-rangers/
[^17]: Democracy Now!, "Exclusive: Why The Carlyle Group Pushed George W. Bush Off Its Board," broadcast and rush transcript, July 3, 2003. Includes the recording of David Rubenstein's April 2003 remarks, Joe Conason's column in Salon, and the remarks of Dan Briody. Sole source for the Rubenstein remarks and for Briody's account of Fred Malek. https://www.democracynow.org/2003/7/3/democracy_now_exclusive_why_the_carlyle
[^18]: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, *The 9/11 Commission Report* (GPO, 2004), pp. 260-261, including the text of the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief item. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-911REPORT/pdf/GPO-911REPORT.pdf
[^19]: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, "Intel Committee publishes declassified '28 pages,'" July 15, 2016, including the statement of Chairman Devin Nunes. https://intelligence.house.gov/2016/07/15/intel-committee-publishes-declassified-28-pages/
[^20]: 28pages.org, statement on the classification history of the 28 pages. Sole source for the classification attribution to the George W. Bush administration. https://28pages.org/
[^21]: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, *Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program*, S. Rept. 113-288 (declassified December 2014): Findings and Conclusions (#1, #3, #5, #6, #7), the Memorandum of Notification of September 17, 2001, p. 39 and notes 17 and 178 (the April 2006 briefing, Bush's memoir, the CIA's June 2013 response and the Rizzo memoir), and the Yoo letter of July 13, 2002. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/CRPT-113srpt288.pdf
[^22]: Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, Memorandum for John Rizzo, Acting General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency, "Interrogation of al Qaeda Operative," August 1, 2002 (signed by Jay S. Bybee), pp. 1 and 18. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/legacy/2010/08/05/memo-bybee2002.pdf
[^23]: Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, "Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A," August 1, 2002, PDF pp. 1, 2 and 46. https://www.justice.gov/olc/file/886061/dl
[^24]: Open Society Justice Initiative, case page for *Al-Nashiri v. Poland*, summarizing the European Court of Human Rights judgment of July 24, 2014. https://www.justiceinitiative.org/litigation/al-nashiri-v-poland/mk
[^25]: Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, *Report on the President's Surveillance Program*, July 10, 2009, Volume I and the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General volume, as released April 24, 2015 in *New York Times Co. v. U.S. Department of Justice*, No. 14 Civ. 3776 (S.D.N.Y.). Preface (Title III), cover term (p. 12), the NSA General Counsel read in on October 4, 2001 (PDF p. 35), the NSA Inspector General read in August 2002, the Presidential Authorizations list and expiry of February 1, 2007, the Yoo findings, and the conclusions on "unprecedented collection." ACLU-hosted copy. https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/document/foia/StellarWind_IG_Report_OCRd_reduced.pdf
[^26]: Glenn Greenwald and Spencer Ackerman, "NSA collected US email records in bulk for more than two years under Obama," The Guardian, June 27, 2013, publishing a top-secret draft report by the NSA inspector general. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/27/nsa-data-mining-authorised-obama
[^27]: Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras, "Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations," The Guardian, June 9, 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance
[^28]: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, *Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq*, S. Rept. 108-301 (2004), p. 14 (Conclusion 1). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-108srpt301/pdf/CRPT-108srpt301.pdf
[^29]: Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence, *Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD* (the Duelfer report), September 30, 2004, "Regime Strategic Intent" and "Nuclear" key findings. Archived copy of the CIA posting: https://web.archive.org/web/2012id_/https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/Comp_Report_Key_Findings.pdf
[^30]: Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, *Report to the President of the United States*, March 31, 2005, pp. 45, 48, 50 and 51. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-WMD/pdf/GPO-WMD.pdf
[^31]: Martin Chulov and Helen Pidd, "Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war," The Guardian, February 15, 2011. Sole source for Janabi's account of his dealings with the BND. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/15/defector-admits-wmd-lies-iraq-war
[^32]: Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, *Review of the Pre-Iraqi War Activities of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy*, Report No. 07-INTEL-04, February 9, 2007 (declassified), Executive Summary, pp. i and ii. https://irp.fas.org/agency/dod/ig020907-decl.pdf
[^33]: Senate Committee on Armed Services, hearing "Briefing on the Department of Defense Inspector General's Report on the Activities of the Office of Special Plans Prior to the War in Iraq," S. Hrg. 110-232, February 9, 2007, opening statement of Chairman Levin, quoting the conclusion of the committee minority staff report of October 2004. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-110shrg35438/pdf/CHRG-110shrg35438.pdf
[^34]: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, *Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information*, S. Rept. 110-345 (June 5, 2008), pp. 1 to 2 (the five speeches and the intelligence review of them), Conclusion 12 (p. 71), Conclusion 15 (p. 82), Additional Views of Chairman Rockefeller (p. 89), Additional Views of Senators Hagel and Snowe (pp. 97 to 98) and Additional Views of Senator Hatch joined by Vice Chairman Bond and Senator Burr (p. 166). https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/110345.pdf
[^35]: Congressional Record, Senate, June 5, 2008, pp. S5133-S5135 (Sen. Rockefeller on prewar Iraq intelligence). https://irp.fas.org/congress/2008_cr/rock060508.html
[^36]: Mark Danner, "The Secret Way to War," *The New York Review of Books*, April 6, 2006. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2006/04/06/the-secret-way-to-war/
[^37]: Matthew Rycroft to David Manning, "Iraq: Prime Minister's meeting, 23 July," as published in "The secret Downing Street memo," *The Sunday Times*, May 1, 2005 (archived copy). https://web.archive.org/web/2005id_/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html

6
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Giulio Andreotti.md
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@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ tags:
born: 1919-01-14
died: 2013-05-06
location: "Rome, Italy"
summary: "Giulio Andreotti was Italy's seven-time Prime Minister and dominant Democrazia Cristiana figure who refused to negotiate for Aldo Moro's release in 1978, disclosed the existence of Operation Gladio to parliament in October 1990, and was acquitted of Mafia association charges after an eight-year trial."
summary: "Giulio Andreotti was Italy's seven-time Prime Minister who refused to negotiate for Aldo Moro's release in 1978, acknowledged Operation Gladio in 1990, and was acquitted of Mafia association charges."
---
Giulio Andreotti was born on January 14, 1919, in Rome. He served as Prime Minister of Italy seven times between 1972 and 1992, more than any other postwar Italian leader, and was the preeminent figure of the [[Democrazia Cristiana]] party's right wing for four decades. Known as "Il Divo" and "Il Gobbo" (the Hunchback), he was a master of the opaque center of Italian power who simultaneously wielded institutional authority, intelligence connections, and political longevity of a kind unique in Western European democracy. He died in Rome on May 6, 2013.[^1]
@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ The refusal was justified as a constitutional principle that the state could not
### Gladio Disclosure
On October 24, 1990, in response to questioning by magistrate [[Felice Casson]] and parliamentary demands following Casson's discovery of the [[Operation Gladio|Gladio]] documentation, Andreotti - serving as Prime Minister for the sixth time - confirmed to the Italian Parliament that a secret NATO stay-behind network had existed in Italy since 1956. His disclosure, carefully calibrated to acknowledge the network's existence while limiting information about its political operations, triggered the parliamentary and European investigations that followed.[^2]
Andreotti, serving as Prime Minister for the sixth time, first acknowledged the [[Operation Gladio|Gladio]] stay-behind structure to the parliamentary Stragi commission on August 3, 1990, saying its activities had continued until 1972; a document he sent the commission on October 18 showed it still active. On October 24, 1990, answering interpellations in the Chamber of Deputies, he described the NATO-framework network and said he had revised the document after magistrate [[Felice Casson]] wrote to the commission's chairman.[^3] The network dated from a 1956 accord between the Italian military intelligence service SIFAR and the CIA, according to the commission's 1992 report.[^4] His disclosure, carefully calibrated to acknowledge the network's existence while limiting information about its political operations, triggered the parliamentary and European investigations that followed.[^2]
### Mafia Trial
@ -52,3 +52,5 @@ The Court of Cassation's final ruling acquitted Andreotti of the murder charge a
[^1]: Pansa, Giampaolo. *Il revisionista.* Rizzoli, 2009. Flamini, Gianni. *Il Partito del Golpe.* Bovolenta, 1982-1985.
