Rigged

But interfering in the congressional vote quickly proved impractical. Given Allende’s sizable coalition in Chile’s two-hundred-person Congress, the CIA estimated that he needed the support of just eighteen additional lawmakers to secure a majority, and that its officers would have to persuade not one, not two, but several dozen representatives to back Alessandri.84 Although the $250,000 was still approved, none of it was spent. The likelihood of exposure was too high, as was the number of votes to be purchased. And Frei, plagued by electoral insecurity, would not participate in the scheme.85 As Helms had warned, when it comes to covert electoral interference, planning is paramount. The CIA was a day late and a dollar short.

Working with limited options, Kissinger had also requested a “cold-blooded assessment,” according to the 40 Committee’s meeting minutes, of the “pros and cons and problems and prospects involved should a Chilean military coup be organized now with U.S. assistance.”86 By this point, the White House had authorized two types of electoral interference: influencing minds and altering votes. Neither had succeeded, so the CIA turned to other ideas. “It is reasonably clear, in exploring avenues to prevent an Allende government from exercising power, that (a) the political/constitutional route in any form is a non-starter,” the CIA cabled its Santiago station. As a result, the cable continued, “the only prospect with any chance of success whatsoever is a military [coup].”87

In Italy, officials like William Colby had argued, and genuinely believed, that their actions were democratic at heart. No such sentiment existed here. “We don’t want a big story leaking out that we are trying to overthrow the Govt,” Nixon told Kissinger on September 12.88 In a phone call two days later, Secretary of State William Rogers conveyed a similar message to Kissinger:

R: My feeling—and I think it coincides with the President’s—is that we ought to encourage a different result … but should do so discreetly so that it doesn’t backfire.

K: The only question is how one defines “backfire.”

R: Getting caught doing something. After all we’ve said about elections, if the first time a Communist wins the U.S. tries to prevent the constitutional process from coming into play we will look very bad.

K: The President’s view is to do the maximum possible to prevent an Allende takeover, but through Chilean sources and with a low posture.89

Debates about the threat posed by Allende persisted in these hectic weeks. On September 14, Viron Vaky, Kissinger’s adviser, described a coup as “impossible” to execute and ill-advised. “What we propose is patently a violation of our own principles and policy tenets,” he wrote of further intervention in Chile. “If these principles have any meaning, we normally depart from them only to meet the gravest threat to us, e.g., to our survival. Is Allende a mortal threat to the US? It is hard to argue this.”90

But only Nixon’s opinion mattered, and he wanted to thwart Allende. On September 15, the president ordered Helms to foment a coup d’état in Chile, which set off a chain of events that has been detailed in other works but is briefly examined here, for insights into what can follow an unsuccessful covert electoral interference operation.91

“1 in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile!” Nixon instructed Helms, per the CIA director’s handwritten notes. “Not concerned risks involved … no involvement of embassy … $10,000,000 available, more if necessary … full-time job—best men we have … make the economy scream.”92 The next day, Helms briefed his team on Nixon’s directive, to which neither the Defense and State Departments nor Ambassador Korry was alerted. A cable from CIA headquarters to its Santiago station relayed that “it is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup” and that it would be “much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date.”93

And so the CIA sought to topple a democratically elected government. As part of this effort, the agency engaged with two groups of Chilean military officials planning to kidnap General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces who had pledged to accept Allende’s government. The CIA has itself explained, “Schneider was a strong supporter of the Chilean Constitution and a major stumbling block for military officers seeking to carry out a coup to prevent Allende from being inaugurated.”94 At 2:00 a.m. on October 22, the CIA delivered submachine guns to one group of Chileans. A few hours later, the other group ambushed Schneider and shot him to death. (Later, the CIA provided a member of this cohort with $35,000 to “keep the[ir] prior contact secret.”)95

Schneider’s death prompted a moment of national unity inside Chile, at a time when America’s aim was to sow division. Thousands attended his funeral, after which Frei and Allende together led pallbearers out of a Santiago cathedral. Rumors of CIA involvement in the murder immediately circulated. “All of these people have been trained by the CIA,” Chilean senator Aniceto Rodríguez alleged at the time.96

