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Thanks to piasa for the ping to this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1735905/posts
"Spymaster takes secrets to grave"
The Times ^ | November 10, 2006 | Roger Boyes
Posted on 11/09/2006 4:26:54 PM PST by MadIvan
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Markus Wolf, the sinister East German spymaster who spun his web across Western Europe, has died peacefully in his sleep — taking with him some of the darkest secrets of the Cold War.
A solitary red rose was deposited by a sympathiser yesterday on the doorstep of his Berlin apartment block. But few tears were being shed for the 83-year-old Stasi general who dispatched some 30,000 agents to seduce Nato secretaries, buy up politicians, vacuum up secrets and train terrorists.
Normally voluble politicians contacted for comment yesterday refused to utter a word, as if Mr Wolf were a demonic presence. “Let him rot in hell,” spluttered one conservative deputy.
Germany, 17 years after the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, has still not quite got over the damage wrought to the national psyche by the spy chief. Even now the coalition government led by Angela Merkel, the Chancellor, is divided over the question of whether to continue vetting civil servants for their Stasi links. A draft law due to be introduced today has been withdrawn — because Germans still cannot agree on how far former Stasi collaborators and agents should be pursued, making victims out of spies."