[^2]: Ganser, Daniele. *NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe.* Frank Cass, 2005. Willan, Philip. *Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy.* Constable, 1991.
[^3]: Camera dei deputati, X Legislatura, *Discussioni*, seduta del 24 ottobre 1990 (no. 537), *Resoconto stenografico*, pp. 71561-71562. Translated from the Italian. https://legislature.camera.it/_dati/leg10/lavori/stenografici/sed0537/sed0537.pdf
[^4]: Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sul terrorismo in Italia e sulle cause della mancata individuazione dei responsabili delle stragi, *Relazione sull'inchiesta condotta sulle vicende connesse all'operazione Gladio*, Doc. XXIII n. 51, approved April 14-15, 1992, pp. 12-13, 29-30. Translated from the Italian. https://www.parlamento.it/service/PDF/PDFServer/BGT/909971.pdf

191
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Günter Guillaume.md
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@ -2,51 +2,204 @@
aliases:
- Günter Guillaume
- Gunter Guillaume
- Günther Guillaume
- Guenther Guillaume
- Günter Karl Heinz Guillaume
category: "Intelligence & Government"
tags:
- Person
- Germany
- Stasi
- EastGermany
- HauptverwaltungAufklaerung
- ColdWar
- Intelligence
- Espionage
- 1960s
- 1970s
summary: "Günter Guillaume was a Stasi agent who emigrated to West Germany in 1956, built a career in the SPD, became Chancellor Willy Brandt's personal aide, and whose exposure as a spy in April 1974 forced Brandt's resignation in one of the Cold War's most politically damaging intelligence operations."
- SocialDemocraticParty
- WillyBrandt
summary: "Günter Guillaume was a Stasi officer who emigrated to West Germany in 1956, became personal aide to Chancellor Willy Brandt, and whose arrest in April 1974 preceded Brandt's resignation."
born: 1927-02-01
died: 1995-04-10
location: "East Berlin, East Germany"
location: "Eggersdorf bei Berlin, Germany"
created: 2026-05-01
updated: 2026-10-07
relations:
- type: employed_by
with: "Stasi"
start: 1954
end: 1974
role: "Officer in Special Deployment (OibE); Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung codename Hansen"
fn: 5
- type: employed_by
with: "Federal Chancellery"
start: 1970
end: 1974
role: "Referent for trade union liaison, then party liaison aide to Chancellor Willy Brandt"
fn: 3
- type: member_of
with: "Social Democratic Party"
start: 1957
end: 1974
fn: 10
- type: informant_for
with: "Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung"
start: 1954
end: 1974
role: "codename Hansen"
fn: 3
- type: spouse_of
with: "Christel Guillaume"
start: 1951
fn: 1
- type: relative_of
with: "Pierre Boom"
role: "son"
fn: 1
- type: investigated
with: "Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz"
reverse: true
start: 1973
end: 1974
fn: 37
- type: participant_in
with: "Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf"
start: 1974
end: 1975
role: "defendant, treason trial before the 4th Criminal Senate"
fn: 50
---
Günter Guillaume was born February 1, 1927, in [[Berlin]], [[Germany]]. He joined the [[Communist Party of Germany]] (KPD) as a young man and after World War II worked in the East German state apparatus. He was recruited by the [[Stasi]]'s foreign intelligence directorate, the [[Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung]] (HVA), and assigned a long-term penetration operation targeting [[West Germany|West German]] political structures. He died April 10, 1995, in East Berlin.[^1]
Günter Guillaume was born February 1, 1927, in [[Berlin]], [[Germany]], and died April 10, 1995, in Eggersdorf bei Berlin.[^1][^2] He was an officer of the [[Stasi]], the [[East Germany|East German]] Ministry for State Security, and in the early 1970s served in the [[Federal Chancellery]] as the personal aide for party affairs to [[West Germany|West German]] Chancellor [[Willy Brandt]]. His arrest in April 1974 was followed by Brandt's resignation.[^2]
### The Cover Identity and Western Penetration
### Training and Recruitment
In May 1956, Guillaume emigrated to West Germany along with his wife Christel (also a Stasi agent) posing as refugees fleeing the GDR. They settled in Frankfurt and Guillaume joined the [[Social Democratic Party]] (SPD). The cover story was well-constructed: Guillaume presented himself as a disillusioned East German committed to West German democracy, and his apparent convictions allowed him to build genuine relationships within the SPD's political networks over the following years.
The Stasi trained Günter and [[Christel Guillaume]] in East Germany during the 1950s as candidates for defection to the West, and Günter was an Officer in Special Deployment (Offizier im besonderen Einsatz, OibE) of the ministry. The Stasi's foreign intelligence directorate, the [[Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung]] (HVA), registered the couple under the codenames "Hansen" for Günter and "Heinze" for Christel, on September 9, 1954, and October 30, 1958, respectively; the entries survive in the HVA's SIRA databases, which archivists of the [[Stasi-Unterlagen-Archiv]] decoded in the 1990s.[^3] His assignment is recorded as "Integration und Aufklärung der SPD" (integration into and reconnaissance of the SPD).[^4]
Guillaume worked in Frankfurt SPD party organization and eventually moved to the federal level. His competence, loyalty, and political reliability brought him to the attention of senior SPD figures. By 1970 he had been brought into the Chancellor's office as an administrator and in 1972 became a personal aide to Chancellor [[Willy Brandt]], with responsibility for party liaison and some administrative duties. He accompanied Brandt on official travel and had access to sensitive communications.[^1]
[[Markus Wolf]], who directed the HVA, wrote that the couple went to West Germany in the mid-1950s on the service's orders under their real names, that Christel's Dutch mother had already moved to Frankfurt, which spared them refugee camps and questioning by Western intelligence services, and that they were told to open and run sources inside the [[Social Democratic Party]].[^5]
### Exposure and Arrest
He was born into a Berlin family and attended primary school from 1933 to 1941, then trained as a photographer, with the details of the sequence unclear because he gave contradictory accounts. He joined the NSDAP on April 20, 1944, left photography about autumn 1944 for three months in the Reichsarbeitsdienst, and was conscripted into the Wehrmacht on January 6, 1945. In May 1945 he spent about six weeks in British captivity and then worked as a farm laborer in Schleswig-Holstein until the end of the year. In 1946 he returned to East Berlin, where he worked as a photographer and last as a technical editor at the publisher [[Volk und Wissen]], again with contradictory statements about those years. He became a member of the FDGB trade union federation in 1950. On May 12, 1951 he married Christel Margarete Ingeborg Boom at the Leisnig registry office, and the couple moved to Lehnitz near Berlin the same year.[^1] The security declaration and the refugee-intake file gave different accounts of his years at Volk und Wissen: the intake file gave 1953 to 1955 as picture editor, the declaration 1951 to 1955 as technical editor.[^6] The two records of Christel's birth differ: one gives October 6, 1927, the other November 6, 1927 in Allenstein.[^7] He joined the [[Communist Party of Germany]] (KPD) as a young man.
The [[Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz]] (BfV), West Germany's domestic counterintelligence service, had been investigating Guillaume since at least 1973 on the basis of intercepted signals intelligence that suggested his connection to East German intelligence. In April 1974, the BfV informed Chancellor Brandt of the evidence against his aide.
### Emigration and the SPD, 1956 to 1969
Brandt continued to use Guillaume in his work while the investigation was completed - a decision subsequently criticized by the BfV and others as having prolonged Guillaume's access to sensitive material. Guillaume was arrested on April 24, 1974. His wife Christel was arrested simultaneously.
