Romeo trap

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Romeo trap is the name of an intelligence service sex espionage operation in which a male agent establishes a love affair with a target person, for the purpose of recruitment, for example. The counterpart to the Romeo trap is called the Venus trap .

Germany

The Central Enlightenment Administration of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR also frequently used this method for espionage . Preferred target persons were employees in security authorities or German federal ministries.

After the end of the measure, the procedure had further and mostly protracted consequences for the target persons. Not only did they lose their supposed husband or partner, but they were also exposed to the contempt of their client. Because of the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court for former GDR citizens, which led to a ban on prosecution for earlier espionage in the Federal Republic for this group of people, they met their former life partners again after the German reunification as witnesses in the criminal proceedings against them (not even bothered under criminal law) .

Examples

The Stalinist agent Ramón Mercader became engaged to Leon Trotsky's secretary Sylvia Ageloff in the late 1930s , which enabled him to carry out a successful assassination attempt on him in 1940.

The history of espionage between the two German states is rich in Romeo missions. These were among others:

Use of agents

So-called "sex missions" are the order of the day for intelligence services . Only a few cases become public. The intelligence services of East and West carried out a variety of Romeo missions during the Cold War . Agents as well as agents who promised to serve the fatherland using their physical charms were deployed by both sides. The KGB showed the least scruples in this area . They trained agents there for many years. The KGB had created files on potential victims in which, among other things, their preferred sexual practices were recorded. The agents studied these files very carefully before their operations. The chosen man then believed that he had finally found a partner of his dreams. After a short time it was explained to the victims that if they wanted to keep their sex life secret, they would have no other way out than to work for the KGB. The KGB also called these agents “swallows”.
It also became known that the arrest of Mordechai Vanunu was only possible through such an agent.

Reception in the film

  • TV movie Romeo
The director Hermine Huntgeburth took up the topic in the television film Romeo in 2000 and was awarded the Adolf Grimme Prize for it in 2002. Sylvester Groth plays a Stasi agent who marries his informant ( Martina Gedeck ) and leaves her again when she can no longer offer him any information.
  • The other women
In 2004, Barbara Sukowa played a secretary for the Foreign Office in The Other Woman , who gives a Romeo agent of the Stasi access to secret documents. Directed by Margarethe von Trotta .
In the spring of 1974, the Stasi smuggled Romeo agent Lars Weber into West Berlin - he was supposed to seduce data analyst Lauren Faber.
ARD 1998, based on the book of the same name (Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1999).

literature