Romeo Spies 4 - The Spy Who Loved Me Video
This is a 50 minute video giving two examples of West German women seduced by East German spies. It may be useful for survivors to look out for the manipulative techniques that the spies used.
The Spy Who Loved Me: When East German Spies Broke Hearts In The Cold War
The Spy Who Loved Me: When East German Spies Broke Hearts In The Cold War [1c]
Transcript follows after the links.
Shownotes
21 Jul 2017 Sexpionage tells the stories of two women who were seduced by secret agents working for the East German intelligence service, the Stasi. At the height of the Cold War the Stasi would regularly despatch their agents to the West German capital, Bonn, armed with the task of forming long term relationships with single women working at embassies or government ministries. These women were unwittingly tapped for top secret information which was then passed on to the East. Both Gabriele Kliem and Margaret Hike had no idea that their lovers were spies until both women were arrested for treason. This film tells the story of the years they spent with their secret agent lovers and explores the feelings they are left with after the most significant relationships of their lives were revealed to be a sham.
Quotes from the video about the manipulation process
“he was the sort of person you could rely on that was important he was a wonderful listener he really engaged with me he made me feel as if I was someone special for most of this women it was probably a dream come true they suddenly have a partner who’s very attentive who’s very nice who avoids all mistakes who wants to keep the relationship stable and going and here you have almost the ideal”
“they had other qualities for example they might be a father figure reliable and serious more important to these women was the inner values of these men men who made them think yes I could share my life”
“Espionage work always rests on a firm grasp of psychology I learned a lot about applied psychology and psychological manipulation I studied human behavior very closely through various different approaches such as Freudian theories”
“my particular Talent was that I really understood people I could really engage with them and relate to their problems this gave women the feeling that they were dealing with a very extraordinary man”
“I don’t want to talk badly about women but women they accept quite a bit if they are really in need for some relationships. women are forgiving in general if you don’t over do it and you can play with the woman as long as you want at the end you open your shirt and shoot me oh she will say no it’s not that bad. it’s true”
Police Spies out of Lives
This website Police Spies Out of Lives (PSOOL) was set up by victims of Police Spies in the UK. There may well be similarities between the techniques used by Police and those used by the cabal on survivors of mind control.
Police Spies out of Lives is a campaigning support group working to end sexual and psychological abuse perpetrated by undercover police officers. They are women deceived into intimate, sexual relationships with undercover police officers, many of whom were infiltrating environmental and social justice campaign groups.T hey work to expose the unethical, immoral and unjustified practices of undercover policing, and the institutional prejudices which have led to the abuse.
Police Spies Out of Lives [3]
Thre is also a page showing that this was not just a local London Met Police operation but happened internationally.
The organisations “turned us into objects to be studied, illegally extracting information about our lives and our networks: independentist, anarchist, libertarian, ecologist, anti-repression, feminist, anti-racist and anti-fascist networks; youth centres, squatted social centres and all manner of social movements where we fought for life and dignity. The perpetrators of this illegal and inhuman espionage have no moral compass and the state has crossed all the red lines”. International Spycops [5]
This is an article talking about women spies in the MI5 domestic spying agency of UK The Secret Lives of MI6’s Top Female Spies [4].
The more we learn about the techniques that were used on survivors then the more survivors of whatever type will be aware of what to avoid. There is much cross over between techniques used.
