Franz Saretzki

Franz Saretzki (* 1926 ) is a German graduate economist who most recently held a managerial position in the computing center of the State Planning Commission of the GDR . In this role he spied for the CIA .

Life

Saretzki was born in 1926 as the son of a customs officer. Due to a serious eye condition he was in the Third Reich as a non-military service capable of military service, retired .

After the Second World War , he studied economics and began to work in the House of Ministries for the State Planning Commission of the GDR. Saretzki's espionage activities began in 1952. He was invited to West Berlin by a senior consultant in the State Committee for Material Supply who had fled to the West . There he was introduced to a CIA senior officer with the code name "Walter". After a second meeting, he made a written commitment to cooperation with the CIA and was given the code name "Stein". It was supposed to provide information on the economic development of the GDR. In 1953/54 he received political and intelligence training and learned how to use secret scripts. In 1958 he was also instructed in the reception of blind radio messages via radio and the deciphering of these broadcasts. He was connected to the blind radio service with number 163 and trained as an active radio operator for emergencies.

In 1953, Saretzki was promoted to senior consultant in the State Committee for Material Supply. Two years later, he was promoted to acting head of the chemistry department of this authority. In the same year he was transferred to the main department for coordinating material balances and dealt with planning methods and fundamental issues. After a reorganization, he became the head of the Department of Fundamental Issues, Accounting and Statistics at the State Chemical Office. He then worked in the State Planning Commission as a group leader in the organization and computer center.

In 1956 he became an employee of the CIA and received in return initially 150 DM a month and later 400 DM. Occasionally he received special bonuses for important information. In addition, he was paid Christmas bonuses and anniversary bonuses for his 5-year, 10-year and 15-year service. These payments were deposited into a West Berlin account. He received a total of DM 170,000 for his work.

From the beginning of his espionage activities to August 13, 1961, around 200 regular and around 120 unscheduled meetings with employees of the CIA are documented. During this time, Saretzki made approx. 1,400 microfilms with approx. 50,000 recordings, which he also handed over to his command officers with verbal explanations. From the time the wall was built, contact was maintained via blind radio service. It received 401 shipments with orders and instructions. In return, he sent 230 numbered and encrypted letters containing espionage information. In the period from 1962 to 1967 he set up seven “ dead letter boxes ”, through which he received special paper for secret reports, encryption documents, instructions and around 15,000 DM in cash.

Saretzki provided the CIA mainly with information about the state of the economy in the GDR. In addition, he also provided politically and militarily relevant information as well as information on certain functionaries of the East German state. He wrote around 2000 personality characteristics. He made 400 recommendations for recruiting suitable target persons and partially supported them with photos. In at least one case he was responsible for recruiting himself.

He had a good overview of the situation in the East German chemical industry. He was also familiar with the problems of the supply industry (e.g. mining, power generation, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and import) and the downstream value chain (e.g. light industry, electrical engineering, food production, transport and export). He had extensive knowledge of the functioning of the East German planned economy, the bottlenecks in the national economy and management problems. Documents of the highest level of secrecy were accessible to him. But he also researched other employees and volunteered to work out analyzes in order to gain additional information.

Saretzki named those raw materials and intermediate products that could not be obtained in the countries of the Comecon at short notice . With his information he enabled the CIA to create an effective embargo list for important raw materials and intermediate products, which led to a sensitive disruption of the East German economy. For example, in 1958, Saretzki learned from an employee that the GDR had succeeded in purchasing 6,700 tonnes of boron ore from Turkey through a Greek middleman. The raw materials were to be transported to the GDR by sea on the Greek freighter Marta . The rare mineral borax , which is required for production in the chemical and ceramic industries, can be extracted from this boron ore . This amount would have covered the need for about 18 months. Saretzki passed this information on to the CIA. At the end of March 1959, the ship was seized by US warships near Gibraltar and directed to a Greek port. The Borerz was confiscated with reference to the embargo list. In mid-1961, the Greek government released the cargo on condition that it was sold to a NATO country.

Saretzki also operated sabotage in the form of disorganization, obstruction of research contracts and the prevention of the implementation of new findings in production. He also prevented the Carl Zeiss Jena combine from being supplied with borax and nickel oxide . However, he refrained from active sabotage if it saw his camouflage endangered.

Saretzki was one of the CIA's greatest sources. Due to his cautious and circumspect way of working, he was only exposed late by the counter-espionage. On September 22, 1969, at 7 a.m., he was provisionally arrested by the Stasi on an urgent suspicion of spying in Berlin-Lichtenberg . After an unusually long 26-month pre -trial detention, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for espionage, sabotage and state crimes against an allied state in December 1971 in a secret trial before the 1st Criminal Senate of the GDR Supreme Court under chairman Walter Ziegeler . He served his sentence in the notorious Bautzen II prison and was later exchanged for other agents.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Roth, Günter : Topspion and Saboteur: the Saretzki case, in: Kierstein, Herbert : Hot battles in the Cold War: unknown cases and facts from counter-espionage in the GDR, 2nd, corr. Aufl., Berlin: Edition Ost, 2008 ( ISBN 978-3-360-01085-8 ), pp. 89-92.
2. ^ Hähnel, Siegfried / Kleine, Alfred : Safeguarding the national economy of the GDR (HA XVIII in the MfS / Department XVIII of the BV), in: Grimmer, Reinhard / Irmler, Werner / Opitz, Willi / Schwanitz, Wolfgang (eds.) : The Security: on the defense work of the MfS, Vol. 2, Berlin: Edition Ost, 2002, pp. 7–160, here: pp. 120 ff. ( ISBN 3-360-01044-2 ).
3. ↑ cf. Fricke, Karl Wilhelm : file inspection: reconstruction of a political persecution, 3rd, durchges. and updated edition, Berlin: Links, 1996, p. 114 ( ISBN 3-86153-099-6 ).