(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, the
Soviet Union pulled off — possibly, with
the collaboration of some in the German
government — one of the most important
intelligence coups of this century: the
abduction of Erich Honecker. In a caper
straight out of a novel by John Le Carre,
the Soviet military
“exfiltrated” the long-time
premier of the former East Germany from a
Soviet base, despite an outstanding
warrant for his arrest, ostensibly taking
him to a hospital in Moscow.

Given the deplorable condition of
health care in the Soviet Union, it is
laughable that Honecker left his German
hospital voluntarily to seek treatment in
the Soviet Union for what are reportedly
acute heart and kidney ailments. The far
more plausible explanation is that
Honecker will meet the same fate as so
many others in the past who have posed
threats to totalitarian regimes —
namely, to “disappear” into
what has been called Nacht und Nebel
(“night and fog”). Indeed,
there have arguably been few greater
threats to a totalitarian regime than
that posed by Erich Honecker to the
Soviet Union.

Honecker is, in short, a man
who knows too much
. The Soviets
had previously blocked his arrest by
refusing to permit a warrant to be served
— on medical and humanitarian grounds.
His former subjects were beginning to
press the government in Bonn to bring
Honecker to trial on charges of ordering
border guards to shoot-to-kill their
countrymen attempting to flee the
tyrannical East German regime. If put on
the stand, Honecker would be in a
position to divulge highly damaging
information on such topics as:

  • His knowledge of the extent to
    which agents of the East
    German Stasi and its Soviet
    sister services, the KGB and GRU,
    successfully penetrated and
    compromised German political life
    — both past and present — and
    NATO’s military operations
    ;
  • His insights into the weak
    links in the West’s technology
    control system

    vulnerabilities massively
    exploited for decades by East
    Germany, the Soviet Union and
    other Warsaw Pact nations.
    (Certainly the ease with which
    the Soviet military was able to
    uproot and relocate a
    hospitalized man does not
    inspire confidence in
    “safeguards” being put
    into place throughout Eastern
    Europe, ostensibly to protect
    Western high technology from
    Moscow’s illegal acquisitions
    );
  • His regime’s logistical,
    materiel, training and
    intelligence support to
    international terrorism

    — data that could be of
    considerable value in the West’s
    efforts to combat terrorist
    operatives and their state
    sponsors;
  • The full extent of his
    government’s assistance
    to various unsavory regimes

    throughout the Third World (e.g.,
    Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique,
    etc.) particularly the provision
    of state security services that
    frequently kept such regimes in
    power and the offensive arms with
    which they threatened their
    neighbors;
  • His knowledge of the actual,
    malevolent purposes to which
    billions of dollars regimes in
    power and offensive arms with
    which they threatened their
    neighbors; borrowed from the West
    were diverted
    for over
    two decades by the East German
    government; and
  • His role in Soviet efforts to violate
    the Intermediate-Range Nuclear
    Forces Treaty
    by
    secreting on East German soil
    SS-23 missiles banned by that
    accord and his knowledge of other
    Soviet arms control breaches or
    circumventions.

Germany is still smarting from the
embarrassing revelations concerning
German chemical, biological, nuclear and
ballistic missile technologies covertly
transferred to Saddam Hussein and the
construction by its firms of a chemical
warfare plant in Libya. It is, therefore,
not hard to discern why some in Bonn are
doubtless breathing a sigh of relief over
the successful Soviet abduction of Erich
Honecker. To be sure, revelations he
might make about West — as well
as East — German misdeeds could make the
Iraqi and Rabta scandals pale by
comparison.

Accordingly, the real test of
Germany’s seriousness about the
kidnapping of Erich Honecker is not to be
found in the vehemence of the Kohl
government’s protests after the fact.
Rather, it will be shown by the
penalties Bonn is willing to impose on
Moscow until Honecker is returned to
German custody
. Such penalties
should include:

  • the suspension of any
    German government-guaranteed
    loans or trade transactions with
    the Soviet Union
    ;
  • the suspension of any
    and all technology liberalization
    efforts
    at COCOM;
  • the imposition of a
    moratorium on all energy-related
    projects
    in the Soviet
    Union; and
  • the suspension of all
    negotiations underway with
    respect to “big ticket”
    projects
    in the energy
    and other industrial sectors.

