The young Schroeder was a Marxist and environmentalist. In the early 1970s he idolized SPD chancellor Willy Brandt, whose Ostpolitik promised better relations with communist Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
A long lost relative of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was an employee of the East German secret police, it has emerged.
There's a collection of Stasi-related articles here: CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY: 1998 - 2003: Stasi Files. I find this part particularly interesting:
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY: Stasi Files: 1999
Boyes, Roger. "CIA to Return Stasi Papers." Times (London). 19 Jan. 1999. [http://www. the-times.co.uk]: "The Central Intelligence Agency, giving way to intense German lobbying, has agreed to hand over thousands of files on agents who spied for communist East Germany."
Drozdiak, William. "The Cold War in Cold Storage: Washington Won't Part With East German Spy Files; Bonn Wants Them Back." Washington Post, 3 Mar. 1999, A17. [http:// www.washingtonpost.com]: When German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder visited the United States last month, he "was fervently hoping he would return home with ... the top-secret archives of East Germany's foreign spy operations that the CIA spirited away after the fall of the Berlin Wall." However, President Clinton would not even discuss the issue. The Chancellor's "senior aides said privately" that he "was outraged by the ... refusal to surrender files that Germany considers its property. They warned that the impasse soon could seriously damage cooperation on intelligence and other matters between the countries."
Pincus, Walter. "Berlin to Get CIA Copies of 320,000 Stasi Files." Washington Post, 27 Oct. 1999, A27. [http://www.washingtonpost.com]: U.S. and German officials stated on 26 October 1999 that the CIA will turn over to Germany "copies of a significant part, but not all," of the Stasi files obtained after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. According to U.S. officials, "[f]iles relating to foreigners who worked for the Stasi in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere will not be turned over."
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY: Stasi Files: 2000 - 2003
New York Times. "U.S. Gives Cold-War Spy Files to Germany." 6 Apr. 2000. [http://www. nytimes.com]: According to a German government spokesman on 5 April 2000, " the Central Intelligence Agency has handed over the first of a large cache of East German files listing intelligence agents and their code names." Tony Czuczka, "Former Spy Files Returned to Germany," Associated Press, 5 Apr. 2000, reports that German government spokesman Uwe-Karsten Heye said that "the first CD-ROM arrived at Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's office last Friday [31 March 2000]. It was still sealed and had not yet been analyzed, he said. Some 1,000 further discs are to follow over the next 1 1/2 years."
Hmm--from another page on the same site, here's an interesting angle related to the Libya connection you mention:
Sunday Times (London). [Introduction to Documents.] 26 Nov. 2000. [http://www. sunday-times.co.uk]: On 26 November 2000, the Sunday Times published "a selection of the information concerning Great Britain obtained from the computer database of East Germany's foreign intelligence service. This list comes from a variety of searches undertaken by us in Berlin at the Gauck commission." An accompanying report by Stephen Grey and John Goetz, "Target Britain," Sunday Times, 26 Nov. 2000, notes that the information "reveals the full scale of Stasi penetration in Britain. Sources in Whitehall provided sensitive intelligence, including, it seems, prior warning of British support for the American bombing of Libya in 1986. The British Army was infiltrated, the security of military bases in West Germany was compromised and advances in nuclear weapons and submarines were disclosed to East Berlin, which told the KGB in Moscow everything it knew. Informers inside the Labour party also supplied confidential documents....
bttt