Previous “Romeo Spy” Posts
Watch Out for Romeo Spies [13]
Romeo Spies 2 - Human Intelligence Operatives Techniques [14]
Romeo Spies 3 Sexpionage [6]
Links
[1c] The Spy Who Loved Me: When East German Spies Broke Hearts In The Cold War https://odysee.com/@FoxesAmazingChannel:8/The-Spy-Who-Loved-Me_-When-East-German-Spies-Broke-Hearts-In-The-Cold-War-_-Sexpionage-_-Timeline-4G2qqI8k3do-720p-1715513578:8
[2] The Spy Who Loved Me: When East German Spies Broke Hearts In The Cold War https://wordpress.com/post/yabasta1.wordpress.com/4027
[3] Police Spies Out of Lives https://policespiesoutoflives.org.uk/
[4] The Secret Lives of MI6’s Top Female Spies https://www.ft.com/content/741772c0-ee76-4d3d-bfcd-4fabc1fb405d
[4a] https://web.archive.org/web/20240627123705/https://www.ft.com/content/741772c0-ee76-4d3d-bfcd-4fabc1fb405d
[5] International Spycops https://policespiesoutoflives.org.uk/international-spycops-two-years-of-infiltrations-culpability-and-police-impunity/
[6] 2024 Jul 6 foxblog3 Romeo Spies 3 Sexpionage https://foxyfox.substack.com/p/95-romeo-spies-3-sexpionage #romeospies #sexpionage #mkultra #mindcontrol
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Transcript - The Spy Who Loved Me: When East German Spies Broke Hearts In The Cold War
0:06 from the heart of East Berlin a group of middle-aged men ran the Cold War for the
0:13 East their strategy included the standard tools of Espionage but they were also working on a new secret
0:22 [Music]
0:28 weapon
0:40 from the early 1960s until the collapse of Communism in 1989 this group spent
0:45 years designing the perfect
0:55 man their experiments helped create an army of undercover agents who were dispatched to the
1:02 West their task to seduce lonely West German secretaries and persuade them to
1:07 hand over government [Music]
1:27 secrets they left behind them a the trail of abandoned and betrayed women who had no idea their lovers were
1:34 actually spies also were actually the best years of my life I was 32 you know I could
1:42 have lived I could have had the life and I
1:48 didn’t known as Romeos they were experts in the art of pretending to
1:58 love what problems do men have in deceiving women not too
2:05 many you know it’s you do it once or twice or three times and then you are
2:11 pretty cold about the whole [Music]
2:28 thing Chapter 2
2:50 a lot of people will think it just infatuation or sexual attraction it was all of that but it was much much more it
2:57 was an eternal longing within me which I never even knew I had until I actually
3:05 saw him from 1977 until 1984 Gabrielle CLE
3:16 had an affair with a man who she thought was the love of her life she was unaware that in reality he
3:22 was an East German spy mining her for West German
3:28 Secrets Gabrielle passed on more secrets to the east than any other agent in her
3:35 position he should have gotten and Oscar Oscar would be too small of a award for
3:43 his uh portrayal you know because he was a fantastic actor really seriously
3:51 because he never made me doubt this for a
3:58 minute the Romeos were trained to exploit what different women dreamed of in a
4:04 man Margaret herker met her Romeo lover in 1968 for 17 years she too unknowingly
4:12 became a key source for the
4:18 East I suppose his instructions were to humor me to adapt to me to listen be
4:25 attentive and at the time it was important to have the feeling there was someone there for me I’d never had that
4:32 before I’d never had anyone I could talk to about my Chapter 3
4:49 problems the Romeo program which entrapped Margaret and Gabrielle was devised in the early 1960s by the hva
4:57 East Germany’s foreign intelligence service from their headquarters in East
5:03 Berlin it was intended to be a key part of their battle with the
5:08 West these were the years of the Cold War when Germany was divided into communist East and capitalist
5:16 West at its heart was the Berlin Wall which divided the city in two East and
5:22 West were sworn enemies representing rival ideologies and rival military
5:28 blocks it was crucial for the hva to know what their enemies in the west were
5:37 thinking our main goal was to infiltrate the key power centers of the West NATO
5:43 the Secret Service the West German government we thought about how to
5:49 penetrate these targets and we came up with the idea of going for single secretaries who had positions in
5:55 important places
6:02 it was the Romeo’s job to seduce the Western secretaries and mine them for
6:07 Secrets the East Germans looked for very specific qualities in the men who were to be sent to the
6:14 West the typical Romeo was between 25 and
6:20 35 a good-looking well educated East shman he had good
6:26 manners and would be attractive to only
