Sexpionage (Cold War Spy Documentary) | Timeline

from the heart of East Berlin a group of middle-aged men ran the cold war for the yeast their strategy included the standard tools of espionage but they were also working on a new secret weapon [Music] from the early 1960s until the collapse of communism in 1989 this group spent years designing the perfect man their experiments helped create an army of undercover agents who were dispatched to the West their task to seduce lonely West German secretaries and persuade them to hand over government secrets [Music] they left behind them a trail of abandoned and betrayed women who had no idea their lovers were actually spies Tosa we're actually the best years of my life I was 32 you know I could happen if I could have happy life and I didn't known as Romeo's they were experts in the art of pretending to love what problems do men have in this evening women not too many you know if you do it once or twice or three times and then you are pretty cold about the rules [Music] a lot of people will think of just infatuation or sexual attraction it was all of that but it was much much more it wasn't eternal longing within me which I never even knew I had until I actually saw him from 1977 until 1984 Gabrielle Kleem had an affair with a man who she thought was the love of her life she was unaware that in reality he was an East German spy mining her for West German secrets Gabrielle passed on more secrets to the east than any other agent in her position he should have gotten an Oscar Oscar would be too small of a word for his portrayal you know because he was a fantastic actor really seriously because he never made me doubt this for a minute the Romeo's were trained to exploit what different women dreamed of in a man Margaret hooker met her Romeo lover in 1968 for 17 years she too unknowingly became a key source for the East Roger finishing off Tosh I suppose his instructions were to humor me to adapt to me to listen be attentive and at the time it was important to have the feeling there was someone there for me I've never had that before God or boy I'd never had anyone I could talk to about my problems the Romeo program which entrapped Margaret and Gabrielle was devised in the early 1960s by the HPA it's Germany's foreign intelligence service from their headquarters in East Berlin it was intended to be a key part of their battle with the West these were the years of the Cold War when Germany was divided into communist East and capitalist West at its heart was the Berlin Wall which divided the city into eastern West were sworn enemies representing rival ideologies and rival military blogs it was crucial for the hva to know what their enemies in the West were thinking as far as British amadee that helped hear that our main goal was to infiltrate the key power centers of the West NATO the secret service the West German government would have cut down we thought about how to penetrate these targets and we came up with the idea of going for single secretaries who had positions in important places [Music] it was the Romeo's job seduce the Western secretaries and mine them for secrets the East Germans look for very specific qualities in the men who were to be sent to the West a typical formula was between 25 and 75 a good-looking well-educated each shaman he had good nanos and would be attractive to lonely women as a Selena mostly absolute a politician to velocity first and foremost they had to be politically reliable what was the use of a good-looking man if he couldn't be trusted to what it's just there's a staple a misty wood we were looking for faith in the party loyalty willingness to join the struggle so we valued political reliability above all else boom he avaiable up strangely enough these secretaries often fell in love with men who weren't always that good-looking they had other qualities for example there might be a father figure but reliably and seriously filling years still more important to these women it was the inner values of these men the men who made them think yes I could share my life with him that but he was the kind of man who when he walks into a room you think he's important he's tall he appears to be something special Gerhardt buyer was deemed to have these qualities and was selected to be sent to the west he had it he began boom of mention ends again my particular talent was that I really understood people I could really engage with them and relate to their problem ski signatory star feeder feeder fact this gave women the feeling that they were dealing with a very extraordinary man he hobby Schmidt and him also given his mention to do it to learn their trade the men selected as Romeo's was sent to Bell Zig a secret training camp outside Berlin the syllabus was extensive marxist-leninist B&R the most importantly human nature and goodness I didn't instead with you my often Quinn sits in the position of you but he huh good espionage work always rests on a firm grasp of psychology likewise only deduct I learned a lot about applied psychology and psychological manipulation Manila I've studied human behavior very closely through various different approaches such as Freudian theories Gillian under Ottoman Freud Orlando the Romeo's were being sent to the west to be promiscuous to seduce and deceive but the East German regime was highly moralistic there was no mention of sex intelligence chiefs like to pretend women