Jorge Luis Vasquez, a Cuban who was imprisoned in East Germany, states that the East German Stasi trained the personnel of the Cuban Interior Ministry ( MINIT ).< ref > The relationship between the KGB and the Cuban Intelligence Directorate ( DI ) was complex and marked by both times of close cooperation and times of extreme competition.

In 1990, it was discovered in the archive of the Stasi ( the state security service of the former German Democratic Republic ) that a member of CND's governing council, Vic Allen, had passed information to them about CND.

East Germany's culture was strongly influenced by communism and particularly Stalinism and was described by East German psychoanalyst Hans-Joachim Maaz in 1990 as having produced a " Congested Feeling " among East Germans as a result of the East German state's goal to protect people from dangers of deviant cultural influence and dangers of popular expression deviating from the state's ideals through enforcing official ideals through physical and psychological repression of these tendencies via its institutions, particularly the Stasi.

It was characterized by East German psychoanalyst Hans-Joachim Maaz in 1990 as having produced a " Congested Feeling " among Germans in the East as a result of Communist policies criminalizing personal expression that deviates from government approved ideals, and through the enforcement of Communist principals by physical force and intellectual repression by government agencies, particularly the Stasi.

More detailed information was retrieved years later when Stasi archives were investigated by the reunited Germany.

After German reunification in 1990, it was confirmed that the RAF had received financial and logistic support from the Stasi, the security and intelligence organization of East Germany, which had given several members shelter and new identities.

The Ministry for State Security ( German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS ), commonly known as the Stasi () ( abbreviation, literally State Security ), was the official state security service of the German Democratic Republic or GDR ( informally known as East Germany ).

The Stasi was headquartered in East Berlin, with an extensive complex in Berlin-Lichtenberg and several smaller facilities throughout the city.

The Stasi motto was " Schild und Schwert der Partei " ( Shield and Sword of the Party ), that is the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany ( SED ).

In 1974, Brandt resigned as Chancellor after Günter Guillaume, one of his closest aides, was exposed as an agent of the Stasi, the East German secret service.

It was not revealed until much later that two Bundestag members ( Julius Steiner and Leo Wagner, both of the CDU / CSU ) had been bribed by the East German Stasi to vote for Brandt.

It came under intense scrutiny in July 2002 when the Washington Post alleged in an editorial that the program was vaguely defined, and investigative political journalist Ritt Goldstein observed in Australia's Sydney Morning Herald that TIPS would provide America with a higher percentage of ' citizen spies ' than the former East Germany had under the notorious Stasi secret police.

For a $ 5, 500 fee to an imaginary lawyer, Don and Helen Robinson received Tiffany Stasi ( whose identity was confirmed by DNA testing in 2000 ) and a set of authentic-appearing adoption papers with the forged signatures of two lawyers and a judge.

Lisa Stasi was never heard from again.

Stasi files opened after 1989 indicated that the bombing was carried out by a group under the direction of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez ( AKA Carlos the Jackal ), and paid for by Nicolae Ceauşescu, president of Romania.

This support was primarily through the secret gathering of intelligence, primarily through a vast network of informants, like the system used by the Ministry for State Security ( Stasi ) in the German Democratic Republic.

Erich Fritz Emil Mielke ( December 28, 1907 – May 21, 2000 ) was a German communist politician and Minister of State Security — and as such head of the Stasi of the German Democratic Republic between 1957 and 1989.

East Germany stagnated as its socialist economy was linked to the Soviet Union ; the secret police ( Stasi ) tightly controlled daily life, and the Berlin Wall ( 1961 ) ended the steady flow of refugees to the west.

Chancellor Brandt was forced to resign in May 1974, after Günter Guillaume, a senior member of his staff, was uncovered as a spy for the East German intelligence service, the Stasi.

In spite of reports blaming Libya for the attack on the nightclub, no individual was officially accused of the bombing until the 1990 reunification of Germany and the subsequent opening up of the Stasi archives.

Stasi files listed him as an agent, and Mehlis said he was the Libyan spy agency's main contact at the embassy.

Ruddock responded to the Stasi revelations with " certainly had no influence on national CND, and as a pro-Soviet could never have succeeded to the chair.

Other researchers have documented the contribution made from other Warsaw Pact intelligence agencies to the fledgling Sandinista government including the East German Stasi, by using recently declassified documents from Berlin as well as from former Stasi spymaster Markus Wolf who described the Stasi's assistance in the creation of a secret police force modeled on East Germany's

Early on the Stasi waged a campaign against Jews, who were already subject to widespread discrimination and violence in the Soviet Union.