On May 12 and 13, 1956 the couple crossed into West Berlin near Hohen Neuendorf-Frohnau and flew to the Federal Republic. On May 13, 1956 they took a flat in [[Frankfurt]]. They did not pass through an emergency-admission camp and were taken in at the flat of Christel's mother, the Dutch national [[Erna Boom]], at Finkenhofstraße 29; police registration followed on July 1, 1956. Guillaume applied for residence on September 13, 1956, and the permit was granted on December 3, 1956.[^1] The cover story of a family reunification with a mother-in-law who had moved to Frankfurt presented the pair as refugees from the GDR.[^8] The [[Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz]] (BfV) memoranda of May 1973 listed the entry without the admission camp, the late application of September 13, 1956, and the gap to the police registration of July 1, 1956 among the features it treated as suspicious.[^9]
Guillaume reportedly told his arresting officers "I am a citizen of the GDR and an officer of the National People's Army. I ask you to respect my honour as an officer" - a statement that was widely reported and confirmed the intelligence nature of his work.[^1]
On August 15, 1956 the couple opened a typing bureau in the shared flat, which added copying and photocopying on September 1, 1956 and ran until April 1, 1957.[^1][^10] Guillaume also helped his mother-in-law run a coffee shop with a retail trade in coffee and chocolate in Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen that she had founded on July 9, 1956, and from July 1, 1957 the two ran it as a joint business that also sold sweets, tobacco products and spirits; the retail business was deregistered in May 1963.[^1] The family business has been described as a snack bar.[^11] A coffee and tobacco shop called Boom am Dom served as a contact point for East German agents.[^8] Wolf wrote that Günter passed information on microfilm in empty cigar tubes that a courier collected in his mother-in-law's shop, and that the HVA kept one-way radio contact with the couple at fixed times on set days of the month.[^12]
### Political Consequences
Guillaume joined the SPD in 1957 and became managing secretary of the SPD sub-district (Unterbezirk) of Frankfurt on March 1, 1964, a post he held until April 30, 1968; from May 1968 until he left for Bonn on December 31, 1969 he was managing secretary of the SPD city-council group in Frankfurt, sat on the city council from October 1968, and served in electoral district 140 as the campaign representative of Federal Minister [[Georg Leber]].[^1][^13] Christel worked as a secretary in the SPD's Hesse-South district until 1964 and then in the Hesse state chancellery in Wiesbaden, first as secretary to State Secretary [[Willi Birkelbach]]; from February 1971 she worked in Hesse's representation in Bonn until her arrest.[^1] Wolf wrote that she became head of Birkelbach's office in the early 1960s and that secret NATO documents reached his desk.[^14]
Brandt resigned as Chancellor on May 7, 1974, citing his personal responsibility for negligence in security. His decision was influenced both by the objective seriousness of the penetration and by the political atmosphere the affair had created. His successor as Chancellor was [[Helmut Schmidt]].
Between July 30, 1969, and April 8, 1974, he transmitted 23 items on internal SPD matters, twelve on government policy and nine on trade union questions; the historian Daniela Münkel assesses his intelligence value to the Stasi as not outstanding and him as unquestionably not a top source. The HVA was allowed to destroy its entire file holdings during the dissolution of the Stasi in 1989 and 1990.[^3] Wolf wrote that Guillaume's information and assessments had a quite different significance from the secret documents reaching the HVA through other sources, and that Guillaume helped shape the détente between the Federal Republic and the GDR by showing the HVA Brandt's will for peace.[^15]
The Guillaume affair damaged [[Ostpolitik]] by removing its principal architect at a critical moment. It also exposed the vulnerability of West German political parties to long-term Stasi penetration operations and generated a reassessment of counterintelligence practices.[^1]
### Chancellery Posting, 1969 to 1972
### Trial and Exchange
Guillaume worked in the 1969 election campaign organization of the transport minister Georg Leber, who proposed him for a post in the Chancellery; [[Herbert Ehrenberg]], who headed the Chancellery's economic and social policy department, looked for an aide for liaison with trade unions and employers' associations.[^3][^4][^1] Wolf wrote that Guillaume presented himself to the head of the Chancellery, [[Horst Ehmke]], three weeks after Brandt's election as Chancellor, and that Ehmke saw no reason to refuse his sponsors.[^16]
Guillaume was tried in West Germany on charges of espionage and treason. He was convicted in December 1975 and sentenced to thirteen years in prison. Christel Guillaume received an eight-year sentence. He was held in West German custody until October 1981, when he and his wife were exchanged for Western agents held in East Germany in a spy exchange negotiated between the two German states.
The Chancellery's inquiries raised reservations at the security group of the [[Bundeskriminalamt]] and at the [[Bundesnachrichtendienst]] (BND).[^4] The BND answered the Chancellery on December 16, 1969.[^17] On December 17, 1969 a BND telex reported that a BND card entry of April 1954 said Guillaume had traveled the Federal Republic on behalf of the publisher Volk und Wissen to establish contacts with publishers, printers and persons and then infiltrate them from the east.[^18] The BND also knew that Volk und Wissen served as a residency (Residentur) for members of the Ministry for State Security; its president, [[Gerhard Wessel]], testified that the Chancellery's question had been aimed at Guillaume personally.[^19] Wessel was ill on December 23, 1969, and a telex of that date from the BND president gave the Chancellery the background instead. State secretary [[Egon Bahr]], who stood in for the head of the Chancellery, noted by hand on the telex that "Selbst wenn Sie einen positiven Eindruck haben, bleibt ein gewisses Sicherheitsrisiko, gerade hier" (even if you have a positive impression, a certain security risk remains, precisely here).[^20] Ehmke testified that Bahr had evidently assumed Guillaume would be hired if he made a proper impression in the planned interview, and that this was a misunderstanding, since the interview was meant to gather comparison material and the BfV check still had to follow.[^19] Wolf wrote that Bahr remained suspicious and told Ehmke he might be wronging Guillaume but that Guillaume's past made it extremely risky to take him into the Chancellery, and that the warning went unheard.[^21]
Guillaume returned to East Germany, where he worked for a time in the Stasi's training programs before East Germany's collapse in 1989-1990. He published a memoir after reunification and died in East Berlin in 1995.[^1]
Ehmke and the Chancellery's security official Schlichter interviewed Guillaume on January 7, 1970, with Ehrenberg present, and Guillaume countersigned the record on January 12, 1970.[^19] The BfV completed a comprehensive card check that it reported to the Chancellery security official on January 27, 1970.[^22] The appointment took effect on January 1, 1970, and Guillaume took up service on January 28, 1970.[^23] He was cleared for classified material up to the level Geheim on May 12, 1970.[^4] Wolf wrote that Guillaume was responsible for receiving and forwarding the incoming messages and the courier mail arriving by helicopter, that the BND staff quickly grew used to his evident standing with the government's leadership, and that with the consent of the Verfassungsschutz he soon received the formal clearance for the highest level of classified material.[^24] On November 30, 1972, an internal order assigned him to the office of the Chancellor, where he took over the party and parliamentary-group liaison portfolio held by the administrative official Reuschenbach.[^25] Wolf wrote that Reuschenbach, a campaign manager running for the Bundestag, proposed Guillaume as his successor and that from January 1, 1973 Guillaume was the personal aide for party matters, attending the SPD executive and parliamentary-group meetings.[^26]
### The BND, the BfV and the Mercker Commission
The Second Inquiry Committee of the [[Bundestag]] found that it would have been sensible for the BND president to pass on the BND's knowledge about Volk und Wissen to Ehmke, since a reference to the publisher was in the card report on Guillaume. Nollau testified that he had not mentioned to Genscher the source reports of the Untersuchungsausschuß Freiheitlicher Juristen or of the BND, which had not seemed weighty to him, and that he would have presented the letter of the UfJ of November 22, 1955 had its wording been known to him, because it was truly weighty.[^27] The committee heard the expert Mercker testify that the BND held material on Guillaume that, under the guidelines, should have been passed to the BfV, and that the principle of passing such domestic-policy material to the BfV had not always been observed.[^28]