would be seduced by higher motives we were all ideologically very doctrine edits the political motive for doing intelligence work was always depicted as the strongest the most reliable the use of human weaknesses was in generally played down you didn't want to be seen as walking with sleazy characters it was a contradiction the Romeo's also had to deal with devotin others were either saying the foul that did a bio we were told that morality was all-important the wife was highly valued in East German society but you should never deceive your wife what's he not getting that would see but these guys were told that they had to go to the west I'm doing a very opposite yeah in madaba yeah this was a conflict that was always there and was never discussed they're training over most Romeo's were sent to bomb West Germany's capital it was the home of government ministries and foreign embassies the key targets for the East Germans one is relatively small town full of ministries and administration their professions of the politicians who worked there they usually had sir family lives but he had a lot of lots of secretary and we knew that one was a lonely place these women didn't have anything to do in the evening and for a woman they are to find a partner it's nearly impossible they work long hours they don't have a lot of spare time and they are just not enough possible thoughtless it was not only a difficult place to meet men it was just no place at all to meet men the competition was fierce I mean if there was one man word of mouth you know before he even arrived everybody is somebody coming who is not married because most of them were married and and then there were just 20 or more women waiting for this person Gabrielle Kleem worked as a secretary at the American Embassy in Bonn in the mid-1970s she had hoped to meet a diplomat to marry but was finding life in the capital as a single woman difficult he didn't get invited anywhere you didn't you didn't fit in anywhere you had to have some kind of husband or fiance who had to have this position margaret Hurka had also moved to bond in search of a new life in the late 1950s she worked as a secretary to the president of West Germany Sean Tuohy dision Mishler even I suppose I was looking for independence to escape from the narrowness of my parents home to put some distance between us I just ran clean that's laughs scientist ish what I particularly wanted to get away from my mother who had always kept to the regulator's and do you so it was against her will that I went away and I applied for the job in secret Heimlich a bish bish before they were both just the sort of vulnerable women working in useful places the hva was looking for a woman who had been neglected by left after that then you know she wasn't her only service lonely normally not too pretty and when they were too pretty the puzzle it was no good a little bit ugly not too ugly because you know you had to enable Romeo to do his job without it that release these either Romeo's were like vultures circling the skies about von Bulow Kaiser control they found their victim so easily the Romeo's now planted themselves in bonds cafes and waited for secretaries to seduce margaret hooker and gabrielle clean were about to meet the men who would change the course of their lives one summer afternoon Gabriele clean a secretary at the American Embassy in Bonn was waiting to meet a gentleman friend at a cafe on the banks of the River Rhine when I was sitting there waiting of father's friend as sacis men coming towards me and he was so tall and blond hair and fantastic blue eyes I [Music] thought that a man Nexis what will actually the answer to all of my inner dreams and I looked at him and he came close and close and and I talked to me and I thought well if ever in my life I could have a boyfriend like this and then he asked me out and he said that we could go for dinner and he wanted to spend the evening with me [Music] she ordered a lot of wine and he talked to me and I just remember the feeling I had of world total falling in love with him [Music] the man who approached Gabrielle in the cafe was a Romeo his bosses in Berlin had intricately planned this first meeting they've been watching over two years to see what type of Romeo would suit her best the man she was supposed to be meeting that day was also an HPA agent she had met a year earlier he had intentionally not turned up and sent Romeo agent Frank deed cell to meet her instead the above integral easily studied the psychology of the women exactly this was very important as mafia by a for example as she doesn't have a husband what does she do in her spare time but that was researched in great detail the Romeo would then consider how to make his first approach Roger he played out the situation in advance in his head with a story to using down with a tough story it was also it was a fuel theater that day on the Rhine the hva had got it just right it was not only that he was so tremendously good-looking that he was so intelligent also he reminded me of my father which I never had and just something I had always waited for and every kind of in a dream which I didn't wasn't even aware of that I had so streams he answered to those dreams and wishes and ideas the nut man implication is that man is like a fake niggas yet these weaknesses were all registered loneliness was a big one like they wanted a father figure so our man