Berlin intelligence agency raises white flag

by Joe Cisar
September 19, 2003

[image: Leipzig Human Rights Award committee members Joe Cisar and Thomas Gandow under surveillance by Scientology in Leipzig, Germany downloaded August 1, 2003 from religiousfreedomwatch.org/extremists/cisarj1.htm (see www.leipzig-award.org for photo background)]

Scientology has been under surveillance in most of Germany for over six years. In Berlin, five of those years have been plagued by leaks and intelligence failures tinged by uneasiness still lingering from the Cold War. On September 2, 2003 the Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution (OPC) announced it no longer had Scientology under observation as of August 14, 2003. The German Scientologists are pleased, but not satisfied.

In 1993, the IRS granted Scientology tax-exemption for its "religious"

training and counseling in the US, but of course, not in Europe. The following year, Scientologists placed lurid full-page advertisements in national newspapers suggesting that they were the next victims of the Nazis who had not really lost in Germany. That was their way of putting Germany on notice that it was now dealing with a world-class religion.

The Germans scrutinized the organizational policies of Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard. By June 1997, the OPC, which acts as an "early warning system" against the Nazis of the future, had its sights set on Scientology. In Berlin, the Scientologists were better prepared than the Germans [see Hubbard's 1969 policy cited below], but the disastrous sequence of events from 1998-2003 were sparked by bureaucratic disgruntlement and fed by those whose job it was to protect democracy and the Constitution in Germany.

It started March 20, 1998, when copies of an anonymous letter, probably from a disgruntled employee, arrived at government agencies and a newspaper in Berlin. The anonymous writer stated that Berlin police commissioner Otto Dreksler had been in Scientology's management "cadre"

for several years.

This accusation had a precedent. In 1994, a different Berlin police commissioner, who really was a Scientologist, was charged with passing official information on to his fellow Scientologists. He admitted to using Scientology software to enter official information into a Scientology computer. Other German agencies had cited this incident as an example of how Scientology infiltrated the government. That case was still in process.

The target of the current letter was scheduled to receive a promotion, but that was put on hold pending investigation. The letter had to be investigated because it mentioned a threat, which would have been a criminal act, if it proved to be true. The author had written of threats of retaliation from Dreksler.

One week later, the Berlin police requested assistance from Berlin's domestic surveillance agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (OPC). The OPC happened to have an agent in place at the Berlin Scientology center. He reportedly identified a photograph of police commissioner Dreksler as that of a person often encountered at Scientology meetings.

On March 31, the OPC had found a membership list that supposedly verified Dreksler's membership in Scientology. As a result, the unfortunate police commissioner was temporarily relieved of his regular duties. His office and home were searched, but no tangible evidence of a Scientology connection was uncovered.

In mid-April an OPC undercover agent made contact with a young Berlin Scientologist. More meetings followed. One month later the agent offered the Scientologist 5,000 marks for information about Dreksler. At this point, a quote from Scientology founder Hubbard is appropriate.

In 1969, Hubbard authored a policy letter for Scientologists on the topic of counter-espionage. In the event that any staff member was asked to attempt espionage, the staff was to "promptly seem to agree, should accept any money offered (which he may keep) and should quickly and quietly report the matter ..."

That is what happened in Berlin almost 30 years later. The Scientologist took the money, and Scientology exposed the fact that the OPC had used a spy. The Scientologist was prepared to testify to this in court. They even had a photograph of the OPC agent, according to reports.

Right about that time, the incident involving the other police commissioner who really was a Scientologist came to a close. On appeal, the Berlin Scientologist policeman had been acquitted of wrongdoing. He asserted that he had only forgotten to delete some data he had entered on a computer, and there was no evidence that the forgotten data had ever been delivered to a third party. Fines he had received earlier were vacated.

By mid-May, non-Scientologist Dreksler was telling the press he had been unjustly labeled a member of Scientology. He and his attorney also complained about the government's evidence, which was being kept confidential for reasons of protecting an official source. Dreksler filed a formal complaint against the OPC. Soon after that, Scientology also sued to have Berlin stop calling the police commissioner a Scientologist.

In early July serious doubts were raised about the validity of the membership list that had been used as verification of Dreksler's alleged standing in Scientology. Other people whose names were on the list turned out not to be Scientologists after all. "Undercover agents also make mistakes," said a domestic intelligence staff member, confidentially, of course.

Later that month the press noted several things had been out of place all along. The original anonymous letter had arrived just in time to keep Dreksler from being promoted. Instead of using Scientology's jargon to refer to Scientology entities, the anonymous writer used "cadre," for instance, an old communist term. Neither did the search of the police commissioner's quarters yield any Scientology printed matter, a circumstance unusual for an active member. Moreover, as a Bavarian intelligence expert pointed out, "The undercover agent is the weakest means of intelligence gathering because these people are often of questionable character."

