Alfred toe

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Alfred Fritz Karl Zehe (born May 23, 1939 in Farnstädt ) is a German physicist and university professor . He gained international fame after the US judiciary arrested him in 1983 for espionage for the East German government, charged him and convicted him in 1985. In June 1985 he was released as part of an agent exchange and returned to the GDR .

Education and college career

Alfred Zehe attended elementary school in Farnstädt, then part of the Querfurt district, until 1953. In 1956 he completed an apprenticeship in mining at the VEB Mansfeld Kombinat Wilhelm Pieck in Lutherstadt Eisleben . From 1956 to 1959 he attended secondary school in Freiberg and Halle (Saale) . From 1959 to 1964 he studied physics and linguistics at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig . In 1969 he was promoted to Dr. rer. nat. PhD at the physics institute of the university. In 1975, the Dr. sc. nat. in the field of materials technology (optoelectronics) with the thesis contributions to the investigation of optical and optoelectronic phenomena in A3-B5 semiconductors .

From 1964 to 1975 he worked at the physics institute at the University of Leipzig, first as a scientific assistant, then as a senior scientific assistant and from 1971 as a university lecturer with a teaching qualification . In 1975 he was appointed professor for technical physics at the Zwickau Engineering University . As part of a scholarly exchange between the GDR and Mexico , he was a professor at the Instituto de Ciencias, Universidad Autónoma de Puebla , a public university in Heroica Puebla de Zaragoza (often short Puebla ), capital of the central Mexican state of Puebla, from 1976 to 1980 . In 1980 he returned to the GDR and became professor for experimental physics at the physical institute of the Technical University of Dresden . He held this position until 1991. He then went back to Puebla and held various positions there.

In his academic career, Zehes main research areas were materials science , solid state physics and vacuum physics . Zehe is the owner or co-owner of more than 75 patent applications in 25 countries. He was an academic advisor to an international student body for 3 post- doctoral degrees , 20 doctorates and several hundred master's and bachelor's degrees in natural and engineering sciences. He is the editor and author of 15 scientific and technical monographs and almost 700 articles that have been published in scientific journals, monographs or conference reports. He is a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Dominican Republic, the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias , the New York Academy of Sciences and a founding member of the Academy of Sciences of the State of Puebla in Mexico.

Undercover operation and arrest

“The Stasi asked Professor Zehe, who was a faculty member at the University of Dresden and who had spent six months at the University of Puebla in Mexico, to help her assess outdated materials. During his stay in Mexico, the professor complied with the request, since his travel permit depended on the evaluative support that the Stasi gave him from time to time. ”He was called to the East German embassy in Mexico City to meet with East German officials who sought Zehes expertise on recently acquired sonar technology documents .

At the time, Zehe was unaware that East German agents had purchased the documents from an undercover US agent in Washington, DC . The US agent was part of a covert operation initiated by the FBI to “lure a spy from one or the other communist embassy into a trap”. The East Germans fell into the trap, bought the documents for $ 22,000, but then realized that they lacked the expertise in Washington to evaluate the purchase. So they asked Zee in Mexico City for an expertise. There he checked the documents, which turned out to be out of date information on submarine sonar detection. Zehe then returned to Puebla and later to Dresden.

He was arrested on November 3, 1983 while attending the American Vacuum Society's annual symposium in Boston . He was accused of conspiracy under the US Espionage Act, specifically for having obtained classified information relating to military technology and passed it on to a foreign government. The decision to arrest him in front of television cameras at a conference was intended to raise public awareness of the dangers of scientific espionage. The FBI asked the American Vacuum Society to provide them with the names of all 2,600 attendees at the Boston meeting and threatened a subpoena. The Society declined to disclose the names, but replied that they would comply with such a subpoena. The FBI did not pursue the matter.

The detention was suspended after the East German government bailed Zehe for $ 500,000 in June 1984. He stayed in Boston while he waited out his trial.

Secret negotiation and conviction

Wolfgang Vogel , organizer of the first agent exchange in 1962 during the Cold War and later negotiator for the GDR in the so-called release of prisoners , was commissioned by the East German government to help her free Zehe from custody. Vogel turned to Alan Dershowitz , a professor at Harvard Law School , for legal advice and to take on Zehes defense, and to Ronald Greenwald (1934-2016), an American Orthodox rabbi and businessman, for as Acting contact man between him and toe.