arrives on the scene he has money he's good-looking and charming yet the secretary becomes obsessed with it and she will do everything not to lose him first encounters between a Romeo and a potential source were not always planned in advance Romeo's were always on the lookout for secretaries to seduce for Margaret hooker it was a chance meeting outside a telephone box near her house it had too much poor bastard consignor warning hours he'd seen me from his flat it overlooked the telephone box I use I'd been waiting to call my parents but hadn't been able to get through so I'd been pacing up and down outside he'd heard my steps and had come down I have seen him in my life before but after a while we got chatting and we ended up going for a walk along the Rhine that's how it all started jazz where garfish does the Romeo told Margaret his name was Franz Becker and he claimed to be a student she revealed she was a secretary to the West German president after she was October 4 alibis when I told him where I work he was unable to conceal the fact that he was a bit nervous a little bit excited and I suppose he thought that's fantastic and it fitted in very nicely of course hva Chiefs in Berlin were immediately alerted that a very important contact had been made nothing less than a secretary to the president of West Germany it was now France Becker's job to turn that contact into a source this wedding will decline we do it we always used the same method create trust build the foundations for a long relationship manipulate emotions this was the simplest method and that rooted in basic human nature Margaret and Becker began an intimate sexual relationship yeah well it all sucked it up asked me he said he needed me because he was all alone in the world I'm not sure whether it was pity I felt but I did have the sense of being somehow responsible for him a kind of maternal feeling and when he visited me at my flat it seemed to me as if he was coming home that he was coming back to where he belongs Becca spent three years developing the relationship with no mention of obtaining any secrets he tapped into her loneliness and her need for companionship do you have a quantization of insulation well he was the sort of person you could rely on that was important oh yeah he was a wonderful listener he really engaged with me he made me feel as if I was someone special for most of this women it was probably a dream come true they suddenly have a partner who was very attentive was very nice who avoids all mistakes who wants to keep the relationship stable and going and he lives almost ideal partner for Gabrielle it was a whirlwind romance her Romeo lover Frank deed cell claimed he worked abroad and could only see her every four to six weeks they met for passionate weekend's in hotels along the River Rhine it would always cry there was a tremendous amount of longing you're just driving there you were totally high as if you he'd taken some tracks or something then you would meet him and then you would know that that this was the only life you would get for all this time and you really had to make the most of it [Music] the way he moved and we just all sexuality and thought it was sex solely to attend dependent on him I never ever considered even looking at another name I searched I just could not live without it answers longing which he built up because of the lake of sexuality in the interim periods and I always had to wait for five weeks and he came up with those idiotic mathematical equations telling me that if he would go to bed with me six or seven times during this one week and said this would equate analysis not funny this would equate to to whatever during the weekend and just would then come up if your excess oil up towards us normal relationship Frank did cell sent the intimate details of his relationship with Gabrielle back to Berlin they were pulled over by intelligence chiefs at hva headquarters who could then plan the next stage in the relationship but if you guys are havin sex played a role of course it was reported where the sex was importantly and this kind of information was included in a dossier and the Romeo used it to plan his behavior the Romeo would report about sex verbally to his controller but that side of things was left pretty much to the Romeo to manage as he saw fit but it was discussed when it was relevant to the operation what are these that give far gabrielle may have fallen passionately in love but for all Romeo's sex served a very specific purpose if he'd been a bigger we had an expression for this bombs but I'd shot in West we danced we called it the post coital readiness to disclose information underneath Xin polite when the Beast interesting what this meant was with women he was sleeping with were prepared to reveal an enormous amount after sex poor educator it this whatever happened around a when I read the most rational which is why you have to work online in the evenings when they're at their most emotional when Beth was monetary standout newts with military precision the hva Chiefs in Berlin had made Margaret and Gabrielle fall in love with their romeo's they were now considered ready to start delivering secrets to the east three years into his relationship with Margaret hooker Romeo agent Franz Becker felt she was ready to pass on information from the president's palace he Hamilton de Hardin what um we just chatted about this and that about