Man without a face [antikvár]

TntroductionFor thirty-four years I served as chief of the foreign intelligence service of the Ministry of State Security of the German Democratic Republic. As even my bitter foes would acknowledge, it was probably the most efficient and effective such service on the European continent. We gathered many of the strategic and technical secrets of the mighty armies arrayed against us and passed them via Soviet intelligence to the command centers of the Warsaw Pact in Moscow. It was widely believed that I knew more about the secrets of the Federal Republic of Germany than the chancellor in Bonn himself. Indeed, we placed agents in the private office of two chancellors, among the thousand or so we had infiltrated into all sectors of West German political life, business, and other areas of society. Many of these agents were West Germans who served us purely out of conviction.I saw my personal and professional life as one long arc that began with what was a grand goal by any objective standard. We East German Socialists tried to create a new kind of society that would never repeat the German crimes of the past. Most of all, we were determined that war should never again originate on German soil.Our sins and our mistakes were those of every other intelligence agency. If we had shortcomings, and we certainly did, they were those of too much