If, on the other hand, the West
Germans quickly permit this episode to be
relegated to the status of a minor
irritant
in the German-Soviet
relationship, that fact will be an
important bellwether of the true
dimensions of the German-Soviet
condominium. Since August 1989, the
Center has been warning that the
Moscow-Bonn rapprochement had ample, if
unsavory, precedents and should not
be encouraged by the United States
.
(See Fifty Years of Tyranny:
The Intolerable Legacy of the Nazi-Soviet
Agreements of August 1939
( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=89-50″>No. 89-50,
28 August 1989), Ridley’s
Believe It or Not: What Are The Secret
Protocols to the New German-Soviet
Agreement?
( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=90-P_69″>No. 90-P 69,
18 July 1990) and The New
Germany:Engine for Democratic Change in
the East or Moscow’s Trojan Horse in the
West?
( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=90-P_106″>No. 90-P 106,
9 November 1990.))

Unfortunately, the United States has
to date taken just the opposite course.
At almost every turn, the Bush
Administration has supported the Kohl
government’s willingness to pay whatever
price Gorbachev demanded for Soviet
agreement to German reunification — and,
for that matter, German acquiescence to
Soviet pressure on virtually everything
else.

Now, in the wake of the Honecker
affair, the United States must make clear
that it will no longer tolerate the
“disappearing act” that
typically has characterized past German
scandals with a debilitating impact on
vital Western security interests.
Regrettably, it will almost certainly
require the Congress to play the role of
watchdog in ensuring that such a
fundamental U.S. policy shift occurs with
regard to U.S.-German relations. As a
practical matter, the Bush
Administration’s penchant for personal
diplomacy would almost certainly
otherwise preclude the vigorous pursuit
of inconvenient, embarrassing issues like
the Honecker matter.

The following are issues that warrant
exhaustive investigation and evaluation
by both the German and American
administrations, by the Congress and by
the media:

  • The timing of the
    Honecker abduction
    is,
    even at first blush remarkable
    and telling:
    • What is the relationship,
      if any, between
      Honecker’s abduction by
      Soviet military forces
      and Defense Minister
      Yazov’s unannounced visit
      to the eastern region of
      Germany last week?
    • Is it any accident that
      the abduction occurred
      shortly after the
      ratification by Moscow of
      the German reunification
      arrangements and the
      termination of the legal
      rights and
      responsibilities in
      Germany enjoyed by the
      United States, Britain,
      France and the USSR under
      the post-war Four Powers
      agreement?
    • Was this action designed
      to send a heartening
      message to entrenched
      communist forces still in
      power — or vying for it
      — in countries like
      Bulgaria, Romania,
      Yugoslavia and Albania?
    • On the eve of the 17
      March referendum, what
      should Soviet reformers
      (like Yeltsin,
      Landsbergis and Kalugin)
      conclude from the Soviet
      central authorities’
      patent disregard for the
      rule of law and their
      willingness to move
      physically against
      opponents in so brazen a
      manner?
  • The German role in all of this
    bears particularly close
    scrutiny:
    • How is it that, if given
      an hour’s notice that the
      Soviets intended to
      remove Honecker to
      Moscow, German
      authorities who held a
      warrant for the man’s
      arrest could not
      intervene to block his
      departure?
    • When German Foreign
      Minister Hans Dietrich
      Genscher visits Moscow on
      the day after the
      referendum, will he
      demand that Honecker be
      turned over to his
      custody?
    • Where is Willy Brandt —
      the rescuer of hostages
      whose political career
      was prematurely
      terminated when
      Honecker’s espionage
      operations in his office
      were revealed — when we
      need him?
  • Finally, the United States’
    interests need to be examined:
    • Is the United States as
      anxious as the Germans
      appear to be to look the
      other way on this
      abduction, and in so
      doing to permit yet
      another manifestation of
      Soviet “old
      thinking” to be
      swept under the carpet?
    • What would Honecker’s
      revelations on the stand
      have meant for the
      blossoming new
      relationship between the
      United States and Syria
      — whose terrorist
      activities (e.g., the
      bombing of the La Belle
      discotheque and Pan Am
      103) have traditionally
      enjoyed considerable
      support from East
      Germany?
Center for Security Policy

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