the abandoned house stories untold walkthrough

#THE ABANDONED HOUSE STORIES UNTOLD WALKTHROUGH WINDOWS#

While M spoke eagerly of the excitement and disillusionment he felt as a result of his spying career, he initially was reluctant to talk about this traumatising “mock arrest”. Nothing, therefore, had prepared him for the interrogation in the Hohenschönhausen prison. Finding the CIA moleīy 1985, M was a seasoned double agent and seemingly getting on very well with his Stasi handlers, Wolfgang and Heinz. M could easily make such trips behind the Iron Curtain without raising suspicions. M’s meetings with them often took place in East Berlin, and sometimes in other venues in the Eastern Bloc such as Bulgaria or Yugoslavia. His two long-time Stasi handlers were known to him as Wolfgang and Heinz. In all six of our interviews, M emphasised the distinctive nature of his relationships with the three different services he dealt with. On several occasions, M discussed the possibility that someone like Aldrich Ames, a notorious KGB mole inside the CIA between 19, was responsible for betraying him. During the cold war, the KGB, of course, worked very closely with the Stasi.

He would go on to believe that he had been betrayed.Īccording to M, only “treason” within the CIA could explain it – that a mole within the American intelligence service had betrayed him as a double agent to the Soviet KGB. A seed that would grow over the years to become an obsession. But the episode planted a seed of doubt in M’s mind about whether the Stasi was on to him. It transpired that the humiliating interrogation was in fact a mock arrest led by Stasi handlers to test his mettle. He wants to find out, in particular, why his East German handlers, whom he had managed to deceive so successfully for so many years, suddenly seemed to turn against him in the mid-1980s. M’s motive in sharing his story stems from his desire to learn more about certain episodes from his spying career. Listen to Eleni Braat and Ben de Jong talk about M’s life in an episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast. From the perspective of the East Germans, M was indeed a traitor.Īfter seeing the evidence he provided to us, we believe his account of working against the Stasi is credible. But throughout this time, his primary loyalty was to the Dutch service and the CIA. Over a period of more than 20 years, from the late 1960s until the end of the cold war, the HVA considered M their agent and he gave the East Germans information – much of it acquired through the multinational he worked for. The Americans were keen to use him when they learned he had also been recruited by the foreign intelligence arm of the Stasi – the renowned Hauptverwaltung (Chief Administration) A, known by its acronym HVA. M worked for the Dutch service for many years and subsequently for the CIA. That career would go on to provide excellent cover for his clandestine work, as it involved a lot of international travel. He was working for a Dutch multinational that we have agreed not to name. M’s spying career began in the second half of the 1960s when the Dutch security service, the BVD (Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst) – the predecessor of the present-day AIVD (Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst) – recruited him. The Insights team generates long-form journalism and is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges. This story is part of Conversation Insights In other words, his interrogators seemed to lack proof. Yet M said he felt strangely reassured because these accusations were not specific – they were meant to provoke him. They taunted him constantly, saying things like “You betrayed Marxism-Leninism” and “You are a CIA agent”. His captors intimidated him by pouring cold water over him from a bucket until the afternoon. M was forced to undergo a degrading and extremely painful cavity inspection, before being taken – still naked – to an interrogation room. They told him he was in the Untersuchungshaftanstalt (pre-trial detention center) Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, a notorious site during the cold war under the control of the Ministry of State Security (Stasi).

#THE ABANDONED HOUSE STORIES UNTOLD WALKTHROUGH WINDOWS#

Still in pyjamas, he was taken from the safe house where he was staying for debriefing sessions with his Stasi handlers to a van with darkened windows that transported him, under armed guard, to a prison.

He was in East Berlin at the time and the men had rudely awoken M around 4am. In early 1985, it appeared that the Stasi may have uncovered his deception – and his true loyalty to the west. These are the words of double agent “M”, who operated for the Dutch security service and the CIA against the East German Stasi for 22 years. Three or four burly fellows in uniform are standing around me, one of them behind me with a truncheon… ‘Sie sind ein Verräter! ,’ they snap.

I was naked, tied to a hard chair with handcuffs.

The abandoned house stories untold walkthrough