Mercker was one of three members of the [[Mercker Commission]], which under a contract of May 31, 1968 with the Federal Republic, represented by the head of the Chancellery [[Karl Carstens]], reviewed complaints by BND staff and tips from outsiders about irregularities in the BND. Its members were the former state secretary Mercker, the former ministerial director Raab and the former lieutenant general Zerbel. The first part of its report of July 24, 1969 dealt with the complaints. The government's published excerpt of the second part, transmitted to the Bundestag on December 3, 1974, records the commission's findings that the BND's effectiveness in reconnaissance against the East had steadily declined and that staff had expressed suspicion that leading BND officials were cooperating with the adversary; the commission found that the staff based this suspicion on specific facts and their assessment, and the government added that the BND's new leadership had followed up the hints and the suspicions had not been confirmed. The commission also found that security reasons, in particular the accusation of enemy control (Feindsteuerung), had too readily been used against inconvenient staff. Its recommendations included intensive Chancellery supervision of the BND to prevent it from becoming a state within the state. The government stated that the full report "ist auch heute nicht zu einer vollständigen Veröffentlichung geeignet" (is not suitable even today for full publication).[^29]
A separate government commission on preventive security (Vorbeugender Geheimschutz), composed of the former state secretaries Birckholtz, Eschenburg, Maassen and Mercker, was established by cabinet resolutions of May 14 and 29, 1974, began work on May 31, 1974, and handed its report on the security questions raised by the Guillaume case to the government on November 18, 1974; the Chancellor [[Helmut Schmidt]] forwarded it to the Bundestag by letter of December 3, 1974.[^30]
### Warnings and Surveillance, 1973
Wolf wrote that the HVA's longtime West Berlin source Wilhelm Gronau of the DGB's Ostbüro was arrested in autumn 1972 while meeting his East German instructor, and that the instructor carried a note with the name Guillaume.[^31] The Second Inquiry Committee recorded that the first suspicions against Guillaume were recognized in April 1973 and hardened during May, and that the BfV's memoranda of May 11 and 17, 1973 recommended surveillance.[^32] Wolf wrote that the BfV was certain of Guillaume's identity "nicht später als März 1973" (no later than March 1973).[^33]
Wolf described how the BfV identified Guillaume through radio traffic. He wrote that in the 1950s the HVA used a Soviet cipher system until it learned that Western services had broken it with computers and could match telegrams to recipients; the HVA withdrew the system and judged that the early telegrams to the Guillaumes allowed no conclusions about their identity, but overlooked the birthday and New Year greetings the service sent its staff. A BfV official handling unattributed radio messages, in canteen talk with a colleague who remembered the name Guillaume from the Gronau case, recalled a recipient whose name began with G, who had become active in the late 1950s, had access to the SPD and was important enough to receive greeting telegrams from East Berlin. He compared the dates of the greetings with the birthdays in the Guillaume family, and Wolf wrote that from then on everything was clear.[^34] Intercepted and decrypted East German radio messages with birthday greetings and a "Glückwunsch zum zweiten Mann" ("congratulations to the second man") matched Günter Guillaume and his son, born in Frankfurt, to the same dates, and that the indications then reached the BfV president, [[Günther Nollau]], who recognized an urgent suspicion although no evidence usable in court existed.[^35]
The case file went through the BfV leadership to its president on May 23, 1973, and a meeting on May 28, 1973 concluded that an urgent suspected case existed that cautious surveillance had to clarify and that the material was not sufficient for proceedings by the Federal Prosecutor.[^36] On May 29, 1973, at 10:30, Nollau briefed the interior minister, [[Hans-Dietrich Genscher]], with the head of the minister's office, [[Klaus Kinkel]], present. All three testified that Nollau named a special intelligence method and an unexplained five-month gap in Guillaume's curriculum vitae before his move to the Federal Republic as grounds; Genscher said he must inform the Chancellor at once, which Nollau first refused and then also approved. Genscher and Kinkel testified that Nollau named only these two grounds. Nollau testified that he could not say what further details he mentioned and, asked whether he had told Genscher that Guillaume was an agent, answered "not in those words, but with that opinion." The committee found that Genscher and Kinkel did not learn that Nollau and the BfV experts were convinced that Guillaume was a spy still active, and found credible Nollau's statement that he knew the matter better than Genscher.[^37]
Genscher informed Brandt in two conversations, on May 29 after a coalition meeting and on May 30, 1973. Brandt testified that Genscher told him the suspicion came from a source of a special kind reaching back to the 1950s, that he took it seriously but thought the suspicion very unlikely because Ehmke had told him in 1970 or 1971 that Guillaume had been thoroughly checked, and that he did not recall mentioning that. According to the committee, the interior minister relayed the BfV's advice to leave Guillaume in his place and give no warning by changing his function or behavior toward him, and Brandt agreed to the surveillance. In the same conversation Brandt raised whether Guillaume should accompany him on his Norway holiday; Genscher said he would ask Nollau and brought the answer the next day that nothing should change, since the suspect might otherwise be warned.[^38] Genscher and Nollau gave conflicting accounts of a telephone call on May 30, 1973: Genscher said he asked Nollau whether the Norway plan should change and Nollau said it should not; Nollau insisted he learned of the trip only after it began in early July. The committee stated that the conflict could not be resolved. Grabert confirmed that Brandt told him of the matter on June 4, 1973, and a BfV file note of July 4, 1973 records that Guillaume was on holiday with the Chancellor.[^39]
The Chancellery sent Guillaume a telex with secret information for Brandt on July 4, 1973.[^4] Wolf wrote that Guillaume accompanied Brandt to Norway at the end of June 1973, handled all correspondence for several weeks, and was shown on television at the cipher machine reading a telex.[^40] Chancellery telexes to Brandt's residence, including secret ones, ran through Guillaume's hands.[^8] Wolf wrote that the HVA never received the films of the copied Norway documents: Christel handed them to her courier "Anita", the two women noticed they were being followed, and the courier dropped the package from a Rhine bridge into the water. He wrote that the prosecution at the trial assumed the papers had reached East Berlin, that Guillaume confirmed that version, and that he himself stayed silent about it for the time being.[^41]
Wolf wrote that the discrepancies between Genscher and Nollau led to a suspicion, in Bonn as well, that insiders had deliberately let Brandt walk into disaster, that Genscher was already talking with the opposition leader [[Helmut Kohl]] about a CDU-FDP coalition, and that Nollau, who had maintained until his death that he warned clearly, was declared the culprit.[^42] Genscher and Kinkel testified in Wolf's own trial in 1993 that Nollau had informed them only of a vague suspicion.[^43]
### Arrest and Resignation, 1974
Guillaume and his wife were arrested on April 24, 1974 in their apartment in Bonn. The minority opinion of the Second Inquiry Committee, written by the CDU/CSU member Gerster, records the arrest of the personal aide of Chancellor Willy Brandt, Günter Guillaume, and his wife, whom it names "Christine, geb. Boom," on suspicion of intelligence activity. The majority report gives the wife's name as Christel.[^44] Elizabeth Pond reported in 1981 that after his arrest Guillaume confirmed proudly that he was an officer in the East German Army.[^11] The words widely reported from the arrest are: "I am a citizen of the GDR and an officer of the National People's Army. I ask you to respect my honour as an officer."
