Latest / The Shadow Dossier / The Shadow Dossier — The Chancellor's Own Assistant

Transcript

The Shadow Dossier — The Chancellor's Own Assistant · The Shadow Dossier

• 0:00
  the shadow dossier act i a refugee with a secret
• 0:07
  in 1956 a man named gunter guillaume arrived
• 0:14
  in west germany from east berlin presenting himself
• 0:17
  as a refugee from the communist east drawn by
• 0:21
  the promise of freedom and opportunity He was,
• 0:25
  in fact, an officer of East Germany's Stasi,
• 0:28
  sent west on a long -term mission by Markus Wolf,
• 0:32
  the legendary head of East German foreign intelligence,
• 0:35
  whose networks of deep -cover agents inside West
• 0:38
  Germany were among the most patient and effective
• 0:42
  in the Cold War. Guillaume worked his way steadily
• 0:47
  into the West German Social Democratic Party,
• 0:50
  proving himself a diligent... Loyal organizer.
• 0:54
  By the early 1970s, that diligence had carried
• 0:58
  him further than almost any planted agent in
• 1:01
  Cold War history. He became a personal aide to
• 1:05
  Willy Brandt, the Chancellor of West Germany
• 1:08
  himself. As one of Brandt's trusted staff, Guillaume
• 1:21
  had access to a remarkable range of sensitive
• 1:23
  material. Internal party communications, diplomatic
• 1:27
  correspondence, and by some accounts, insight
• 1:30
  into NATO deliberations that passed through the
• 1:33
  Chancellor's office. For an intelligence service,
• 1:36
  having a source this close to a sitting head
• 1:39
  of government was an almost unheard of asset.
• 1:45
  West German counterintelligence had actually
• 1:47
  flagged Guillaume as a possible security risk
• 1:50
  years earlier, based on inconsistencies in his
• 1:54
  background story. But the warning was not acted
• 1:57
  on with the urgency it deserved, and he continued
• 2:00
  rising through Brandt's inner circle regardless.
• 2:13
  Guillaume was finally arrested in April 1974,
• 2:17
  and the fallout was immediate and severe. Willy
• 2:21
  Brandt, a chancellor who had built his international
• 2:24
  reputation on Ostpolitik, his policy of engagement
• 2:28
  and reconciliation with the communist East, now
• 2:31
  faced the humiliation of having harbored an East
• 2:34
  German spy at his own side for years. Though
• 2:38
  Brandt was not personally accused of wrongdoing,
• 2:42
  He took political responsibility and resigned
• 2:44
  in May 1974. Guillaume was convicted of treason
• 2:57
  and served time in a West German prison before
• 3:00
  being exchanged in 1981 as part of a broader
• 3:04
  East -West prisoner swap, returning to East Germany,
• 3:07
  where he was received as a hero of state security.
• 3:11
  Marcus Wolff, the spymaster who had run him,
• 3:14
  later wrote candidly in his memoirs that toppling
• 3:18
  a West German chancellor had never actually been
• 3:21
  the operation's goal. It was, in his account,
• 3:24
  an unintended, almost accidental consequence
• 3:28
  of simply keeping a well -placed source in position
• 3:31
  for too long without knowing exactly how close
• 3:35
  to the top he would climb. The Guillaume affair
• 3:40
  remains one of the starkest illustrations of
• 3:43
  Cold War espionage's central risk for democratic
• 3:47
  governments, that the most loyal -seeming aide
• 3:50
  in the room might have been placed there years
• 3:52
  earlier, for exactly this purpose, by a service
• 3:56
  patient enough to wait. This concludes declassified
• 4:03
  file number 070 of the Shadow Dossier. The Chancellor's
• 4:08
  own assistant. What dangerous secrets await in
• 4:14
  our next file? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
• 4:21
  RSS .com, and YouTube so you never miss an official
• 4:26
  declassification. This is the Shadow Dossier.
• 4:32
  Thank you for listening.