Nacht Und Nebel: The Honecker Affair

(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?