Brandt wrote that on the morning of April 24, 1974, on his return from Cairo, he was greeted with the news that one of his Chancellery advisers had been arrested as a spy, that it did not immediately occur to him that he would have to resign, and that his decision matured "without undue haste" and was finally taken on May 6. He wrote that he had "taken advice which, looking back, I should not have taken."[^45]
The Bundeskriminalamt delivered a dossier to Brandt on May 1, 1974, containing claims from his bodyguards that Guillaume had brought women to him. Brandt met SPD leaders at Bad Münstereifel on May 4 and informed the SPD leadership on the morning of May 5.[^46] Brandt's resignation letter reached the federal president, [[Gustav Heinemann]], on the evening of May 6, 1974, and states that he takes "die politische Verantwortung für Fahrlässigkeiten im Zusammenhang mit der Agentenaffäre Guillaume" (political responsibility for negligence in connection with the Guillaume agent affair).[^46] The resignation became public at midnight. Brandt explained the decision to the SPD parliamentary group on May 7. The Bundestag elected Helmut Schmidt as his successor on May 16, 1974.[^46] The years of Guillaume's service were the years of Brandt's [[Ostpolitik]], the normalization of relations between East and West Germany.[^11] Wolf wrote that the resignation after the arrest of "our scout" Guillaume was something for which he was still blamed.[^47]
The East German security service analyzed the resignation in a report of May 14, 1974, titled "Entwicklung der Krise der Koalition und zum Verfall der Autorität Willy Brandts." Its conclusion reads "Der Fall Guillaume war nur der äußere Anlaß zum Rücktritt Brandts von seiner Funktion als Bundeskanzler" (The Guillaume case was only the outward occasion for Brandt's resignation from the office of Chancellor).[^48] In 1972 the Stasi bribed two members of the Bundestag, whose votes allowed Brandt to survive a no-confidence motion of the CDU/CSU on April 27, 1972.[^48][^3] Wolf wrote that he recalled the CDU deputy [[Julius Steiner]] as a mediocre source who had received regular payments, and that the opposition was unexpectedly two votes short.[^49]
### Trial and Exchange, 1975 to 1981
Guillaume was tried for treason before the 4th Criminal Senate of the [[Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf]]. Brandt testified there on October 1, 1974.[^50] A draft letter to the Rhineland-Palatinate minister-president Helmut Kohl on the question of an exchange of Guillaume is dated September 9, 1974.[^50] On December 15, 1975 the court convicted Guillaume of treason and sentenced him to thirteen years in prison; his wife Christel received eight years.[^51][^3] The Chancellery recorded the announcement of the judgment in a memorandum of December 16, 1975.[^50] Guillaume's sentence of thirteen years for treason was reported in 1981 as having been imposed in 1975.[^52]
Christel Guillaume was released in March 1981, in an exchange described as the first East-West spy swap in twenty months, after West Germany pardoned her. East Germany had repeatedly sought Guillaume's return, while West Germany insisted that he serve his full sentence.[^11] Reports in September 1981 described a six-nation swap that would include Guillaume, which Bonn did not officially confirm at the time.[^53] West Germany released Guillaume on October 1, 1981 in an exchange with East Germany, under which, according to a source, about 3,000 East Germans would be allowed to join relatives in West Germany.[^52] Leaked terms of the exchange were that East Germany would release 35 imprisoned West German spies and political prisoners and grant 3,000 exit visas, with France, Denmark and South Africa each releasing an East-bloc agent, and that West Germany would pay $65.2 million and release at least two spies; as carried out, France, Denmark and South Africa kept their Eastern agents for the time being. Guillaume was "placed in a delivery van and hustled eastward," and the East German intermediary was the lawyer [[Wolfgang Vogel]].[^54]
### Later Life and Family
After his return to the GDR, Guillaume gave several lectures on his operation at the MfS school, and the Stasi celebrated the pair with a two-hour documentary under the title "Auftrag erfüllt" (Mission Accomplished). The memoirs of [[Werner Grossmann]], the last head of the HVA, describe the effect of the affair on [[Erich Honecker]] as a "Guillaume-Syndrom": Honecker feared a second case and asked [[Erich Mielke]] to shut down further agents in the Chancellery.[^3]
Guillaume published his account in 1988 as *Die Aussage: wie es wirklich war* (The Statement: As It Really Was), recorded by Günter Karau and published by the Militärverlag der DDR in East Berlin. A second edition followed in 1990 from Universitas in Munich, and a third in 1993 from Ullstein.[^55]
Christel Guillaume, born Boom, died in Berlin; her death was reported on March 25, 2004.[^56] Their son, [[Pierre Boom|Pierre Tobias Charles Guillaume]], was born in Frankfurt on April 8, 1957, and published *Der fremde Vater* (The Stranger Father) under the name Pierre Boom with Aufbau-Verlag in 2004.[^1][^57] Pierre Boom's father was arrested at the family's Bonn apartment on April 24, 1974, and returned to the GDR on October 1, 1981.[^58]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Wolf, Markus, with Anne McElvoy. *Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism's Greatest Spymaster.* Times Books, 1997 (Wolf, who directed the HVA and oversaw the Guillaume operation, discusses it in his memoir). Brandt, Willy. *People and Politics: The Years 1960-1975.* Little, Brown and Company, 1978.
[^1]: Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 7/3083, Unterrichtung durch die Bundesregierung, letter of the Chancellor dated December 3, 1974, https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/07/030/0703083.pdf, PDF pp. 7 and 8 (report of the commission Vorbeugender Geheimschutz, section A.I: biography, birth in Berlin on February 1, 1927; school 1933 to 1941; NSDAP membership from April 20, 1944; Reichsarbeitsdienst; Wehrmacht January 6, 1945; British captivity; 1946 return to East Berlin and Volk und Wissen; FDGB 1950; marriage May 12, 1951 at Leisnig to Christel Margarete Ingeborg Boom, born November 6, 1927 in Allenstein; crossing May 12/13, 1956; flat of Erna Boom, Finkenhofstraße 29; residence application September 13, 1956 and permit December 3, 1956; typing bureau August 15, 1956 to April 1, 1957; coffee shop founded July 9, 1956; joint business from July 1, 1957; retail trade deregistered May 1963; son Pierre Tobias Charles born April 8, 1957; Frankfurt SPD offices and Leber's constituency post; Christel's career). German original: "Günter Karl Heinz Guillaume wurde am 1. 2. 1927 in Berlin geboren." "Am 20. 4. 1944 war G. Mitglied der NSDAP geworden." "Die Angaben über seine Beschäftigungsverhältnisse in dieser Zeit sind allerdings widersprüchlich." "Am 8. 4. 1957 war nämlich der Sohn Pierre Tobias Charles der Eheleute G. geboren worden."
[^2]: Bundesarchiv, "Die Affäre Guillaume" (essay by Daniela Münkel), https://www.bundesarchiv.de/themen-entdecken/online-entdecken/themenbeitraege/die-affaere-guillaume/. States the OibE designation, the arrest of April 24, 1974 in Bonn, the 1927 birth year and the death on April 10, 1995 in Eggersdorf bei Berlin. German original: "Guillaume starb am 10. April 1995 in Eggersdorf bei Berlin."
[^3]: Bundesarchiv, "Die Affäre Guillaume" (essay by Daniela Münkel), same URL. Gives the Stasi training as defector candidates, the 1969 Leber recommendation, the 1970 appointment as "Referent für die Verbindungen zu den Gewerkschaften" and the 1972 promotion to "Parteireferent", the codenames with BStU, MfS, HV A, MD, Nr. 6, SIRA-TDB 12, SE 7303399, SIRA-TDB 21, ZV 8209795 and SIRA-TDB, ZV 8259394, the 23 SPD, 12 government-policy and nine trade-union items from July 30, 1969 to April 8, 1974, the destruction of the HV A files in 1989 and 1990, the Stasi-school lectures, the documentary "Auftrag erfüllt", the December 1975 sentences of 13 and eight years, the 1981 release, the 1972 bribery of two Bundestag members, and the Großmann and Honecker passage citing Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, p. 312. German original: "Überliefert sind dort die beiden Decknamen "Hansen" (Günter Guillaume) und "Heinze" (Christel Guillaume) sowie ihr Erfassungsdatum bei der HV A: 9. September 1954 für "Hansen" und 30. Oktober 1958 für "Heinze"." And: "Insgesamt war der nachrichtendienstliche Wert von Guillaume für das MfS nicht herausragend, er war zweifellos keine Spitzenquelle."
[^4]: Bundesarchiv, Geschichtsgalerie "Günter Guillaume: Der Spion, den niemand stoppte" (text by Barbara Groß and image captions), https://www.bundesarchiv.de/themen-entdecken/online-entdecken/geschichtsgalerien/guenter-guillaume-der-spion-den-niemand-stoppte/. States the mission "Integration und Aufklärung der SPD", the proposal through Leber and contact with Herbert Ehrenberg, the reservations of the Sicherungsgruppe of the Bundeskriminalamt and of the BND, the retroactive hire on January 1, 1970 after the conversation with Ehmke, and carries the captions "Ermächtigung Günter Guillaumes für den Zugang zu Verschlusssachen der Geheimhaltungsgrade VS-Vertraulich und Geheim, 12. Mai 1970," "Fernmeldenachricht des Bundeskanzleramtes (Bonn) an Günter Guillaume mit geheimen Informationen für Bundeskanzler Willy Brandt, 4. Juli 1973," and "Am 24. April 1974, wurden der damalige Kanzler-Referent Günter Guillaume und seine Ehefrau Christel in ihrer Wohnung in Bonn verhaftet."