6:36 women first and foremost they had to be politically reliable what was the use of
6:42 a good-look man if he couldn’t be trusted we were looking for faith in the
6:48 Party Loyalty willingness to join the struggle so we valued political reliability Above All
6:55 [Music] Else strangely enough these secretaries often fell in love with men who weren’t
7:02 always that good-look they had other qualities for example they might be a father figure
7:08 reliable and serious more important to these women was the inner values of these men men
7:16 who made them think yes I could share my life with
7:22 him he was the kind of man who when he walks into a room you think he’s important he’s tall he appears to be
7:30 something special Gart berer was deemed to have Chapter 4
7:37 these qualities and was selected to be sent to the
7:45 West my particular Talent was that I really understood people I could really engage with them and relate to their
7:55 problems this gave women the feeling that they were dealing with a very extra ordinary
8:14 man to learn their trade the men selected as Romeos were sent to belig a
8:20 secret training camp outside Berlin the syllabus was extensive
8:26 Marxist leninism Espionage the most importantly Human
8:36 Nature Good Espionage work always rests on a firm grasp of
8:43 psychology I learned a lot about applied psychology and psychological
8:49 manipulation I studied human behavior very closely through various different approaches such as Freudian
8:58 theories the Romeos were being sent to the west to be promiscuous to seduce and
9:06 deceive but the East German regime was highly moralistic there was no mention of
9:12 sex intelligence Chiefs liked to pretend women would be seduced by higher
9:18 motives we were all ideologically very indoctrinated the political motive for
9:26 doing intelligence work was always uh uh uh depicted as the strongest the most
9:33 reliable uh the use of human weaknesses was in generally played down you didn’t
9:42 want to be seen as working with sleazy characters it was a contradiction the
9:47 Romeos also had to deal
9:55 with we were told that morality was all important
10:00 the wife was highly valued in East German Society you should never deceive your
10:06 wife but these guys were told that they had to go to the west and do the very
10:13 opposite this was a conflict that was always there and was never
10:22 discussed their training over most Romeos were sent to Bon West Germany’s Chapter 5
10:28 capital it was the home of government Ministries and foreign embassies the key targets
10:34 for the East Germans B is a relatively small town
10:40 full of Ministries and administration the professionals so the
10:47 politicians who worked there they usually had their family lives but they had a lot lots of secretary and we knew
10:55 that Bon was a lonely place these women didn’t have anything to do in the evening and for a woman they are to find
11:02 a partner it’s nearly impossible they walk long hours they don’t have a lot of
11:07 spare time and there are just not enough possible
11:13 Partners it was not only a difficult place to meet men it was just no place
11:19 at all to meet men the competition was fierce I mean if there was one man Word
11:26 of Mouth you know before he even arrived everybody oh there’s somebody coming who
11:31 is not married because most of them were married and and then there were just 20
11:36 or more women waiting for this
11:44 person Gabrielle CLE worked as a secretary at the American Embassy in Bon
11:50 in the mid 1970s she had hoped to meet a diplomat to marry but was Finding life in the
11:56 capital as a single woman difficult she you didn’t get invited anywhere you
12:01 didn’t you didn’t fit in anywhere you had to have this kind of husband or fiance who had to have this
12:10 position Margaret herker had also moved to B in search of a new life in the late
12:16 1950s she worked as a secretary to the president of West
12:25 Germany I suppose I was looking for Independence to escape from the narrowness of my parents
12:32 home to put some distance between
12:38 us I particularly wanted to get away from my mother who had always kept us very
12:45 close so it was against her will that I went away and I applied for the job in
12:56 secret they were both just the sort of vulnerable women working in useful places the hva was looking
13:03 for a woman who had been neglected by life up to then you know she was in her
13:11 early 30s lonely normally not too pretty and when they were too pretty
13:18 that was it was no good a little bit ugly not too ugly because you know you had to enable the Romeo to do his
13:27 job the Romeos were like vultures circling the skies above
13:33 Bon they found their victim so