Dershowitz feared a conflict of interest with his then client Anatoly Shcharansky , a founder of the Refusenik movement in the Soviet Union . Shcharansky was imprisoned in Moscow for alleged spying for the United States. Therefore, he proposed Harvey A. Silverglate (* 1942) as defense attorney for toe.

Silverglate contended that Zehe did not commit a crime under a reasonable interpretation of the Espionage Act. Zehe did not buy the documents in question in this case himself, but only checked the documents presented to him in Mexico City. Silverglate went on to claim that the charges were invalid because the Espionage Act did not cover espionage of a foreign citizen outside of the United States, as the documents were presented to Zehe in Mexico City. On January 29, 1985, U.S. District Judge David S. Nelson denied the motion to dismiss the case, ruling that the Espionage Act was disruptive to both U.S. and non-U.S. Residents, due to the national security threat from espionage extraterritorial, can be applied.

The US prosecutor's office then offered Zehe that he could take up residence in the US and continue his academic career. Although Zehe knew that his reactions were being closely monitored by the East German government, he accepted the offer. Shortly thereafter, however, the US government refused to accept Zehe as a real defector. Zehe was now faced with the decision to either plead guilty and hope for a mild sentence or not to plead guilty and let the American legal system endure itself. On February 22, 1985, Zehe pleaded guilty in advance of promising a mild sentence. A federal court in Boston sentenced him to eight years in prison.

Media campaign in the GDR

Immediately after Zehe's arrest on November 3, 1983, the SED initiated a campaign in the GDR and called Zehe “an innocent victim of arbitrary American justice”. This campaign was distributed by the daily newspaper Neues Deutschland (ND) , the so-called central organ of the SED. On November 7, the front page of the ND featured a protest from the Rector of the Autonomous University of Ruebla (UAP), Alfonso Velez Pliego. He had condemned the arbitrary arrest of the GDR physicist Alfred Zehe in Boston on behalf of the scientists and university professors at this institution. On November 10, 1983, an article appeared in the ND under the heading “GDR physicists demand the release of Prof. Dr. Toe. Letters of protest from scientists to US presidents ”. The reason for Zehe's arrest was not disclosed.

In the party group meetings of the SED, the arrest of Zehes GDR-wide in late 1983, early 1984 was the top topic. The university newspaper (UZ) of the Karl Marx University Leipzig, organ of the district leadership of the SED, clicked on November 18 with the headline “SME members condemn the US arbitrary act. Immediate release of Prof. Dr. Alfred Zehe demanded ”. There it was quoted from a letter from the physicist Prof. Artur Lösche to the US President Ronald Reagan : "In our opinion, this arbitrary measure is a serious blow to the principles of peaceful coexistence and the exchange of scientists between states with different social systems."

These "solidarity actions" for Zehe in the GDR continued until 1984, but ended abruptly, presumably after it became known in East Berlin that Zehe had consented to possibly taking up residence in the USA. The GDR media then reported in 1985 that Zehe had been sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, but whether his admission of guilt was also published in the GDR cannot yet be proven. After his return to Dresden, Zehe was reintegrated into the teaching and research operations of the Technical University of Dresden in a surprisingly “noiseless” manner.

Agent exchange

Glienicke Bridge, site of the 1985 agent exchange, view from the Potsdam side

Vogel's secret negotiations were successful. Zehe was released on June 11, 1985 as part of an exchange between four Eastern Europeans in the USA for 23 people from the GDR and Poland, none of whom were American. The exchange took place on the Glienicke Bridge , which connects West Berlin with Potsdam . The other three prisoners released by the United States were Marian W. Zacharski, a Polish businessman who was sentenced to life imprisonment in California in 1981 for conspiracy and defense secrecy. He had obtained high quality information on US missile defense systems. Also Alice Michelson, an East German who pleaded guilty to helping foreign agents to obtain classified information and who was sentenced to 10 years. Also, Penyu Baychev Kostadinov, a Bulgarian commercial attachée at the Washington Embassy, ​​who was charged in 1983 with buying nuclear-related secrets. He had not been tried because of a dispute over his diplomatic immunity.

