Whitney, Craig R. Spy Trader. New York: Times Books - Random House,
1994. 487 pages.
When the Berlin Wall came down in late 1989, East German attorney
Wolfgang Vogel was still held in high esteem. The West German government was
considering him for a merit cross, its highest civilian award, while in the
East his associations with Stasi since 1953 had made him rich. Vogel was
best known for arranging spy swaps between East and West. By 1993, however,
a reunited Germany was considering his career through a different lens.
Vogel had negotiated the release of 33,755 former political prisoners and
215,019 of their relatives in exchange for West German government payments
that totaled the equivalent of more than two billion dollars from 1964 to
1989. He was charged with corruption and tax evasion, because he profited
from Stasi policies that encouraged the detention of dissidents as a means
of addressing East Germany's need for hard currency. It seemed to many
that this is a bit too close to slave-trading. Vogel, meanwhile, thought
he was a hard-working do-gooder who was earning his generous commissions.
In another interesting case that came in the wake of reunification, the
former head of Stasi, Markus Wolf, was convicted for treason. But in 1995
the highest German court ruled that such charges were reasonable only if the
treasonous acts had been committed on West German soil. It's unclear what
effect this might have on Vogel's situation.
ISBN 0-8129-2461-4
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