13:38 easily the Romeos now planted themselves in Bon’s cafes and waited for
13:43 secretaries to seduce Margaret herker and Gabrielle CLE
13:48 were about to meet the men who would change the course of their
13:58 lives One Summer Afternoon Gabrielle cim a Chapter 6
14:04 secretary at the American Embassy in Bon was waiting to meet a gentleman friend at a cafe on the banks of the river
14:12 rine when I was sitting there waiting for this friend I saw this man coming
14:19 towards me and he was so tall and blonde
14:24 hair and fantastic blue eyes
14:31 [Music] I thought that a man like this would be
14:38 actually the answer to all of my inner dreams and I looked at him and he came
14:44 closer and closer and then he talked to me and I thought well if ever in my life
14:50 I could have a boyfriend like this and then uh he asked me out and he
14:59 said that we could go for dinner and he wanted to spend the evening with
15:05 [Music]
15:10 me he ordered a lot of wine and he talked to me and I just remembers the
15:16 feeling I had of totally falling in love with
15:24 [Music] him
15:30 the man who approached Gabrielle in the cafe was a Romeo his bosses in Berlin had
15:36 intricately planned this first meeting they’ been watching her for 2 years to see what type of Romeo would suit her
15:46 best the man she was supposed to be meeting that day was also an hva agent she had met a year
15:54 earlier he had intentionally not turned up and sent Romeo agent Frank cell to
15:59 meet her instead they studied the psychology of
16:05 the women exactly this was very important for example she doesn’t have a
16:11 husband what does she do in her spare time that was researched in great
16:17 detail the Romeo would then consider how to make his first approach he played out
16:23 the situation in advance in his head which story to use
16:29 it was all stage it was pure theater that day on the Rind the hva had
16:37 got it just right it was not only that he was so
16:42 tremendously goodlook that he was so intelligent also he reminded me of my
16:49 Father which I never had and this was something I had always waited for and
16:54 every kind of inner dream which I didn’t wasn’t even aware of that I had those
17:00 dreams he answered to those dreams and wishes and
17:09 ideas these weaknesses were all registered loneliness was a big one like
17:15 they wanted a father figure so our man arrives on the scene he has money he’s
17:21 good-look and Charming the secretary becomes obsessed and she will do everything not to lose
17:28 him first encounters between a Romeo and a
17:33 potential Source were not always planned in advance Romeos were always on the
17:39 lookout for secretaries to seduce for Margaret herker it was a
17:45 chance meeting outside a telephone box near her
17:51 house he’d seen me from his flat it overlooked the telephone box I used I’d
17:57 been waiting to call my parents but hadn’t been able to get through so I’d been pacing up and down outside he’
18:03 heard my steps and had come down I’d never seen him in my life before but after a while we got chatting and we
18:10 ended up going for a walk along the rine that’s how it all
18:23 started the Romeo told Margaret his name was France Becka and he claimed to be a Chapter 7
18:29 student she revealed she was a secretary to the West German
18:35 president when I told him where I work he was unable to conceal the fact that he was a bit nervous a little bit
18:43 excited and I suppose he thought that’s fantastic and it fitted in very nicely
18:48 of course hva Chiefs in Berlin were immediately alerted that a very
18:55 important contact had been made nothing less than a secretary Mar to the president of West
19:03 Germany it was Now France Becker’s job to turn that contact into a
19:10 source we always used the same method create trust build the foundations for a
19:15 long relationship manipulate emotions this was the simplest method rooted in basic human
19:23 nature Margaret and Becca began an intimate sexual relationship
19:32 he said he needed me because he was all alone in the world I’m not sure whether it was pity I felt but I did have the
19:39 sense of being somehow responsible for him a kind of maternal feeling and when
19:45 he visited me at my flat it seemed to me as if he was coming home that he was coming back to where he
19:52 belonged house Becca spent three years developing
19:59 the relationship with no mention of obtaining any
20:05 secrets he tapped into her loneliness and her need for
20:12 companionship well he was the sort of person you could rely on that was
20:19 important he was a wonderful listener he really engaged with me he made me feel
20:24 as if I was someone special for most of this women it was probably a dream come true they