certain people from my office hour he just seemed to have a very general interest in it or - he the operative of a stricken her entanglement was engineered very carefully very slowly what she delivered in the early days or reported on didn't go beyond what any of us might tell a good friend or partner in casual conversation so that was just a beginning that's what Anne Frank after two years of receiving this verbal information he felt ready to ask her for more secret documents from the palace Margaret had now been with him for five years and trusted him when he told her who he worked for don't you sniff on phone I'm Gandhi Ashram he never talked about secret services of course there was what he called up the firm which had its headquarters in Zurich all I knew was that it was a right-wing organisation that's your when he asked me to give him documents I didn't say of course I'll do it I just said I'll see what I can do if I happen to find anything I agreed so he had something to offer the firm Margaret began to smuggle top-secret government documents from the president's palace just kleiner norty what I took or just little notes which I could slip very easily into my handbag or a thin carbon copy which I could fold up and hide in one of its compartments I'm fast guitar because you worked in France I had a good relationship with my bosses but this was a breach of trust no one would have thought I was capable of must be a kind mention so I asked myself how France managed to bring me to this point because even now I ask myself office he told me I was helping him I didn't know I just can't explain it yeah she kind of smushed York Leone West Germany was at the frontline of the Cold War thousands of British and American troops were stationed there in NATO bases all top secret reports on negotiations within NATO were sent to the West German President this was the information the East Germans wanted margaret Hurka gave it to them endurance I not sighting in the droids Lorne because of the situation at that time the heightened tension between east and west this information was extremely sensitive to summoning and it was rather like Big Brother looking over your shoulder at all negotiations between the alliance partners partner who destroyed or shorted Gabrielle cleans job at the US Embassy in bond gave her access to American military secrets her Romeo also developed the relationship to the point where she would trust him when he asked her for secret documents he came up with a story he said that he was working in Saudi Arabia and in African countries and that his home office was in Munich and that he worked for a company which was collecting information on different levels also economic levels and to some kind of like a so-called think-tank or data base which would be used to support peace to nurtured peace in the world [Music] Gabrielle was obsessed with detail and willing to believe anything this sexual attraction with nobody if I had a census and the serve I think this made me close my eyes to everything and he just muses having smuggled the documents out of the embassy she would photograph them at home and give him the films whenever she saw him there were camps of films in the pocket of my court and he would tack me and put his hand in the pocket of my coat intake systems without ever saying anything and then always looking at me like just as image and say oh yes you did lie where I hide Gabrielle's position at the US Embassy made her recruitment by the hva a danger to the West she was known to East German intelligence by her codename Gerhardt equally guard the sauce Gerhardt was one of the most important East Germans ever had in terms of the quantity of information and the extent of information that was being passed to East Berlin winking on the door she worked in the American Embassy so had access to very important information she worked in the very office where armed suppliers and military maneuvers were coordinated between the West Germans and the Americans Margaret was now regularly delivering secret documents to Becca but their relationship changed she was hooked on him so he didn't need to spend as much time with her and insisted their affair be kept a secret she was the new honey I never really had an address I never really had a telephone number where I could call him right up to the end I didn't he was had some excuse or other why this had to be the case and this was an impossible situation Becca gave regular reports to his bosses back in the east on the state of the relationship teams of psychologists analyzed the reports and worked out how the relationship should progress they wanted to keep their source happy at all costs Ivana it may be the hitter individual at movida the task really was to keep things on the boil re-inject vigor into the relationship and we did this with interesting conversation love an expensive holiday some of these women couldn't have afforded it on their own but the hva footed the bill and it worked it bought time the relationship could last another year if the relationship showed signs of cooling it was always warmed up again to motivate the woman and this was always done according to a set plan Becca took these photos of Margaret on their holidays together but he refused to be photographed pictures of the back of his head all that Margaret has of their time together even then she claims she noticed something strange about