[^5]: Wolf, Markus, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg: Erinnerungen*, Munich: Ullstein, 2005 (German-language edition of the memoir; the English edition is *Man Without a Face*, New York: Times Books, 1997), Internet Archive lending copy spionagechefimge0000wolf, printed p. 264. German original: "Günter Guillaume und seine Frau Christel waren wie Dutzende anderer junger Menschen Mitte der 50er Jahre im Auftrag meines Dienstes unter ihrem richtigen Namen in die Bundesrepublik gegangen." "Das Ehepaar war von uns beauftragt, Quellen innerhalb der SPD zu erschließen und zu »führen«". Sole source for the passages so cited. The page numbers of this edition differ from those of the English edition.
[^6]: Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 7/3246, Bericht und Antrag des 2. Untersuchungsausschusses (zu Drucksache 7/2193), February 19, 1975, https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/07/032/0703246.pdf, PDF p. 66. German original: "Im Notaufnahmeverfahren hatte Guillaume angegeben, von 1949 bis 1953 als Fotograf und von 1953 bis 1955 als Bildredakteur im Verlag „Volk und Wissen" gearbeitet zu haben." And: "In der Sicherheitserklärung gab Guillaume an, von 1951 bis 1955 im Verlag „Volk und Wissen" als technischer Redakteur tätig gewesen zu sein."
[^7]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 23: "Die Ehefrau Christel G., geb. 6. Oktober 1927"; Drucksache 7/3083, PDF p. 7: born "am 6. 11. 1927 in Allenstein/Ostpreußen".
[^8]: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, "Fall G. mit Folgen," https://www.fes.de/news/fall-g-mit-folgen. Gives the 1956 family-reunification legend, the coffee and tobacco shop Boom am Dom, and the Chancellery telexes through Guillaume's hands during the Norway holiday. Sole source for the Boom am Dom detail and the telex statement.
[^9]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 36 (the points of the BfV memoranda of May 11 and 17, 1973). German original: "Die Einreise der Eheleute Guillaume am 13. Mai 1956 ohne die Inanspruchnahme des Notaufnahmelagers Gießen und die Zeitdifferenz zwischen der Einreise und dem Notaufnahmeantrag, der erst am 13. September 1956 in Gießen einging, zeige an, daß der schriftliche Antrag einer gründlichen und langen Vorbereitung bedurfte."
[^10]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 19. German original: "Dort eröffnete er mit seiner Frau am 15. August 1956 ein Schreibbüro". Also: "Nachdem Guillaume 1957 in die SPD eingetreten war ... wurde er am 1. März 1964 Geschäftsführer für den Unterbezirk Frankfurt der SPD."
[^11]: Pond, Elizabeth, "East, West Germany trade spies; West plays 'waiting game'," The Christian Science Monitor, March 23, 1981, https://www.csmonitor.com/1981/0323/032355.html. Quoted: "Just before her release, Christel Guillaume was pardoned by West Germany." Also: "In the first East-West spy swap in 20 months, the wife of East Germany's most famous secret agent has been returned to East Germany." Also: "After his arrest Guillaume confirmed proudly that he was an officer in the East German Army." And: "East Germany has tried repeatedly to get master spy Gunter Guillaume back, but West Germany is insisting that he serve his full 13-year sentence." The snack bar is described in the same article.
[^12]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed p. 265. German original: "Die Informationen ließ er uns per Mikrofilm in leeren Zigarrenhülsen zukommen, die ein Kurier im Laden seiner Schwiegermutter entgegennahm. Einseitigen Funkkontakt zu den Guillaumes hielten wir zu festgelegten Zeiten an bestimmten Monatstagen." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^13]: Drucksache 7/3083, PDF p. 8 (March 1, 1964 to April 30, 1968 as Geschäftsführer of the Unterbezirk Frankfurt; from May 1968 Geschäftsführer of the SPD-Stadtverordnetenfraktion; Stadtverordnetenversammlung from October 1968; Wahlkreisbeauftragter of Georg Leber in Wahlkreis 140; departure for Bonn December 31, 1969); Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 19 (SPD entry 1957).
[^14]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed pp. 264 and 265. German original: "Christel Guillaume war als erste erfolgreich: Sie wurde Anfang der 60er Jahre Büroleiterin bei Willi Birkelbach." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^15]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed pp. 267 and 268. German original: "Guillaumes Informationen und Wertungen hatten eine ganz andere Bedeutung als die Geheimdokumente, die uns über unsere anderen Quellen erreichten." "es ist keine Übertreibung, wenn ich sage, daß er die Entspannung zwischen Bundesrepublik und DDR mitgeprägt hat". Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^16]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed p. 263. German original: "Drei Wochen nach Willy Brandts Wahl zum Bundeskanzler am 21. Oktober 1969 stellte sich dem Chef des Kanzleramts ein Mann namens Günter Guillaume vor." "Kanzleramtschef Horst Ehmke sah keinen Grund, Guillaumes Befürwortern ihren Wunsch abzuschlagen". The Federal Government's report (Drucksache 7/3083, PDF p. 9, section Einstellungsvorgang) places the proposal by Ehrenberg in the 1969 reorganization of the Chancellery. Sole source for Wolf's account of the presentation.
[^17]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 24 ("die von der Unterabteilung des BND am 16. Dezember 1969 gegebene Antwort").
[^18]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 67 (telex of the BND received December 17, 1969, reporting a card entry of April 1954). German original: "dass nach einer auf ihren Wahrheitsgehalt nicht mehr überprüfbaren Karteinotierung des BND vom April 1954 Günter Guillaume im Auftrage des Verlags „Volk und Wissen" die Bundesrepublik bereist haben solle, Verbindungen zu Verlagen, Druckereien und Personen herzustellen und diese dann östlich zu infiltrieren."
[^19]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 25 (testimony of Wessel on the question to the BND and on Volk und Wissen as "Residentur für Mitglieder des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit"; testimony of Ehmke on Bahr's note; the interview of January 7, 1970 with Ehmke, Schlichter and Ehrenberg, record countersigned by Guillaume on January 12, 1970). German original: "Weiterhin verfügte der BND über die Erkenntnis, daß der Verlag „Volk und Wissen" als Residentur für Mitglieder des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit diente."
[^20]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 25 (the telex of the BND president of December 23, 1969, shown to Bahr in view of a possible vacation deputization, and his handwritten note) and PDF p. 68 (Schlichter's note of December 23, 1969 that Wessel had fallen ill and would respond by telex). German original of the note: "Selbst wenn Sie einen positiven Eindruck haben, bleibt ein gewisses Sicherheitsrisiko, gerade hier".
[^21]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed pp. 265 and 266. German original: "Nur Egon Bahr blieb mißtrauisch und erklärte Ehmke gegenüber, möglicherweise tue er Guillaume Unrecht, aber dessen Vergangenheit lasse es als äußerst riskant erscheinen, ihn ins Kanzleramt aufzunehmen. Seine Warnung verhallte ungehört". Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^22]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 28 (the BfV's comprehensive card check, summarized on January 26, 1970 and handed to the Chancellery security official Schlichter on January 27, 1970).
[^23]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 23 (hire "zum 1. Januar 1970") and PDF p. 29 ("Guillaume trat seinen Dienst im Bundeskanzleramt am 28. Januar 1970 an.").
[^24]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed p. 267. German original: "für Empfang und Weiterleitung der eingehenden Nachrichten und der per Hubschrauber eintreffenden Kurierpost zuständig. Die BND-Leute gewöhnten sich schnell daran, daß Guillaume offensichtlich das Vertrauen der Regierungsspitze genoß. Mit Zustimmung des Verfassungsschutzes erhielt er kurz darauf auch die formelle Genehmigung zum Umgang mit Verschlußsachen der höchsten Geheimhaltungsstufe." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^25]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 34. German original: "Durch Hausanordnung vom 30. November 1972 wurde Guillaume dem Büro des Bundeskanzlers zugeteilt." The passage states that he had taken over months earlier the portfolio of the administrative official Reuschenbach for links to the party and parliamentary group.
[^26]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed p. 268. German original: "Ab dem 1. Januar 1973 war er als persönlicher Referent für Parteifragen dem Kanzlerbüro zugeteilt". Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^27]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 25 (the committee's finding: "Es wäre sinnvoll gewesen, wenn der Präsident des Bundesnachrichtendienstes seinen Erkenntnisstand über den Verlag „Volk und Wissen" weitergegeben hätte") and PDF p. 37 (Nollau on the UfJ and BND source reports: "denn dieses sei wirklich gravierend gewesen").