20:31 suddenly have a partner who’s very attentive who’s very nice who avoids all
20:37 mistakes who wants to keep the relationship stable and going and here you have almost the ideal
20:46 [Music] partner for Gabrielle it was a whirlwind Chapter 8
20:53 romance her Romeo lover Frank Dell claimed he worked abroad and could only
20:58 only see her every 4 to 6 weeks they met for passionate weekends in hotels along
21:04 the river rine I would always drive there with a tremendous amount of
21:09 longing you’re just driving there you were totally high as if you had taken some tracks or something then you would
21:16 meet him and then you would know that that this was the only life you would
21:21 get for all this time and you really had to make some most of
21:27 it [Music]
21:35 the way he moved and he just OED sexuality and so I was sexually totally
21:44 dependent on him I never ever considered even looking at another
21:52 man I thought that I just could not live without it and this longing which he
21:57 built up because the lack of sexuality in the interim periods and I always had
22:03 to wait for five weeks and he came up with those idiotic mathematical equations telling me that if he would go
22:10 to bed with me six or seven times during this one weekend that this would equate no this
22:18 is not funny this would equate to to whatever during the weekend and this would then come up if you add this all
22:26 up to this normal relationship
22:32 Frank Dell sent the intimate details of his relationship with Gabrielle back to
22:37 Berlin they were poured over by intelligence Chiefs at hva headquarters
22:42 who could then plan the next stage in the
22:51 relationship sex played a role of course it was reported whether sex was important to the woman this kind of was
22:59 included in a dossier and the Romeo used it to plan his behavior the Romeo would report about
23:05 sex verbally to his controller but that side of things was left pretty much to the Romeo to manage as he saw fit but it
23:12 was discussed when it was relevant to the operation Gabrielle may have fallen
23:18 passionately in love but for all Romeos sex served a very specific
23:25 purpose we had an expression for this
23:30 we called it the post coital Readiness to disclose
23:37 information what this man was the women you were sleeping with were prepared to reveal an enormous amount after
23:45 sex this will never happen during the day when they’re at their most rational which is why you have to work on them in
23:51 the evening when they’re at their most
23:57 emotional
24:04 with military Precision the hva Chiefs in Berlin had made Margaret and Gabrielle fall in love with their
24:11 Romeos they were now considered ready to start delivering secrets to the Chapter 9
24:19 east 3 years into his relationship with Margaret herker Romeo agent France Becka
24:25 felt she was ready to pass on information from the president’s
24:33 Palace we just chatted about this and that about certain people from my
24:41 office he just seemed to have a very general interest in it
24:47 all her entanglement was engineered very carefully very slowly what she delivered
24:53 in the early days or reported on didn’t go beyond what any of us might tell a good friend or
24:58 in casual conversation but that was just the
25:08 beginning after 2 years of receiving this verbal information he felt ready to ask her for
25:15 more secret documents from the palace Margaret had now been with him
25:21 for 5 years and trusted him when he told her who he worked
25:27 for he never talked about secret Services of
25:32 course there was what he called The Firm which had its headquarters in Zurich all
25:37 I knew was that it was a right-wing organization when he asked me to give him documents I didn’t say of course
25:44 I’ll do it I just said I’ll see what I can do if I happen to find anything I
25:49 agreed so he had something to offer The
25:57 Firm Margaret began to smuggle top secret government documents from the president’s
26:08 Palace what I took were just little notes which I could slip very easily into my
26:14 handbag or a thin carbon copy which I could fold up and hide in one of its
26:22 [Music]
26:27 compartments in I had a good relationship with my bosses but this was
26:32 a breach of trust no one would have thought I was capable of I asked myself how France managed to
26:40 bring me to this point even though I asked myself this he
26:48 told me I was helping him I don’t know I just can’t explain it
26:57 yeah West Germany was at the front line of
27:03 the cold war thousands of British and American troops were stationed there in NATO
27:09 bases all top secret reports on negotiations within NATO were sent to the West German president this was the