him yes Victor in Missoula there was always something at the back of it all which I couldn't really put my finger on he seemed divided as if he had a job to do and I kind of sensed it Modesto Margaret thought of leaving him but Becca had been well trained in using a woman's weaknesses to keep her well it's dr. doback field sorry whenever I tried to end the relationship he'd come along and talk about all the good things the good times fyodor I know Mom it had he'd always say that we needed one another that we knew one another inside out that we understood each other when Christine was stored and that's how he kept me so I did ask the soft I don't want to talk badly about women but women they accept quite a bit if they are really in need for for some relationships women are forgiving in general if you don't overdo it and you can play with the woman as long as you want at the end you open your shelters shoot me or she would say no it's not that bad it's tall long stretches apart secrecy for Gabrielle to life as the lover of a Romeo was never easy I never really lived unless it was to him so this was a horrible problem and also see as an event it got it got increasingly worse you would think oh well I didn't see him for five weeks and she had a life and was interval periods but I didn't I didn't shove any life I didn't go out I didn't do anything I didn't do it anything but I wanted Berlin couldn't risk gabrielle becoming too unhappy they couldn't afford to lose such a valuable source she had to believe there was a future with her Romeo detail kept her by promising what she most wanted in the world we were dusted off and walking alone and he lifted me up in front of a window so we could both look into our reflections and he said oh we was such a beautiful couple and we will get married next spring because I was expected I was dancing with joy oh so now I would finally have a life [Music] six months later details summon Gabrielle to a cafe in Brule I because I thought well we were going to get married I was ecstatic with joy and I sort said he would tell me ooh you know something like the wedding plan but Romeo's were not supposed to marry their source they lived in West Germany under a false identity and marriage would involve too many checks so he made his excuses the wedding was off I thought that maybe this relationship would now break up Lenore because of us he had hurt me really not only so much but too much but the relationship did not break up the trips to the Rhine and Gabrielle's spying continued year after year secret details of Western missile systems and NATO exercises were all passed on it was the only way Gabrielle could keep detail he always creates a fantastic all he said of course if she don't play anymore those documents my love for you will certainly not die but I don't know how I could keep on seeing you of course if he would have said if you don't give me any more documents bloody when I don't come to see you anymore then even I would have worked but he always said yes I will do my the most I can but I don't know how I can do it and I do I was calculating and everything you know and that's how he got me to do what the man in Berlin had shaped to excellent sources but they're spying for the East was about to come to an end the West German secret service the BND was now on the trail of both women by 1985 margaret hooker had been with her romeo lover Franz Becker for 17 years for fourteen of those she had been passing on secrets from the president's palace but Becker had been identified as an agent by the West German secret service the BND while under surveillance they noticed he saw a lot of Margaret and uncleared entities and then across the alarm bells started ringing who is this is it his mother did it his girlfriend visit his sister and then we discovered that Miss hooker worked in the president's office and then of course the alarm bells really began to ring huh [Music] Margaret's flattened bond was now put under surveillance after several months the West Germans had the evidence they needed it was time to tell her boss president von weizsäcker those loud Ahmad's members were with him Darmody although he was very skeptical the avea suddenly the head of counterintelligence comes along and says mr. president one of your closest age is Allegiant and of course you have to have some very strong evidence at back that out and I remember that President poroshenko was very dubious Sylvia could well my impression at the time was that he was more willing to believe Miss her clit and he was to believe me the other for her good glob of smoke but the evidence was overwhelming Margaret was picked up from her flat and charged with espionage she insisted her lover had worked for a Peace Institute in Switzerland I really believed even then that it was an organization in Switzerland rubber but the police didn't believe anything I said after gansan vada skip contrived saying in the whole world there is no Swiss organization whatever its political colour which would have been interested in the type of material that this Hurka was handing over before he could be hunted and her claim that she didn't know what she was involved in well this is something all these people do to preserve their own self-esteem or mirror their dark tanka head these mysteries given she was not naive she might have been clinging to the idea of doing something good or working for peace