The File by Timothy Garton Ash

Author:Timothy Garton Ash [Ash, Timothy Garton]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-307-75676-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-09-22T04:00:00+00:00

VII

IMB “SMITH” CONTRIBUTES A SARTORIAL CRITICISM. He says I “make a pretty casual impression (open collar, which requires a tie, but no tie …).”

He places me, accurately enough, as “a member of the bourgeois intelligentsia with a liberal-humanist education and a liberal-democratic attitude.” He also finds me “somewhat naive in [my] curiosity. Seeks every opportunity to learn more. Talks to old workers in ‘the pub at the corner,’ that is, with citizens who remember [the Nazi] period.”

I cannot remember “Smith” at all, and my diary notes only “long lunch w. British Communist at Humboldt Univ.” After several false traces—are there so many “Smiths”?—the archivists finally bring up the right file. He is an Englishman, a former polytechnic lecturer who took a job teaching at the Humboldt University in the 1970s, married an East German woman and settled down. Here, in Part I of the file, is Lieutenant Wendt’s proposal to make contact with him, using a “legend.” Wendt will ring up, pretending to be from the city council. When they meet, Wendt will introduce himself as “Heinz Lenz” from the Ministry for State Security and say that the Englishman’s name has appeared on the books of a Western intelligence service in West Berlin. It looks bad, and they need his cooperation to clear this up. In effect: prove your innocence!

The trick works. Within a week there’s another meeting with candidate-informer “Doktor,” as he’s now called. Two weeks later the candidate writes out and signs a handwritten undertaking to keep these contacts strictly secret. Later in Part I, I find the standard brown envelope saying “Pledge.” It contains his handwritten pledge to “support the M[inistry] f[or] S[tate Security] on a voluntary basis.” For this purpose, it concludes, “I have chosen the code name ‘Smith.’” By 1981 he’s an IMB. This abbreviation replaced IMV (as for “Michaela”) in 1980, but meant essentially the same: the highest class of informer, one having direct contact with the enemy.

As an Englishman I have often thought to myself, If Britain were a communist police state, would we have lots of informers? Well, here’s a British informer—and a busy one. His Part II comprises some six hundred pages, in three binders, and that takes us only to 1986. The last binder cannot be found; perhaps it was still in Wendt’s office cupboard, perhaps it was shredded or burned.

He starts by informing mainly on his contacts with the British embassy. Then he is asked to report on the British Council library in West Berlin. A detailed description—with sketch map—is delivered. Then there are formal typewritten instructions for a trip to Britain. What to do if the British “special services” try to contact him: “Don’t become nervous, remain outwardly calm!” His special mission is to give a detailed description— with sketch map—of the British Council headquarters in Spring Gardens, in central London. Leave it to “Smith.” And sure enough, here is his map: Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, the Mall and then Spring Gardens drawn in the wrong place.

Later, he is given another formal instruction.

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