27:16 information the East Germans wanted Margaret herker gave it to them
27:23 in because of the situation at that time the heightened tension between East and
27:28 West this information was extremely sensitive it was rather like big brother
27:34 looking over your shoulder at all negotiations between the alliance Chapter 10
27:46 Partners Gabrielle clean’s job at the US Embassy in Bon gave her access to
27:51 American Military Secrets her Romeo also developed the
27:56 relationship to the point where would trust him when he asked her for secret documents he came up with a story he
28:04 said that he was working in Saudi Arabia and in African countries and that his
28:11 home office was in Munich and that he worked for a company which was uh
28:16 collecting information on different levels also economic levels and
28:23 to some kind of like a so-called s tank or data base which would be used to
28:30 support uh um Peace to nurture peace in
28:35 the word Gabrielle was obsessed with detel
28:42 and willing to believe anything this sexual attraction with
28:48 nobody ever had had this and this uh I think this made me close my eyes to
28:58 everything and he just newses having smuggled the documents out
29:05 of the embassy she would photograph them at home and give him the films whenever she saw him I would have the films in
29:12 the pocket of my court and he would hack me and and put his hand in the pocket of
29:18 my coat and take the films without ever saying anything and then always looking at me like this father image and say oh
29:25 yes you did very well child Gabrielle’s position at the US Embassy
29:30 made her recruitment by the hva a danger to the West she was known to East German
29:36 intelligence by her code name geart the source geart was one of the
29:42 most important East Germans ever had in terms of the quantity of information and the extent of information that was being
29:48 passed to East Berlin she worked in the American Embassy so had access to very important
29:56 information she worked in the very office where armed supplies and Military Maneuvers were coordinated between the
30:02 West Germans and the Americans Margaret was now regularly
30:09 delivering secret documents to Becca but their relationship changed she was hooked on him so he
30:17 didn’t need to spend as much time with her and insisted their Affair be kept a
30:22 secret I never really had an address I never really had a telephone number where I could call him him right up to
30:29 the end I didn’t he always had some excuse or other why this had to be the case and
30:35 this was an impossible
30:42 situation Becca gave regular reports to his bosses back in the east on the state
30:47 of the relationship teams of psychologists
30:52 analyzed the reports and worked out how the relationship should progress
30:59 they wanted to keep their Source happy at all Chapter 11
31:07 costs the task really was to keep things on the boil re-inject Vigor into the relationship and we did this with
31:13 interesting conversation love an expensive holiday some of these women couldn’t
31:20 have afforded it on their own but the hva footed the bill and it worked it bought time the relationship could last
31:27 another year if the relationship showed signs of cooling it was always warmed up again to
31:32 motivate the woman and this was always done according to a set plan Becca took these photos of Margaret
31:40 on their holidays together but he refused to be
31:47 photographed pictures of the back of his head are all that Margaret has of their time
31:53 together even then she claimed she noticed something strange about him
31:59 there was always something at the back of it all which I couldn’t really put my finger on he seemed divided as if he had
32:05 a job to do and I kind of sensed this Margaret thought of leaving
32:12 him but Becca had been well trained in using a woman’s weaknesses to keep
32:20 her whenever I tried to end the relationship he’d come along and talk about all the good things the good times
32:31 he’d always say that we needed one another that we knew one another inside out that we understood each
32:37 other and that’s how he kept me I don’t want to talk badly about
32:44 women but women they accept quite a bit if they are really in Need for for
32:52 some relationships women are forgiving in general if you don’t over do it and you
33:00 can play with the woman as long as you want at the end you open your shirt and shoot me oh she will say no it’s not
33:07 that bad it’s
33:13 true Long stretches apart secrecy for Gabrielle too life as the
33:20 lover of a Romeo was never easy I never really lived unless it was
33:27 through him so so this was a horrible problem in all those years and it it got