In particular, the GDR State Council Chairman Erich Honecker is said to have campaigned for Zehe . “For whatever reason, he wanted to get him out quickly.” The 23 inmates on the other side were “little fish”, referred to by journalists as “leisure agents”, without any significant training as agents. The automotive engineer Eberhard Fätkenheuer, for example, disguised as a mushroom picker, "stealthily" counted the vehicles on a military site of the National People's Army from the roadside , was caught and in 1979 sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for espionage. Like others, he had been recruited by the Military Intelligence , the intelligence service of the US military, which had acted on its own - without the FBI, CIA or other US agencies knowing about it. "That was unprofessional to the last," said John Kornblum , who at the time was involved in the negotiations as an employee of the US State Department. The recruited GDR citizens were misled. The list actually comprised 25 people, two of whom stayed in the GDR at their own request.

classification

In his book, Silverglate summed up the toe affair in a nutshell: 'Vogel may have been a "spy trader", but Zehe was not a spy.' Vogel understood from the start that a conviction was a prerequisite for freeing Zehe. "Ironically, Vogel's long-term plan (but not necessarily that of his government) depended on the East German's condemnation, because that fit well with the Americans' desire to collect enough bait to ensure the exchange of the high-profile Shcharansky ." In 1986 exchanged for a Soviet spy as part of the third agent exchange on Glienicke Bridge.

Silverglate used Zehes case to argue against the appointment of Robert Mueller as director of the FBI in 2001 . In vain, Mueller became director and remained so until 2013. Mueller, according to Silverglate, illegally used "national security" in the Zehe case as a reason to withhold documents from the defense.

Courted Class Enemy in the study . The relationship between the GDR and the USA in 2006 is summed up: “The MfS recruited the exchange scholars planned for the USA primarily for reasons of control and discipline, ie for reasons of domestic policy. There is no evidence that the HVA specifically used the researchers as part of the GDR's scientific and industrial espionage. There are no known cases in which they illegally obtained research-related materials in the United States. And the only case of a GDR scientist who was arrested for espionage in the USA, the Dresden physicist Alfred Zehe, was not a participant in the exchange program. The Causa toe is also hardly predestined to find its way into the history of the great espionage cases of the Cold War. "

Espionage or alleged espionage is one aspect. Karl Wilhelm Fricke emphasizes the strain on interpersonal relationships caused by the practices of the Stasi , and he also addressed the Zehe case immediately beforehand: “The use of such travel cadres has been part of State Security practices for years. For this purpose, people in the GDR who have professional contacts to the West and are allowed to travel to the West are won - not least scientists who are in contact with Western colleagues or who are allowed to travel to scientific conferences in the Federal Republic or non-socialist countries. You must submit a report on your return. Not infrequently, however, they are recruited as unofficial employees of the State Security and are entrusted with the task of spying on their contact persons. The question remains whether the GDR does not ultimately have to pay too high a price for all these machinations of the MfS. Because they inevitably result in a lasting burden on interpersonal relationships; In addition, they encourage professors and students to adapt that makes them lacking in character. "

Awards

  • National Prize of the GDR III. Class for science and technology in 1972 as a member of a research collective (5 people) in the Chemistry and Physics section of the Karl Marx University in Leipzig, “For his part in basic scientific research in solid state physics”.
  • In 1980 he received an honorary doctorate (Dr. hc) from the Autonomous University of Puebla for founding the Experimental Solid State Physics division in Puebla and for his scientific contributions.
  • In 2003 he received the State Prize for Science and Technology of the State of Puebla.

Scientific publications (selection)

The scientific publications (papers) from toe are fully listed on its website hasta 1999, his monographs and contributions to monographs on the website monografias. The following lists those of his works that are available in German-language libraries or the Library of Congress .

  • Calculation of the influence of a partially immersed dielectric circular cylinder on the natural frequency of a cavity in the X-band and the application of the results to conductivity studies on semiconductors . Leipzig, Sect. Physics, Diss. June 26, 1969. Leipzig 1969 (108, VI signed sheets with illustrations included).
  • Contributions to the investigation of optical and optoelectronic phenomena in A3-B5 semiconductors . Leipzig 1975.
  • Exploraciones en solidos . Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, México 2001 (311 pages).
  • Tecnologia epitaxial de silicio . Books on Demand, 2001, ISBN 978-3-8311-1438-2 .
  • Herramientas analiticas de interfaces solidas . Intercon Verlagsgruppe, Alemania 2002, ISBN 978-3-8311-3262-1 (207 pages).

