Friday 17th December 2021
Information against cigarettes?
Willy Brandt supplied US intelligence
Before he became chancellor, according to a report, Willy Brandt was an informant for the US military intelligence service CIC for years. The SPD politician reported about the GDR state party SED or political prisoners in Bautzen, Saxony. He met his liaison officers several hundred times.
Former Chancellor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Willy Brandt was apparently a paid informant for the US military intelligence service CIC for years. This is reported by the “Spiegel”. According to this, Brandt had been providing information to the Americans since 1948, and the collaboration ended in 1952. He was listed under the registration number “O-35-VIII”. This emerges from secret CIC documents that the historian Thomas Boghardt has seen.
According to this, Brandt met more than 200 times with CIC liaison officers who classified him as “normally reliable”. He reported on the GDR state party SED and the youth organization FDJ, on political prisoners in Bautzen in Saxony, East German shipyards, factories, the railway system and the telephone equipment of the Soviet armed forces. The information probably came from the east office of the SPD, which had connections to social democrats in the Soviet occupation zone and later GDR. It is unclear whether Brandt acted with the knowledge of the SPD leadership.
Brandt’s reports to the CIC have disappeared, but historian Boghardt has looked at so-called control sheets, on which it is noted when meetings took place and what it was about. Brandt initially received cigarettes, sugar or coffee from the Americans, which were considered to be a currency substitute on the black market.
From 1950, according to the records, the CIC paid him 250 D-Marks a month, which roughly corresponded to the average monthly income of a West German, plus expenses and special payments. However, according to the CIC, Brandt mainly spent cigarettes, food and cash as part of the work of the East Office.