but the fact that she clung to something like this is a sign that deep down she knew exactly what she was involved in this for the first time Margaret discovered that the man she had loved for 17 years had secretly been spying for the east how is she yes Peter a farm I only discovered later that she was already married when he was sent over here she owed us profundidad we thought that was a terrible revelation for me smiler I mean the whole thing was bad enough but the fact that he'd always gone on about how he was all alone in the world without family what he coulda spared me that I think certainly sign wasn't Incas while Franz Becker escaped to the east Margaret was sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage of which she served for natural information division well of course it was absolutely awful I needed all the strength I had just to survive it and if you ask me how I survived it well I really don't know for Gabriele clean the end came in 1991 the Cold War and her affair with her Romeo lover Frank did sell we're now over the hva had been disbanded documents uncovered from their files revealed that Gabrielle had been passing secrets to the east from 1977 until the collapse of communism in 1989 she had handed over 1500 documents more than any other source in her position but at her trial or she could think of was deed Sal they were constantly talking about espionage and I didn't care about that I always said but did you know him what was he like and did he love me so I always wanted to know that you did he have some feelings for me or was it all just a lie I really want to know if something like that happens till you just tend to question yourself what is - and what's not - and what part is for you and what part is imagined and the WordPad is a story and word plant is affection and you go absolutely insane because you just feel like you add disintegrating bit by bit by bit by bit memo is so we are false everything you lived for was kind of cake in a way that they have practically no identity [Music] we with people and they destroy us and in every level as the Cold War was now over Gabriele received a two-year suspended sentence the men who run the operation from Berlin were not even put on trial as they were deemed to have been doing their job I think it's so devastating that some supid else was I'm sorry whom I don't know from a hole in the ground taken some stupid ship office in East Germany picking people women out you know like like greater animals for testing and saying okay we are going to destroy her life today margaret hooker lives alone in her parents old house after her release from prison she had nowhere to go but the place she had left 30 years earlier in search of an exciting life in Bonn she has not seen France Becca since her arrest he is now seriously ill stinker elmo's yes Medina Mishka let's go it seems to me that he now has to live with himself and that must be hard enough but I think I've worked through a lot of this this is his issue now I don't have any feelings of hatred such variance a relationship was a huge part of my life it did have a purpose and a meaning for me so in that respect these were not wasted years [Music] gabriele clean now lives alone in Holland with her 13 dogs there is little sympathy for the plight of Gabrielle and Margaret from the men who benefited from the secrets they gave up my pen name is Paul we never abused with me we saw it as a legitimate method a method which was justified by the very real threat posed by the cold war in mind what I need is if we are talking about the brutality of secret services if you show me this broken heart well then I can show you much much worse look back through history and who broken hearts look like nothing be nice indeed whichever way you look at it espionage is a dirty business but it's necessary there is always a point where you want to know more from someone than he's prepared to reveal and to gather this information you use all the means of your disposal and because the human being is always the weakest link in the chain you use this weakness to your own advantage c'est la vie c'est la vie if it hadn't been the Romeo for this poor woman that would be ten years of a happy life maybe missing I don't think that was a too big human custard because it goes into the in a general mixture of human fate and human happiness and unhappiness some of them are probably very happy with their whole meals [Music] [Music] Gabriele's romeo lover died several years ago he may have deceived her to keep her spying but to this day she has not let go if he would walk into my life like I remember him I'm terribly afraid that I would fall in love with him again and because of I am now alone again totally alone a very big part of me would say yes that I loved you and you felt a void in me which nobody ever caught or what over again and why don't we just move on from see God and live for once together yeah you you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 496,079

Rating: 4.644846 out of 5

Keywords: Full Documentary, real, Documentaries, Channel 4 documentary, Full length Documentaries, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, history documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary, Cold War, BBC documentary, documentary history, History, stories

Id: 4G2qqI8k3do

Length: 48min 5sec (2885 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2017