Allende, meanwhile, adeptly removed the roadblocks to his confirmation. On October 24, he won the congressional vote. A few days later, he announced that three Communist Party members would serve in his fifteen-person cabinet. And on November 3, he was sworn in as president.97

Over the next three years, the CIA spent millions of dollars seeking to destabilize Allende’s government.98 Jack Devine, who took part in these operations, had hoped that the White House would learn from Alessandri’s defeat in 1970 and authorize “big-time political action” in future elections. But, he continued, Chile “never got there.” On September 10, 1973, the young Devine, tipped off by sources inside Chile, cabled Washington: A COUP ATTEMPT WILL BE INITIATED ON 11 SEPTEMBER.99 Indeed, on September 11, the Chilean military overthrew Allende’s government; Allende himself committed suicide before he could be taken into custody. Afterward, Augusto Pinochet, a Chilean general, established a repressive military dictatorship.100 Chilean democracy had died with Allende. (It was not until December 1989 that Chile again held a competitive election, after which Patricio Aylwin, the victor, succeeded Pinochet as the country’s leader.)

The road to Allende’s downfall had begun a decade earlier, when the United States first targeted Chile’s elections, as part of a global strategy of covert electoral interference. When Allende won the presidency, in 1970, Nixon was unwilling to accept this outcome. He cared more about destroying Allende than maintaining a foreign democracy. One form of covert action—electoral interference—gave way to another: coup plotting. Although the CIA was not directly involved in Allende’s eventual overthrow, historian Peter Kornbluh concludes that the Nixon administration “sought, supported, and embraced the coup.”101

“Our objective was not to preserve a free democratic election process in Chile,” Morton Halperin, an adviser to Kissinger in 1969 and 1970, testified a few years later, after the CIA’s covert action programs there had been outed publicly. “Our objective was very simple. It was to keep Salvador Allende from coming to power,” including by “intervening in elections,” “creating false propaganda,” and pushing the military toward “overthrowing the constitution.”102

Chapter 4

THE STASI CHANGES HISTORY

Half a world away, a spectacle was unfolding in West Germany. On April 27, 1972, its citizens gathered around radios and televisions; journalists prepared to file breaking news stories; and in the White House, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger awaited updates. Willy Brandt, the West German chancellor, would learn his fate in just a few minutes.

Rainer Barzel, the conservative opposition leader, had called for a vote of no confidence within the Bundestag, the West German parliament. If successful, the motion would result in Brandt’s removal. It would also mark the end of his conciliatory foreign policy, Ostpolitik, designed to renew ties with the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc.1 Barzel needed the support of a majority of lawmakers to take power. This concentrated electoral process could redirect West Germany at a pivotal moment in the Cold War. Since becoming chancellor in 1969, Brandt, the head of the Social Democratic Party, had negotiated reconciliation agreements with the Soviet Union and Poland. If he fell, these agreements would fall with him.

One by one, lawmakers entered a booth and marked their voting cards with a “yes” or “no,” or, to abstain, left the card blank.2 All ballots were anonymous. Brandt watched, stone-faced, as his colleagues determined his future.

For the Soviet Union, however, the stakes were too high to do nothing. Behind the scenes, the East German Stasi, on orders from Moscow, worked to succeed in West Germany where the CIA had failed in Chile: to rig a parliamentary vote of succession. “We were a very good team and could count on each other and did what was necessary,” Horst Kopp, a former Stasi officer who participated in this covert operation, told me in Berlin, forty-five years later.3

After lawmakers cast their ballots, the president of the Bundestag motioned for silence, results in hand. West German citizens held their breath. So did Soviet and East German officials, who would soon learn whether their plan had worked.

Covert electoral interference operations often reflect the character of the states that execute them. In America, presidential elections occur every four years, so CIA officers instinctively knew how to export traditional campaign techniques to faraway places. William Colby’s work in Italy, and the 1964 operation in Chile, benefited from this familiarity with competitive campaigning.

The Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites had a far different domestic experience. Competitive elections were not held, and secret police terrorized citizens. The KGB and its peer agencies like the Stasi, East Germany’s security service, proved most adept at exporting the tool kit of a surveillance state: bribery, blackmail, and psychological warfare. At opportune moments, Eastern operatives could use these weapons to manipulate foreign electoral processes. Such was the case in April 1972.

The road to the Stasi’s operation had begun years earlier, when its intelligence officers set their sights on two men: Julius Steiner and Leo Wagner. Both were conservative members of the Bundestag who drank heavily, chased women, and amassed debts. Both were thus ripe for recruitment. “Irresponsible habits are all classic signals that someone can be recruited, and money was always the go-to tool for people in debt,” said Donald Gregg, a CIA operations officer for almost the entirety of the Cold War.4

Steiner, the first lawmaker, was a junior member of Barzel’s conservative bloc, made up of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU). He needed money to support his lavish lifestyle. “He was a drinker, seeking women, in debt,” recalled Kopp, who worked for the Stasi from 1960 to 1985 as a member of Department X, a branch of its foreign intelligence division. In exchange for cash, Steiner began feeding information to East German officers as early as 1970.5 The intelligence he provided was documented carefully in the Stasi’s files:

SA7301219: Foreign policy measures of the CDU.

SA7301725: The current situation and the process of differentiation in the CDU/CSU resulting from the disputes over the basic contract.

SE7301717: Efforts by CDU politicians to reach an agreement with the FDP.

SE7301719: Proceedings within the CDU and CDU/CSU factions regarding the struggle for leadership positions.6

The second target, Wagner, was a high-ranking member of Barzel’s conservative bloc. The Stasi studied him closely, recording his home address and birthday, political activities, and family details: “Catholic, married, two children.”7 In 1961, Wagner was elected to the Bundestag; he quickly became a rising star. Wagner was a friend and “close confidant” to Franz Josef Strauss, the longtime head of the CSU. By 1971, he was one of the conservative bloc’s parliamentary managing directors.8

In public, Wagner appeared confident and ambitious. He even had a nickname: Handsome Leo. In private, however, he was near financial and personal ruin. While campaigning for the Bundestag, he frequently took out loans that he then struggled to repay. He was a regular at high-end clubs like Chez Nous, where he spent up to 4,000 deutschemarks (roughly $7,800 in 2020 values) each night on champagne and caviar. A married man, Wagner carried out several affairs at once. “Leo Wagner, for us he was the mysterious Leo,” Hans Korneli, a former bartender at Chez Nous, recalled in a documentary about Wagner produced by his grandson. “He was a real VIP guest and a very reserved person.” Wagner’s longtime driver, Wolfgang Jankowiak, described him as a “politician by day, and by night, in these bars, a totally different person.”9

Wagner’s reckless behavior tore his family apart. “I basically buried him long before his death,” Ruth Schwarzer, his daughter, said in the documentary. Wagner spent most of his time in the West German capital, Bonn, away from his wife and children, who lived in his home district. His Bonn apartment had a back entrance, so visitors—including mistresses—could visit without detection. On one occasion, Elfriede, Wagner’s wife, called without warning; another woman answered the phone. “You whore,” Elfriede yelled, before hanging up. She pleaded for a divorce, but Wagner, ever mindful of his reputation, refused. “You’ll never get a divorce. It’s out of the question,” he screamed, based on Ruth’s recollection. Elfriede, trapped in a loveless marriage, descended into alcoholism and depression. She soon died of cancer. A distraught Ruth then attempted suicide by drinking ant poison. She fell into a weeks-long coma but ultimately survived.10

The instability of Wagner’s personal life made him vulnerable. “We tried to recruit Leo Wagner because he was so open to attack, especially for financial reasons,” Kopp explained. Wagner tried to hide his indiscretions. He succeeded at least partially: His colleagues did not notice his self-destructive behavior. For the Stasi, this disconnect presented an opportunity.