[^28]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 49. German original: "Der Sachverständige Mercker hat dazu bestätigt, daß das Prinzip der Abgabe an den BfV bei innenpolitischen Vorgängen nicht immer eingehalten worden sei. So habe auch im Fall Guillaume der BND Material über Guillaume gehabt, daß er nach den Richtlinien an das BfV hätte abgeben müssen."
[^29]: Drucksache 7/3083, PDF pp. 2 and 39 to 42 (government statement and excerpt of the second part of the Mercker report of July 24, 1969: contract of May 31, 1968 with the head of the Chancellery Carstens; members Mercker, Raab, Zerbel; findings on the decline of the BND's effectiveness against the East, on staff suspicion of leading officials, on the use of security reasons against inconvenient staff and on Chancellery supervision), with the Second Inquiry Committee's reference to the recommendation of intensive supervision "daß der BND zum Staat im Staate werde" in Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 46. German original of the government's statement: "Der Bericht der Mercker-Kommission ist auch heute nicht zu einer vollständigen Veröffentlichung geeignet." German original of the government's remark: "Die neue Leitung des Dienstes ist den Hinweisen nachgegangen. Die Vermutungen haben sich nicht bestätigt." Of the commission: "Dieser Eindruck ist offensichtlich auch dadurch verstärkt worden, daß vielfach allzu schnell und allzu offensichtlich unzutreffenderweise Sicherheitsgründe, insbesondere der Vorwurf der Feindsteuerung zur Begründung von Maßnahmen gegen unbequeme Mitarbeiter herangezogen worden ist."
[^30]: Drucksache 7/3083, PDF pp. 1, 3 and 6 (cabinet resolutions of May 14 and 29, 1974; appointment by letter of May 30, 1974; start of work May 31, 1974; report dated November 11, 1974 and handed over November 18, 1974; letter of the Chancellor of December 3, 1974).
[^31]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed pp. 269 and 274. German original: "Im Herbst 1972 wurde Wilhelm Gronau vom Ostbüro des DGB, eine unserer ältesten Quellen in West-Berlin, verhaftet, als er sich mit seinem DDR-Instrukteur traf." Also: the instructor "einen Spickzettel mit sich geführt hatte, auf dem er sich unter anderem den Namen Guillaume notiert hatte". Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^32]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF pp. 35 and 36. German original: "Die ersten Verdachtsmomente gegen Günter Guillaume wurden im April 1973 erkannt und verdichteten sich im Laufe des Monats Mai".
[^33]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed p. 269. German original: "Es kann nicht später als März 1973 gewesen sein, daß der Verfassungsschutz sich über Guillaumes Identität als Spion der DDR endgültig im klaren war." Sole source for the passages so cited; the committee's finding is at Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 35.
[^34]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed pp. 274 and 275. German original: "Was wir außerdem zu berücksichtigen vergaßen, waren die Geburtstags- und Neujahrsglückwünsche, die unser Dienst an seine Mitarbeiter zu schicken pflegte." "Der Beamte nahm sich die Akte mit den Telegrammen vor und verglich die Daten der Glückwünsche mit den Geburtstagen der Familie Guillaume. Von da an war alles klar." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^35]: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, "Fall G. mit Folgen," https://www.fes.de/news/fall-g-mit-folgen. German original: "einst abgefangene und dechiffrierte DDR-Funksprüche mit Geburtstagsgrüßen und einem „Glückwunsch zum zweiten Mann" passten taggenau auf Günter Guillaume und dessen in Frankfurt zur Welt gekommenen Sohn." And: "Kaum wurden die Indizien beim Verfassungsschutz bis zu Präsident Günther Nollau weitergereicht, erkannte dieser einen dringenden Verdacht, doch es fehlten handfeste, gerichtsverwertbare Beweise." Sole source for the radio intercept passage.
[^36]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 36 (forwarding on May 23, 1973 via the vice president to the BfV president; meeting of May 28, 1973).
[^37]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF pp. 37 and 38 (briefing of Genscher by Nollau on May 29, 1973 at 10:30 with Kinkel present; the two grounds, a "besondere nachrichtendienstliche Methode" and a gap of five months in the curriculum vitae; Nollau's first refusal and subsequent approval of informing the Chancellor; the testimony of Genscher, Kinkel and Nollau on what was conveyed; Nollau's answer "Nicht mit diesen Worten, aber mit dieser Meinung.").
[^38]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF pp. 39 and 40 (the two conversations of May 29 and 30, 1973; Brandt's testimony 16/93 to 16/99, 16/121; the advice to leave Guillaume in place; the Norway question and the answer that nothing should change). German original: "gab der Bundesminister des Innern unter Berufung auf den Präsidenten des Bundesamtes für Verfassungsschutz dem Bundeskanzler auf dessen Frage hin den Rat des Verfassungsschutzes weiter, Guillaume am Platz zu belassen".
[^39]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 40 (the contradiction between Genscher and Nollau on the telephone call of May 30, 1973, which "nicht auszuräumen war"; Grabert's confirmation of June 4, 1973; the BfV note of July 4, 1973 that Guillaume was on holiday with the Chancellor; Bardenhewer's recollection that Nollau had recommended taking Guillaume along). Sole source for the May 30 telephone accounts.
[^40]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed pp. 269 and 270. German original: "Als wäre nichts gewesen, blieb Guillaume Brandts enger Vertrauter und begleitete ihn Ende Juni 1973 auf dessen Urlaub nach Norwegen, wo er für mehrere Wochen sämtliche Aufgaben des persönlichen Referenten und Büroleiters erledigte. Aller Schriftverkehr ging durch seine Hände; es gibt Fernsehaufnahmen, wo man Guillaume am Chiffriergerät ein eben eingegangenes Fernschreiben lesen sieht." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^41]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed pp. 272 to 274. German original: "Den Inhalt der Norwegen-Dokumente erfuhren wir erst, als sie Gegenstand des Prozesses gegen das Ehepaar Guillaume wurden. Der Grund dafür ist, daß wir die Filmrollen mit den Kopien der Papiere, die Christel Guillaume ihrem Kurier »Anita« aushändigte, nie erhielten." "Zuletzt wählte sie die geringere Gefahr und ließ das Päckchen von einer Rheinbrücke ins Wasser fallen". Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^42]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed pp. 275 to 277. German original: "Die Diskrepanzen in den Aussagen des Innenministers und des obersten Verfassungsschützers ließen nicht nur in Bonn den Verdacht aufkommen, Eingeweihte hätten Brandt bewußt ins Unheil tappen lassen." "Daß der ehrgeizige Politiker Genscher angesichts der Regierungskrise in jenen Tagen bereits mit Helmut Kohl, dem Oppositionsführer, Gespräche über eine CDU-FDP-Koalition führte, ist ebensowenig ein Geheimnis". Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^43]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed p. 277. German original: "Ihre diesbezüglichen Aussagen in meinem Prozeß 1993 waren wenig erhellend und beschränkten sich im wesentlichen darauf, daß sie von Nollau lediglich über einen »vagen Verdacht« informiert worden seien." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^44]: Drucksache 7/3246, PDF p. 62 (section "Auffassung der Minderheit," the CDU/CSU minority opinion of Abgeordneter Gerster). German original: "Am 24. April 1974 wurden der persönliche Mitarbeiter des damaligen Bundeskanzlers Willy Brandt, Günter Guillaume und seine Ehefrau Christine, geb. Boom, wegen des dringenden Tatverdachts nachrichtendienstlicher Tätigkeit verhaftet." Christel G., geb. Boom, is named in the majority text at PDF p. 23.
[^45]: Brandt, Willy, *People and Politics: The Years 1960-1975*, Boston: Little, Brown, 1978, p. 450 (Internet Archive lending copy peoplepoliticsth00bran; index entry "Guillaume, Günther, 450"). Quoted: "On the morning of 24 April 1974, when I returned from Cairo, I was greeted with the news that one of my Chancellery advisers had been arrested as a spy." "my decision to resign matured without undue haste. It was finally taken on 6 May." "There is no doubt that I took advice which, looking back, I should not have taken."
