Kohl wins bid to seal spy files

Kohl oversaw the unification of West and East Germany in 1990

BERLIN, Germany -- Lawyers for Helmut Kohl have succeeded in sealing secret police files on the former German chancellor.

The Stasi -- the spy agency of the former East Germany -- recorded the conversations of Kohl and other West German politicians, and investigators probing a 1999 slush fund scandal want the files on Kohl to be released.

Kohl wanted to keep his files under lock and key, arguing the wiretaps were illegally obtained and that he deserves protection

The Berlin administrative court ruled against opening the eavesdropping records after a hearing on Wednesday to assess Kohl's insistence that he deserves protection from further damage to his "human dignity."

The official heading the Stasi archive, Marianne Birthler, argued the records should be opened up for Kohl as they have been for other Germans, except for information about their private life. In court, her lawyers said giving in to Kohl would set back efforts to come clean on East German history.

But Kohl, who reunited Germany in 1990 after East Germany's collapse, won his latest attempt to defend his legacy. In March, he avoided criminal charges by agreeing with prosecutors to pay a 300,000-mark ($130,000) fine related to his acceptance of illegal campaign donations.

The court said a law passed by Kohl's government after reunification that regulates access to the Stasi files bars the release of records on people targeted by the Stasi, including "figures in contemporary history ... and therefore also the plaintiff."

The Associated Press reported that Birthler said she would appeal, prolonging a battle that Kohl has pledged to take all the way to the supreme court. "Substantial research sources have been blocked off," she said.

Investigators had said they would not use the files on Kohl as evidence but that they might use information from them to question witnesses.

German law regulating the Stasi archive allows the release of records to journalists and academics, but it also has clauses to protect the privacy of those on file.

Kohl maintained that the Stasi's notes on him -- some 2,000 pages -- would be full of false and doctored information. The slush fund case was sparked in 1999 when the former chancellor refused to name the donors of $900,000 in off-the-record political donations he received during the 1990s.

A former East German pro-democracy activist, Birthler's view reflects a feeling among eastern Germans that records made by the Stasi -- which dissolved along with East Germany after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall -- should not be shielded by the government.

The files of many former East German politicians are already public. National leaders, including President Johannes Rau, also have warned that extra protection for Kohl could set back the slow process of uniting the long-divided country.