33:34 it got increasingly
33:41 worse you would think oh well I she didn’t see him for five weeks and she had the life in those interval periods
33:48 but I didn’t I didn’t have any life I didn’t go out I didn’t do anything I didn’t do anything what I
33:56 wanted Berlin couldn’t risk Gabrielle becoming too unhappy they couldn’t afford to lose
34:04 such a valuable Source she had to believe there was a future with her Chapter 12
34:10 Romeo detel kept her by promising what she Most Wanted in the world we were in
34:16 dorf and walking along and he lifted me up in front of a window so we could both
34:22 look into our Reflections and he said oh we was such a beautiful couple
34:28 and we will get married next spring of course I was ecstatic I was dancing with
34:35 joy I thought now I would finally have for [Music]
34:44 Life 6 months later ditel summoned Gabrielle to a cafe in
34:51 Bru I because I thought when we were going to get married I was ecstatic with
34:56 joy and I thought that he would tell me you know something about the wedding plans but Romeos were not supposed to
35:03 marry their Source they lived in West Germany under a false identity and marriage would
35:09 involve too many checks so he made his excuses the wedding was
35:16 off I thought that maybe this relationship would now break up you know
35:22 because he had hurt me really not only so much but too much
35:31 but the relationship did not break up the trips to the Ry and Gabrielle’s
35:36 spying continued year after year secret details of Western missile systems and
35:43 NATO exercises were all passed on it was the only way Gabrielle could
35:48 keep detel he always plat his fantastic gole he said of course if you don’t
35:54 bring any more of those documents my love for you will certainly not die but I don’t know how I could keep on seeing
36:02 you of course if he would have said if you don’t give me any more documents bloody well I don’t come to see you anymore then even I would have walked
36:09 but he always said yes I will do my the most I can but I don’t know how I can do it and then always calculating and
36:17 everything you know and that’s how he got me to do it
36:24 so the man in Berlin had shaped two excellent sources but their spying for the East
36:31 was about to come to an end the West German secret service the BN was now on the trail of both Chapter 13
36:41 women by 1985 Margaret herker had been with her Romeo lover France Becka for 17
36:50 years for 14 of those she had been passing on secrets from the president’s
36:56 Palace but Becca had been identified as an agent by the West German secret service
37:02 the BN while under surveillance they noticed he saw a lot of
37:07 Margaret and then of course the alarm Bell started ringing who is this is it his mother is it his girlfriend is it
37:14 his sister and then we discovered that M herker worked in the president’s office and then of course the alarm Bells
37:20 really began to
37:26 ring Margaret’s flat in Bon was now put under
37:32 surveillance after several months the West Germans had the evidence they
37:37 needed it was time to tell her boss president Von
37:45 viter he was very skeptical suddenly the head of Counter Intelligence comes along and says Mr
37:52 President one of your closest AIDS is an agent and of course you have to have some very strong evidence to back that
37:58 up and I remember that President Von visaka was very
38:04 dubious my impression at the time was that he was more willing to Believe Miss herker than he was to believe
38:14 me but the evidence was overwhelming Margaret was picked up from her flat and charged with
38:21 Espionage she insisted her lover had worked for a peace Institute in
38:26 Switzerland I really believed even then that it was an organization in
38:35 Switzerland but the police didn’t believe anything I
38:40 said in the whole world there is no Swiss organization whatever its political color which would have been
38:47 interested in the type of material that Miss herker was handing
38:52 over and her claim that she didn’t know what she was involved in well this this is something all these people do to
38:59 preserve their own
39:07 self-esteem she was not naive she might have been clinging to the idea of doing
39:12 something good or working for peace but the fact that she clung to something like this is a sign that deep down she
39:19 knew exactly what she was involved
39:26 in for the first time Margaret discovered
39:31 that the man she had loved for 17 years had secretly been spying for the
39:41 East I only discovered later that he was already married when he was sent over
39:50 here that was a terrible Revelation for [Music] me I mean the whole thing was bad enough