The recruitment of Wagner was a complex affair. It began when he met Georg Fleissman, a Bavarian journalist employed by the Stasi, toward the end of the 1960s. As Kopp told me, “You can hardly understand this story without the shining person Georg Fleissman.” Fleissman targeted Wagner on behalf of the Stasi, working meticulously to master Wagner as an individual. “Fleissman had Leo Wagner completely under his control,” Kopp continued. “He was completely aware of his financial and family situation up to the tiniest detail.”11

Beginning in 1970, Wagner provided intelligence to Fleissman, who claimed to represent private corporations desiring access to Eastern markets. The Stasi crafted Fleissman’s cover story. “It was developed by experts here,” Kopp said. “We had faked documents for the trade interest groups with proper names, addresses, and letterheads,” all to convince Wagner that Fleissman worked for lobbyists aligned with American rather than Soviet interests. In exchange for Wagner’s reports, Fleissman provided cash and insider information about Brandt’s coalition, which he claimed to have obtained through his work as a journalist. But Fleissman’s actual source was the Stasi.12

Over time, Wagner came to depend on these secret payments. He often sent Wolfgang Jankowiak, his driver, to back alleys, where anonymous couriers waited with packages. “It had always been a brown envelope,” Jankowiak said in the documentary, “filled with quite some bills.” Jankowiak did not know who was providing the money.13 It is possible that Wagner did not, either, because he worked through Fleissman, a middleman. Sometimes, with covert operations, interfering actors prefer to keep key players in the dark. Whether Wagner knew it or not, this arrangement lent him plausible deniability. “Wagner just wanted to receive the money,” Kopp said. “He was deep in debt, and he fully relied on Fleissman [to live] a lifestyle like somebody great without having the means for such a lifestyle.”14 Wagner did not care for whom Fleissman worked; what mattered was what Fleissman could give him.

While the Stasi targeted Steiner and Wagner, Moscow was seeking an economic lifeline in high politics. By the end of 1968, Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, had become insecure about the stability of his sphere of influence, which was rotten from the start. The Soviet Union had established control over Eastern Europe through a liberation turned occupation and then through aggressive electoral interference operations. Lacking access to the ballot box, Eastern Europeans instead expressed discontent through revolt. Between 1953 and 1956, East Germans, Poles, and Hungarians all staged popular uprisings. And in 1968, Czechoslovakia seemed to follow suit by pursuing a series of liberal reforms that Alexander Dubček, the country’s leader, called “socialism with a human face.”

The Czechoslovak movement, known as the Prague Spring, alarmed Moscow. The events of 1968 “brought upheavals whose effects were long-lasting,” Brandt later wrote, even though “the traces of change seemed to vanish swiftly.” That August, Soviet and allied forces invaded Czechoslovakia, some twenty years after Communists had seized control of the country. Worried that other states in the Eastern bloc would imitate Czechoslovakia, Brezhnev announced what became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine: A threat to socialism in one country, he said, would be treated as the “common problem” of “all socialist countries.” Externally, this pronouncement signaled resolve; internally, it was a bluff that Soviet leaders hoped would deter further dissent. Brezhnev, a lifelong Communist Party member, was a “cautious, reactive, formulaic, and technocratic” figure intent on maintaining a fragile sphere of influence.15

What Brezhnev needed was stability, which he hoped to achieve through détente, or deepened cooperation, with the United States and its allies. Engaging with the West could jump-start Eastern economies, which had begun to stagnate. In August 1970, while meeting with Brandt, Brezhnev emphasized that “the Soviet Union is ready to join in wide-ranging economic ventures.” Joseph Wippl, a CIA officer stationed in West Germany in the mid-1970s, concluded that the Soviet Union’s and East Germany’s “real policy was based on just one thing: money, hard currency. They desperately need[ed] it.”16 Beyond economics, a superpower rapprochement would also position the Soviet Union to secure international recognition of Europe’s postwar borders, which occurred at Helsinki in 1975, and to demonstrate its continued leadership of the world Communist movement, despite a break with China.17

But Brezhnev had a problem: Before achieving a period of détente, the Soviet Union had to mend relations with West Germany, the dividing line between East and West. Tensions over Germany’s future had spawned some of the Cold War’s most dangerous episodes, including the Berlin airlift of 1948 and 1949, the Berlin crisis of 1961, and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 (when Washington was convinced that Moscow’s real plan was to seize all of Berlin).18 Reconciling with West Germany was the required first step in reaching across the Iron Curtain.