[^46]: Brandt Stiftung, "Der Rücktritt Willy Brandts," published May 6, 2024, https://willy-brandt.de/en/neuigkeiten/der-ruecktritt-willy-brandts/. Covers the Bundeskriminalamt dossier of May 1, the Bad Münstereifel meeting of May 4, the announcement to the SPD leadership, the letter received by the federal president on the evening of May 6, the midnight announcement, the May 7 explanation to the SPD parliamentary group, and the election of Helmut Schmidt "einen Tag später" after May 15, 1974. German original of the letter: "übernehme die politische Verantwortung für Fahrlässigkeiten im Zusammenhang mit der Agentenaffäre Guillaume".
[^47]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed p. 262. German original: "der Rücktritt Willy Brandts nach der Verhaftung unseres Kundschafters Günter Guillaume." The sentence reads that he did not yet suspect that nine months later would happen "was man mir bis heute anlastet". Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^48]: Bundesbeauftragter für die Stasi-Unterlagen, Stasi-Mediathek, "Bericht zur 'Entwicklung der Krise der Koalition und zum Verfall der Autorität Willy Brandts'," BArch, MfS, ZAIG, Nr. 5023, Bl. 3-17, dated May 14, 1974, https://www.stasi-mediathek.de/fileadmin/pdf/dok1534.pdf. The editorial introduction states the 1956 emigration, the 1972 post, the arrest of April 24, 1974, the 1975 sentences of 13 and eight years, and the 1972 payments to two Bundestag members. German original of the conclusion: "Der Fall Guillaume war nur der äußere Anlaß zum Rücktritt Brandts von seiner Funktion als Bundeskanzler." Sole source for the bribery claim apart from the Bundesarchiv essay, which repeats it.
[^49]: Wolf, *Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg*, printed p. 261. German original: "Ich erinnerte mich an den CDU-Parlamentarier Julius Steiner aus Baden-Württemberg, der sich zu einer mittelmäßigen Informationsquelle entwickelt hatte und dafür regelmäßige Geldzuwendungen". "Als dann das Ergebnis verkündet wurde, fehlten ihr wider Erwarten zwei Stimmen." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^50]: Bundesarchiv, Geschichtsgalerie "Günter Guillaume: Der Spion, den niemand stoppte," same URL as note 4, image captions: "Zeugenaussage des SPD-Vorsitzenden und früheren Bundeskanzlers Willy Brandt vor dem 4. Strafsenat des Oberlandesgerichtes Düsseldorf im Prozess gegen Günter Guillaume wegen Landesverrats (Seite 1), 1. Oktober 1974"; "Schreiben (Entwurf) an den rheinland-pfälzischen Ministerpräsidenten, Dr. Helmut Kohl, zur Frage des Austauschs von Guillaume, 9. September 1974"; "Urteil des Oberlandesgerichts Düsseldorf in der Strafsache gegen Günter und Christel Guillaume, u. a. wegen Landesverrats, 15. Dezember 1975"; "Vermerk des Bundeskanzleramtes (Bonn) zur Urteilsverkündung im Prozess gegen Günter und Christel Guillaume wegen Landesverrats (Seite 1), 16. Dezember 1975".
[^51]: Bundesarchiv, "Die Affäre Guillaume," same URL as note 2 ("Im Dezember 1975 wurde Günter Guillaume zu 13, seine Frau Christel zu acht Jahren Haft wegen Landesverrats verurteilt."), with the day from the Geschichtsgalerie caption cited at note 50.
[^52]: New York Times, "Bonn Releases Spy in Brandt Case," October 2, 1981, dateline Bonn, Oct. 1, reproduced in CIA CREST document CIA-RDP90-00552R000202410005-9, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000202410005-9. The article reports that Guillaume was arrested and sentenced to 13 years in prison for treason in 1975, that West Germany released him in an exchange with East Germany, that the arrangement would allow about 3,000 East Germans to join relatives in West Germany, and that Christel Guillaume, given an eight-year sentence for espionage in 1975, was released in March.
[^53]: Pond, Elizabeth, "Complex spy swap: East German superspy for West German agents," The Christian Science Monitor, September 29, 1981, https://csmonitor.com/1981/0929/092926.html. Quoted: "Guillaume was sentenced in 1975 to 13 years' imprisonment." The article describes the swap as reported but not officially confirmed.
[^54]: Newsweek, "An Exchange of Spies," October 12, 1981, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP90-00552R000202410002-2, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000202410002-2. Quoted: "was placed in a delivery van and hustled eastward." "The swap that actually unfolded last week was not entirely as advertised". The article reports the leaked terms (35 imprisoned West German spies and political prisoners, 3,000 exit visas, France, Denmark and South Africa each to release an East-bloc agent, West Germany to pay $65.2 million and release at least two spies) and names Wolfgang Vogel; it states that Christel Guillaume was released "in a smaller prisoner exchange last March."
[^55]: Guillaume, Günter, *Die Aussage: wie es wirklich war*, protocol by Günter Karau, Berlin: Militärverlag der DDR, 1988, 412 pp., Deutsche Nationalbibliothek record, https://portal.dnb.de/opac.htm?method=simpleSearch&query=Guillaume+Aussage; Munich: Universitas, 1990, 436 pp., ISBN 3800412292 (Open Library, https://openlibrary.org/books/OL1583202M); Frankfurt am Main and Berlin: Ullstein, 1993, 436 pp. (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek record).
[^56]: Förster, Andreas, "Frau im Schatten," Berliner Zeitung, March 25, 2004, https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/article/christel-guillaume-ist-in-berlin-gestorben-sie-war-eine-erfolgreiche-agentin-der-stasi-im-westen-vor-allem-aber-war-sie-die-ehefrau-des-kanzleramtsspions-frau-im-schatten-1275787. Lede: "Christel Guillaume ist in Berlin gestorben."
[^57]: Boom, Pierre, *Der fremde Vater: der Sohn des Kanzlerspions*, Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 2004, 415 pp., Open Library record, https://openlibrary.org/books/OL31620607M, Internet Archive title record derfremdevaterde0000boom.
[^58]: Leinkauf, Thomas, "Der verratene Sohn," Berliner Zeitung, September 29, 2001, https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/article/der-verratene-sohn-1023905. Describes Pierre Boom as the son of Günter Guillaume, the arrest at the Bonn apartment on April 24, 1974, and the father's return to the GDR on October 1, 1981.

4
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Markus Wolf.md
View file

@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ tags:
- 1960s
- 1970s
- 1980s
summary: "Markus Wolf (1923-2006), known as 'the man without a face,' directed the Stasi's foreign intelligence directorate (HVA) from 1952 to 1986, building one of the Cold War's most effective intelligence services through penetrations of West German government including the Guillaume operation that brought down Chancellor Willy Brandt."
summary: "Markus Wolf (1923-2006), 'the man without a face,' directed the Stasi's foreign intelligence directorate (HVA) from 1952 to 1986, including the Guillaume penetration of Willy Brandt's office."
born: 1923-01-19
died: 2006-11-09
location: "Berlin, Germany"
@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ The HVA's penetrations extended to the [[Bundesnachrichtendienst]] (BND), the Fe
The placement of Guillaume as a personal aide to Chancellor Brandt was Wolf's most consequential operation. Guillaume, recruited before his emigration to West Germany in 1956, spent nearly two decades working his way through the Social Democratic Party's structures. By 1972 he had become a close aide to Brandt, with access to sensitive political communications and accompanying the Chancellor on foreign travel.
When the [[Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz]] (BfV) exposed Guillaume in April 1974, and Brandt resigned in May 1974, it was one of the most spectacular results the HVA achieved. Wolf's memoir, published after the Cold War, discusses the operation with evident professional pride while acknowledging its political dimensions.[^1]
When Guillaume was arrested in April 1974, a year after the [[Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz]] (BfV) first suspected him, and Brandt resigned in May 1974, it was one of the most spectacular results the HVA achieved. Wolf's memoir, published after the Cold War, discusses the operation with evident professional pride while acknowledging its political dimensions.[^1]
### Western Identification Problems