Spy papers at center of Kohl scandal divide Germans

April 8, 2000
Web posted at: 3:09 a.m. EDT (0709 GMT)

In this story: Committee members clash over Stasi archives Controversy uncovers lingering east-west divide Kohl vows to fight release of records RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

BERLIN (CNN) -- Papers locked for years in the vaults of East Germany's former spy agency could hold the key to exposing the full extent of a political fund-raising scandal that disgraced former West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

The records show that Stasi spies listening in on telephone conversations more than a decade ago knew about Kohl's secret fund-raising activities -- a scandal that finally broke just last November. The revelations rocked Kohl's Christian Democratic Party.

	MESSAGE BOARD
Germany today

Kohl led the Christian Democrats until his 1998 election defeat. The Stasi -- East Germany's secret police -- had apparently followed the party's financial dealings as far back as 1976.

Now a bitter battle has begun over whether the parliamentary committee probing the Kohl case should have access to the secret files. Conservative committee members say the files should remain locked.

"In the constitution, Article 10 provides protection against eavesdropping in the private sphere, and that must be respected," said Christian Democratic lawmaker Andreas Schmidt.

Leftists want access to the Stasi archives and claim the law is on their side.

Green Party lawmaker Hans-Christian Stroebele said the committee's right to see the Kohl evidence is protected by legislation passed to cover just such a situation.

"In the Stasi archives law, it's specifically provided that Stasi archives or documents should be made available to an investigatory committee," he said.

The controversy over the files has exposed the lingering east-west gap in the nation that Kohl himself united in 1990.

Eastern politicians were upset that the same records used to weed out one-time collaborators with the communist secret police from public jobs in united Germany should be off-limits now that revelations could affect prominent western Germans.

That would have a "catastrophic" effect on eastern Germans' respect for democracy and could widen the east-west gap, Reinhard Hoeppner, governor of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung newspaper.

Files kept by the Stasi, were used as evidence in the past against leading eastern politicians accused of acting as informers for the communist regime. Several withdrew from politics amid the allegations.

With parliament examining whether political decisions were bought during Kohl's 16 years in power, the former leader has said he will go to Germany's highest court to keep Stasi files out of investigators' hands.

He maintains there is no way of knowing if or how the information was doctored to suit the Stasi's goal of undermining the West.

Former East German spymaster Markus Wolf said the Stasi decided in the 1980s not to try to discredit Kohl with its data on his party's finances, partly because of a thaw in east-west relations.

Berlin Bureau Chief Chris Burns contributed to this report.

Green Party in Germany

STASI - THE EAST GERMAN SECRET POLICE

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.