Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World (review)

Because technological innovation was a primary sphere of conflict between the superpowers during the cold war, the defense, consumer, and industrial technologies of the “other side” were highly prized commodities. Histories of cold war intelligence are uncommon due to their political sensitivity and the general shortage of information. Frequently, historians are compelled to approach their object of inquiry obliquely, as does James Bamford in his histories of the National Security Agency over the past quarter-century and William E. Burroughs in his 1988 history of U.S. photo reconnaissance satellites. Yet others such as preeminent cryptological historian David Kahn have been able to examine information from the records of the losing side, as is the case in his Hitler’s Spies (1978).

Now, Kristie Macrakis has successfully followed this latter pattern in examining East German intelligence by looking at the records of the Stasi, the intelligence arm of the East German government. She makes the case that the Stasi aggressively sought to acquire technology from the West and employ it to solve its own technological problems. Her extensive archival research reveals that the East’s economic and industrial weakness as well as the East German government’s own bureaucratic problems hampered its mission to acquire Western technology and undermined its ability to employ information and technology it did acquire.

The first half of the book follows the actions of various Stasi officers as they desperately sought to insinuate themselves into West German industry, and the actions of the Stasi bureaucracy as it sought to manage its intelligence gathering and state security missions. They communicated their intelligence acquisitions back to East Germany through a variety of means, including special inks and microfilm. One of Macrakis’s most striking findings is the breadth of the technologies sought by the Stasi—chemical processes, computer specifications, and telecommunications technologies—and the relative ease with which it acquired sensitive information from the West.

While the Stasi proved adept at the acquisition of Western technologies, however, it proved to be largely unable to make use of the acquired information. Microcircuitry design was of limited value because the East lacked the prowess to apply the information to its own industrial processes. The West also limited the East’s industrial effectiveness by means of trade restrictions on high-tech exports, restrictions it continued to tighten even as the cold war drew to a close. Some Stasi officers were left behind as the iron curtain fell, while others were persuaded to cooperate for romantic, economic, or ideological reasons.

In the second half of the book, Macrakis provides a fascinating view inside the spy technology of the Stasi: concealed minicameras, invisible ink, radioactive tracking systems. In one chapter she explores the Stasi’s use of olfactory tracking and the creation of “smell jars” containing olfactory samples that allowed specially trained dogs to track down individuals from whom samples had been previously obtained, even after a period of years.

Macrakis based her research on numerous interviews with former Stasi officers—some living as private citizens and others who were captured and imprisoned for espionage—and she also made effective use of archival materials. Taken together, these sources have allowed her to paint a rich picture of the Stasi’s quest for Western technologies and its struggles to make use of acquired information. Seduced by Secrets offers a revealing look at the difficult-to-observe history of a modern intelligence agency. It provides scholars with an insightful analysis and a new perspective for thinking about the relationship of technology and the cold war by demonstrating the rich possibilities available to scholars exploring Eastern Bloc resources.