And this is why Moscow so valued Brandt. Before 1969, a conservative coalition had governed West Germany without interruption. Each of Brandt’s predecessors had abided by the Hallstein Doctrine, which called for the nonrecognition of East Germany and any state that recognized East Germany (excluding the Soviet Union). Conservative lawmakers also resented that as part of the postwar settlement, Poland had received German lands east of the Oder and Neisse Rivers.19 Under the Hallstein Doctrine, Kopp said, East Germany was a “non-state [and] isolated in trade relations, culturally, and politically.” But, he continued, Brandt “broke the pattern.”20

After the 1969 election, Brandt secured a majority coalition and became chancellor. He was determined to be “the advocate of our own interests vis-à-vis the governments of Eastern Europe,” and to build new connections with the Soviet Union and its satellites.21 His objectives aligned with Brezhnev’s: to remove Berlin as a Cold War flash point and open West Germany to trade. It was in this context that Moscow sought to preserve Brandt’s government.

Covert electoral interference is always motivated by security-based concerns, real or imagined. The United States believed that containing leftist candidates would minimize threats to its welfare, identity, and even survival; next came CIA operations in countries like Italy, Chile, and Japan.22 The Soviet Union had manipulated elections to establish a security buffer across Eastern Europe. The KGB then backed like-minded politicians around the world who, if elected, would provide Moscow with friends abroad and talking points at home that Communism was an appealing ideology. The CIA’s and KGB’s interference operations varied in their objectives—some were meant to preserve regimes, while others were meant to install new ones—but they all reflected the threats and opportunities of the moment.

The vote of no confidence came at a pivotal historical moment, in which Brandt was center stage. As chancellor, he pursued his conciliatory Ostpolitik, which coincided with Moscow’s interest in détente. Brandt first negotiated a treaty with the Soviet Union. In May 1970, Bonn and Moscow reached a preliminary reconciliation agreement.23 That same month, cracks within Brandt’s coalition emerged. He had been updating his cabinet on negotiations, but lawmakers still complained about a lack of transparency. Rumors circulated that members of his coalition might switch sides. During a cabinet meeting, however, Brandt allayed the concerns of his wary allies—for the time being.24

The foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and West Germany finalized their agreement in August 1970, in what The New York Times described at the time as “an almost jovial atmosphere.”25 The signatories not only confirmed the boundaries of Europe but also pledged to “improve and extend cooperation between [their two countries], including [in] economic relations.” With the agreement complete, Brandt traveled to Moscow, a gesture to which he believed the Soviets would attach “major importance.” A visibly thrilled Brezhnev invited Brandt into his office, where they talked for four hours. Then, in a television address, Brandt advertised the merits of what was called the Moscow Treaty, declaring that it was “time to rebuild our relations with the East.”26

Next, in December, West Germany and Poland agreed to the Treaty of Warsaw. The agreement normalized relations between the two countries and, as in the Moscow Treaty, confirmed their postwar border along the Oder-Neisse line, infuriating conservative lawmakers.27 While in Warsaw, Brandt, in a scene captured by television crews, fell to his knees after laying a wreath at the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, when German soldiers had slaughtered Jewish resistance fighters. Brandt, humbly and intentionally, was attempting to reestablish trust with the nations Hitler had terrorized.28 A transit accord between East and West Germany, signed in 1971, advanced Ostpolitik still further.29

Brandt’s treaties won him global acclaim, including a Nobel Peace Prize in October 1971. They also made him enemies in parliament. The conservative bloc derided his accolades as premature: The Bundestag had not even debated the accords. While meeting with Brandt toward the end of 1971, Brezhnev, preoccupied with his economic interests, asked, “just between ourselves,” whether the Moscow Treaty would be ratified. The answer was anyone’s guess. When the Bundestag finally opened debate on Brandt’s agreements in February 1972, the conservatives remained fiercely opposed. As Kenneth Rush, the U.S. ambassador to West Germany, warned Richard Nixon, “[The conservatives] oppose détente. They’re Catholic and feel you can’t deal with the devil.”30