Cryptome hosted documents, consisting of over 70, 000 files, include suppressed photographs of U. S. soldiers killed in Iraq, lists of people believed to be MI6 agents, detailed maps of government facilities ( based on publicly available mapping and aerial photography ), list of Stasi workers at the time of its dissolution on December 8th 1989, and 4, 000 photos of the Iraq War killed and maimed.

In a 2006 book commissioned for the presidential elections, Se on ihan Matti, Vanhanen compared the Finnish tabloid press to the KGB and Stasi, former Soviet Union and East German secret police agencies.

Egon Krenz ( left ) officially congratulating Erich Mielke on behalf of the government on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the Stasi in 1985

On January 23, 1992, he announced his resignation because of alleged Stasi contacts and was succeeded by Bernhard Vogel on February 5, 1992.

The Stasi records on his wife referred to his activities as an informant.

Lötzsch's local party group in Berlin-Lichtenberg has invited former Stasi employees and informers to speak on several occasions with her support: for instance, Erich Mielke's immediate deputy, Werner Grossmann, was invited as a speaker.

The Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial is on the site of the main remand prison of the Stasi.

In 1956, he and his wife Christel emigrated to West Germany on Stasi orders to penetrate and spy on West Germany's political system.

In September 2003, investigations were made by the BStU ( the federal commission set up to deal with the files of the Stasi ) into the Rosenholz files on Stasi workers which somehow got into the hands of the CIA ; as a result, it was claimed that Wallraff had had connections to the Stasi in the 1960s.

On December 17, 2004, the Hamburg district court ruled on a suit brought by Wallraff that he must not be described as an Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter or Stasi collaborator ( he was being called this above all in newspapers belonging to the Axel Springer Verlag-the publishers of Bild-Zeitung ) as no proof of collaboration could be furnished in the documents which had been presented.

After German reunification, he was appointed Minister for Special Affairs in the CDU government of Helmut Kohl, until his resignation on December 17, 1990 amid rumors that he had worked for the East German Stasi.

He nevertheless supported the 1905 Law on the Separation of Church and State, but, when testifying before the Commission Stasi on secularism, he opposed the 2004 law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools.

In 1998 the Bundestag's immunity committee concluded that Gysi had been a collaborator with the Stasi from 1978 to 1989 under the name IM Notar, and fined him 8, 000 Deutsche Marks.

Günter Guillaume ( February 1, 1927 – April 10, 1995 ), was an intelligence agent of East Germany's secret service, the Stasi.

* 1950 – The Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, is established.

In 1950 he joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany ( SED ) and in 1952 he was appointed by the Stasi to division III of the Bureau of Economics in Potsdam.

In the East, the Soviets crushed dissent and imposed another police state, often employing ex-Nazis in the dreaded Stasi.

Neither country had a significant army until the 1950s, but East Germany built the Stasi into a powerful secret police that infiltrated every aspect of the society.

In 1989, the socialist regime collapsed after 40 years, despite its omnipresent secret police, the Stasi.

Since German reunification, the PDS has frequently been the target of suspicions that leading members were connected with East Germany's Ministry for State Security, or Stasi.

Shortly after the 2005 federal election, Marianne Birthler, the official in charge of the Stasi archives, accused the Left Party of harboring at least seven former Stasi informants in its newly-elected parliamentary group.

At about the same time, the media revealed that Lutz Heilmann, a Left Party Bundestag deputy from the state of Schleswig-Holstein, had worked several years for the Stasi.

While the first accusation proved to be false, Heilmann's connection with the Stasi remained controversial.

Though Heilmann had served as a bodyguard, not as an informant or secret police officer, he violated a Left Party regulation obliging candidates to reveal past Stasi involvement.

Charges of a Stasi past were also a factor in the Bundestag's decision to reject Lothar Bisky as the Left Party's candidate for the post of parliamentary vice president.

In the Free State of Saxony, the chairman of the Left Party group, Peter Porsch, could lose his mandate in the Saxon parliament because of his alleged Stasi past.

According to Alpo Rusi's book Vasemmalta ohi, Lipponen began cooperation with the East German secret police Stasi in 1969.

It has now been discovered that this officer had been a member of the West Berlin communist party SEW and had also worked for the Stasi.

Now considered a criminal organisation, several Stasi officials were prosecuted for their crimes after 1990.