39:58 but the fact that he’d always gone on about how he was all alone in the world without
40:06 family he could have spared me that I
40:17 think while France Becka escaped to the east Margaret was sentenced to 8 years
40:22 in prison for Espionage of which she served four
40:29 well of course it was absolutely awful I needed all the strength I had just to
40:34 survive it and if you ask me how I survived it well I really don’t Chapter 14
40:44 know for Gabrielle CLE the end came in 1991 the Cold War and her affair with
40:52 her Romeo lover Frank Dell were now over the hva had been
40:58 disbanded documents uncovered from their files revealed that Gabrielle had been passing secrets to the east from 1977
41:06 until the collapse of Communism in 1989 she had handed over 1500 documents
41:13 more than any other source in her position but at her trial all she could
41:20 think of was detail they were constantly talking about Espionage and I didn’t
41:25 care about that I always said but did you know him what was he like and
41:31 did he love me I I’m sorry I always wanted to know did he did he have some
41:37 feelings for me or was it all just a lie I really wanted to
41:46 know if something like that happens to you you tend to question
41:52 yourself what is true and what is not true and what part is who and what part
41:58 is imagined and what part is a story and what part is a fiction and you go
42:03 absolutely insane because you just feel that you are disintegrating Bit by Bit
42:09 by Bit by Bit memories were false everything you
42:15 lived for was kind of taken away so you have practically no
42:23 [Music] identity
42:28 we were people and they destroyed us on in every
42:34 level as the Cold War was now over Gabrielle received a 2-year suspended Chapter 15
42:42 sentence The Men Who Run the operation from Berlin were not even put on trial
42:47 as they were deemed to have been doing their job I think it’s so devastating that
42:52 some stupid I’m sorry who I don’t know from a hole in the ground
42:58 sit in some stupid office in East Germany picking people women out you
43:05 know like like like animals for testing
43:11 and saying okay we are going to destroy her
43:17 life today Margaret herker lives alone in her parents’ old
43:22 house after her release from prison she had nowhere to go but the place she had had left 30 years earlier in search of
43:29 an exciting life in Bon she has not seen France Becker since her
43:35 arrest he is now seriously
43:42 ill it seems to me that he now has to live with himself and that must be hard enough but I think I’ve worked through a
43:49 lot of this this is his issue now I don’t have any feelings of
43:56 hatred the relationship was a huge part of my
44:07 life it did have a purpose and a meaning for me so in that respect these were not
44:13 Wasted Chapter 16
44:26 Years Gabrielle CLE now lives alone in Holland
44:33 with her 13
44:42 dogs there is little Sympathy for the plight of Gabrielle and Margaret from the men who benefited from the secrets
44:49 they gave we never abused women we saw it as
44:57 a legitimate method a method which was justified by the very real threat posed
45:03 by the Cold War if we’re talking about the brutality of secret Services if you show me this
45:10 broken heart well then I can show you much much worse look back through history and a
45:17 few broken hearts look like
45:25 nothing is whichever way you look at it Espionage is a dirty business but it’s
45:31 necessary there is always a point where you want to know more from someone than he’s prepared to reveal and to get this
45:36 information you use all the means at your disposal and because the human being is always the weakest link in the
45:43 chain you use this weakness to your own Advantage celavi
45:51 C if it hadn’t been the Romeo for this poor woman that would be 10 years of a
45:57 happy life may be missing I don’t think there was a too big human CA to it
46:02 because it it goes into the in a general mixture of human faith and and human
46:09 happiness and unhappiness some of them are probably very happy with their
46:16 [Music]
46:22 [Music] Romeos
46:29 [Music] Gabrielle’s Romeo lover died several years
46:35 ago he may have deceived her to keep her spying but to this day she has not let
46:42 go if he would walk into my life like I remember
46:50 him I’m terribly afraid that I would fall in love with him again
46:57 and because of I’m now um alone again totally
47:05 alone very big part of me would say yes that I loved you and you felt a void in
47:12 me which nobody ever could or would or will again and why don’t we just move on
47:19 from there oh God and live for once
47:25 together gold
47:46 [Music]
47:55 Virginia
48:04 e