The East German Stasi was a highly professional and dangerously conspiratorial organisation, the self-styled "sword and shield" of a vicious Communist regime. In its relentless intelligence war on what its officers called "the invisible front", Britain was a principal target. This is the story of that war - a story the Stasi tried to ensure would never be told.
When Communism collapsed in 1989/90, they embarked on an orgy of destruction, shredding millions of files. Some, however, were overlooked, and others recently reconstructed - and they form the basis of this groundbreaking book. This is the first time the files have yielded their secrets on Britain, and, thanks to recent changes in German law, it will be the last.
'The Stasi Files' shows how the East German secret service (which, as one senior MI6 officer concedes, was 'very, very good') ran rings round British counter-intelligence. Only two Stasi spies were ever caught by MI5, and that was after a tip from West German intelligence.
Key to the Stasi's success was the opening of their embassy in Belgrave Square in 1973, which became the base of many UK operations and included a special military intelligence unit whose existence - and whose labours - have never previously been revealed. It is clear from the files that almost everyone who worked in the embassy was in fact a Stasi officer, and indulged in what MI6 euphemistically calls "activities incompatible with diplomatic status".
So what were these activities? Apart from the daily grind of gaining access to Britain's strategic, political and economic secrets - giving a "Stasi-eye" view of personalities like Thatcher, Kinnock and Michael Foot as well as of Britain's relations with the USA and some of our defence secrets - the files also indicate the precise nature of the Stasi's interest in the British peace movement and Chatham House.
Here too is a fascinating exploration of Stasi spycraft and recruitment techniques, examining the cases of Stasi sources - some already named; others unveiled in these pages - and a riveting survey of the elaborate structure of intelligence officers, agents and spies, often working with each other in fluid relationships, who together constituted the troops on the ground in the Stasi's intelligence war against Britain.
Relying on unique, genuine and previously unpublished archival material, and the fruit of five years' painstaking research including interviews with those caught up in the Stasi's networks and those charged to counter them, 'The Stasi Files' gives a startling insight into how secret intelligence operations against this country were planned and executed.
Gripping and revelatory, it is the definitive account of East Germany's Cold War spying in Britain and the most important book on espionage to appear since 'The Mitrokhin Archive'.