literature

  • Craig R. Whitney: Spy trader: Germany's devil's advocate and the darkest secrets of the Cold War . 1st edition. Times Books; Random House, New York, Toronto 1993, ISBN 0-8129-2221-2 , pp. 266 (XL, 375, limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Karl Wilhelm Fricke (ed.): Committed to the truth: Texts from five decades on the history of the GDR . 1st edition. Links, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86153-208-5 , p. 492 (636 p., Limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Jens Niederhut: Non-political relations: The exchange of scientists between the USA and the GDR . In: Uta A. Balbier (Hrsg.): Courted Class Enemy: The relationship between the GDR and the USA (=  research on GDR society ). Links, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-86153-418-1 , pp. 123–141 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Harvey A. Silverglate: Three felonies a day: How the feds target the innocent . 1st American ed. Encounter Books, New York 2009, ISBN 1-59403-255-6 (xlvi, 323, limited preview in Google Book Search). Title translated: Three Crimes a Day: How the Government Targets the Innocent

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Escolaridad. Retrieved May 1, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Puestos. Retrieved May 1, 2020 .
  3. ^ Patentes. Retrieved May 1, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Summary. Retrieved May 1, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Harvey A. Silverglate: Espionage: My introduction to the National Security State (1983-84). Retrieved May 1, 2020 . “The Stasi asked Professor Zehe, who was a faculty member at Dresden University and spent half the year at the University of Puebla in Mexico, to help them evaluate the obsolete materials. While in Mexico the professor fulfilled their request, since his permission to travel was contingent upon the evaluative assistance he provided the Stasi from time to time. "
  6. ↑ Harvey A. Silverglate: Three felonies a day , p.219
  7. ↑ PA Redhead, ed .: Vacuum Science and Technology: Pioneers of the 20th Century , History of Vacuum Science and Technology, vol. 2 (American Vacuum Society, 1994), p. 21
  8. ↑ Mitchel B. Wallerstein, Lawrence E. McCray: Scientific Communication and National Security: The Issues in 1984 , January 31, 1984, 11, limited preview in the Google book search
  9. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , June 12, 1995: The director drove up in a gold-colored Mercedes . Retrieved May 1, 2020
  10. ^ Craig R. Whitney: Spy trader , p. 266
  11. ^ Craig R. Whitney: Spy trader , p. 265
  12. ↑ Harvey A. Silverglate: Three felonies a Day " , p 220
  13. ↑ United States v. Toe, 601 F. Supp. 196 (D. Mass 1985); Kent College of Law: United States v. Toe, January 29, 1985 . Retrieved May 1, 2020
  14. ↑ Harvey A. Silverglate: Three felonies a Day , p 222
  15. ↑ EAST GERMAN ENTERS GUILTY PLEA TO BUYING SECRET US DOCUMENTS. The New York Times, February 22, 1985, accessed May 1, 2020 .
  16. ^ Rector of the University of Puebla protests against the arrest of GDR physicists. Expression "Reagan's anti-communist obsession". Retrieved May 1, 2020 .
  17. ↑ GDR physicists demand the release of Prof. Dr. Toe. Letters of protest from scientists to US presidents. Retrieved May 1, 2020 .
  18. ↑ SME members condemn the US arbitrary act. Immediate release of Prof. Dr. Alfred toe demanded. Retrieved May 1, 2020 .
  19. ↑ Alice Michelson. Retrieved May 1, 2020 .
  20. ^ The New York Times, June 16, 1985. Retrieved May 1, 2020 .
  21. ^ WDR: June 11, 1985 - Largest exchange of agents on Glienicke Bridge. Retrieved May 1, 2020 .
  22. ↑ Harvey A. Silverglate: Three felonies a day , p 220
  23. ↑ Harvey A. Silverglate: Three felonies a day , p.219
  24. ^ Boston Phoenix: Harvey A. Silvergate, "Freedom Watch: The Real Bob Mueller," July 12-19, 2001
  25. ↑ From 2017 to March 2019, Robert Mueller was a special investigator on the possible connections between Donald Trump's campaign team and Russian authorities and related issues.
  26. ↑ Jens Niederhut: Nonpolitical Relations: The Exchange of Scientists between the USA and the GDR , pp. 139 and 140
  27. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke: Committed to the truth , p. 482
personal data
SURNAME Toe, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Toe, Alfred Fritz Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Farnstädt