Jeffrey Carney

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Jeffrey Martin Carney (born September 25, 1963 in Cincinnati ) is a former American agent of the GDR . He was a non-commissioned officer in the US Air Force who worked as an agent for the GDR State Security in West Berlin .

Life

Jeffrey Carney went through a youth that made him a. a. depressed because of his homosexual disposition. He joined the US Air Force at the age of 17. a. to leave his previous living conditions behind. In the military, however, he felt just as unwanted and had to hide his homosexuality.

Carney worked as a member of the "6912 Electronic Security Group" a. a. at Tempelhof Airport and the Marienfelde radar system . Although he did not hold a high-ranking position, he was employed as a linguist because of his knowledge of German and thus obtained secret documents. At Checkpoint Charlie in 1982 - other sources speak of October 1983 - he had offered himself to Stasi employees who allegedly obliged him as the source of the head office to investigate . He was led under the code name "Kid". After being transferred back to the USA in 1984, he fled to the GDR embassy in Mexico in 1985. From there it was smuggled from Mexico to Cuba and reached the GDR via Prague. There he was also used in telecommunications intelligence and under the name of Jens Karney he was issued a GDR identity card valid until December 15, 1999 , with the fake place of birth Dessau instead of Cincinnati . The Stasi found him an apartment in the Berlin district of Marzahn and occupied him with the evaluation of new West Berlin recordings, including car calls made by the American city commandant in Berlin. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, he was urged by the Stasi to look specifically for female victims for their Romeos . On November 22, 1985 he received the Medal of the Brotherhood of Arms in gold, the award document was signed by Erich Mielke .

According to later estimates, the secret service damage to his espionage activities amounted to 14.5 billion dollars. After German reunification , he received federal German identity papers.

Pintschstrasse 12, 10249 Berlin-Friedrichshain (2014)

After the fall of the Wall he worked as a subway driver in Berlin. According to unconfirmed reports, Stasi defectors told US services where Carney was. Agents of the US secret service United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations kidnapped him on April 22, 1991 on the street near his apartment at Pintschstrasse 12 in Berlin-Friedrichshain . He was abducted to the USA via Berlin-Tempelhof Airport and Ramstein Air Base and charged there. German authorities had not been informed, and the Federal Government at the time ( Kohl IV cabinet ) had protested against it only "quietly" , according to Spiegel . Carney was sentenced to 38 years in prison. This procedure was conducted as a non-public process at its own request.

Only after the German media had reported on the case did the federal government ( Kohl V cabinet ) in the US State Department issue a protest note against Carney's “forced return”. According to the internal assessment of the Bonn authorities, the kidnapping of the man was a clear violation of international law . The occupation rights expired in April 1991 and the kidnapping took place five weeks later.

After his early release from Fort Leavenworth prison in 2003, the German authorities refused to recognize him as a citizen because, according to the Berlin Interior Authority, he lacked a citizenship certificate, his GDR papers were only bogus documents of the GDR secret service apparatus and did not prove him that the GDR really naturalized him. In August 2013 he published his memoir under the title Against All Enemies: An American's Cold War Journey .

As a motivation, Carney later said he was full of hatred for his country, his colleagues and his family. He suffered from his outwardly hidden homosexuality and the resulting humiliation by comrades.

literature

Cinematic reception

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Alison Gee: Jeff Carney: The lonely US airman turned Stasi spy . In: BBC News . September 19, 2013 ( bbc.com [accessed August 5, 2017]).
  2. ↑ a b c d e Frankfurter Rundschau: Secret Services: The tolerated kidnapping of Jeffrey Carney . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . ( fr.de [accessed on August 5, 2017]).
  3. ↑ a b c d Jürgen Dahlkamp: Not a beautiful country . In: Spiegel Online , July 14, 2003. Retrieved October 13, 2014. 
  4. ^ Sven Felix Kellerhoff , Bernd von Kostka: Capital of Spies: Secret Services in Berlin during the Cold War . Berlin Story Verlag 2010. Section The »Quelle Kid«. To be able to live in the GDR, he became a spy.
  5. ↑ "What the heck is a cryptologic linguist ...?"
  6. ^ Air Force sergeant sentenced as spy.
  7. ↑ Germany denies passport to ex-spy , Washington Times , July 21, 2003.
personal data
SURNAME Carney, Jeffrey
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carney, Jeffrey Martin (full name); Karney, Jens
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American agent of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Cincinnati