On July 23, the investigation against police commissioner Dreksler was officially dropped. He was reinstated and promoted as planned. Personal suspicions, however, lingered.

Scientology used the occasion to complain bitterly that the German government was persecuting its "religious" community. The Scientology organization sued to stop the Berlin authorities from offering money to Scientologists for spying. Litigation also has a basis in Scientology founder Hubbard's writing. In this respect, the only winner in the situation appeared to be Scientology, as a contemporary commentator publicly noted.

The affair did not stop there. The Germans had to hold somebody responsible. Demands for political accountability occurred within the week.

On September 5, "Der Spiegel" magazine reported that the investigation had yielded some information which was rather controversial in that part of the world. The OPC had employed former Stasi agents as informants.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, Germany was divided into East and West. East German secret police were employed by the Ministry of State Security, which the Germans shortened to "Stasi."

Police commissioner Dreksler commented that it was inconceivable that the OPC's former Stasi man had been given more credibility than a long-term police officer of the City of Berlin. Nevertheless, the Berlin Senate stated that no former Stasi staff would be dismissed, because information was sometimes needed from their sector of society. By November, a re-organization of the Berlin OPC was announced.

A year later details of the story began to surface. A former Stasi agent who worked for the OPC as an undercover man finally went to the press. He had been dismissed by the OPC. The 76-year-old man said he had worked for East German State Security as an informant until 1974. In 1997 he applied for work at the Berlin OPC and was assigned to Scientology. He was the one who played a decisive role in the wrongly accused police commissioner. His current version of the story, however, differed from the one reported by the OPC the previous year. This time the old-timer stressed he had only seen the police commissioner once, and that was outside the Berlin Scientology center.

On May 27, 1999, a second anonymous letter, apparently written by an OPC whistleblower, made the rounds. This time though, the target of the letter was OPC management. The letter stated that a second ex-Stasi man had been used in the Dreksler investigation. The OPC's response was that priority would be given to the reorganization which had been announced the previous fall.

By September 4, 1999, a bureaucratic ruling was made concerning the 76-year-old ex-OPC ex-Stasi undercover agent. He was not allowed to testify on his part in the Dreksler case before the Berlin Senate investigative committee. This decision had been made for reasons of state security, even though he had already told his story repeatedly to the media. Within days, the German Green Party demanded early retirement for the OPC Chief.

Within a couple of weeks, the police commissioner's wife announced she was publicly leaving their family's political party because nobody from that organization had ever apologized. She was also outraged that the person who had incriminated her husband the prior year had not been identified.

On October 26, 1999, Dreksler's case against the OPC was heard in court.

The unjustly accused man demanded 50,000 marks in damages, along with 16,000 marks in compensation. It was reported January 10, 2000 that he received 35,000 marks compensation from the State of Berlin.

On November 17, 1999, a report stated that the Berlin OPC would be consolidating and moving, and on January 7, 2000 the Berlin OPC chief announced his early retirement, at his own request and for personal reasons. His last public appearance was June 21, 2000, two years prior to his previously scheduled retirement.

By January 10, 2000 an unidentified OPC employee leaked the identity of the second ex-Stasi man in the Dreksler affair. The man was the son of a lieutenant-general in the former East German Ministry for State Security.

Not only was he a much bigger wheel in the formerly communist regime than the septuagenarian had been, but he had been considered a high intelligence strategist who delivered outstanding results. This man, furthermore, had told the OPC there was no connection between Scientology and Dreksler. His information, however, had been discarded in favor of the dubious incriminations.

On March 30, 2000 a press release announced the Berlin OPC would be dissolved and managed as part of the Interior Administration. In December of that year the press reported that a woman data security officer and a state security chief would jointly take over management of Berlin's former OPC.

Finally, on December 15, 2001, the press reported Scientology won its case against the German city-state of Berlin. In Berlin, undercover agents would no longer be used in attempts to infiltrate Scientology. Scientology announced that similar endeavors would be initiated in other German states, even though most of them are not plagued with the difficulties experienced in Berlin.

Scientologists are not completely satisfied with the September 2003 announcement. It's true that they are no longer under surveillance in Berlin, but the organization would prefer a court judgment, one that can be used in future litigation.

Scientology and the Berlin OPC both came into existence in the early 1950s. While the Berlin OPC has enjoyed significant victories in its half century of existence, the agency has also had it share of problems. Its first chief disappeared in 1953 while traveling in the direction of East Berlin. One year later he returned unexpectedly, and was subsequently sentenced to four years in prison for state treason. He futilely asserted that he had been kidnapped, a story he kept to until his death in 1997, the year the surveillance of Scientology began.

from cisar.org/usa/minton.htm#030903

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Joe Cisar http://cisar.org
The Press and Public Relations Policies of Layfayette Ronald Hubbard
http://www.xenu.net/archive/thesis/cisar-home.html

To all those on ARS who say that the wolf will alway come to the door
wearing the same disguise, I say go read some history ... Bob Minton

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