Operation Rosewood
| Date | 1989 |
|---|---|
| Participants | Stasi, CIA |
| Description | One of the greatest coups of Cold War espionage: the CIA secreting away in 1989 of the complete original files from East Germany's foreign spy operations, including the true identities of its thousands of agents, most in West Germany and other NATO countries. |
Operation Rosewood (German: Operation Rosenholz) was the "one of the greatest coups of Cold War espionage": the CIA secreting away to the USA, sometime after 1989, of the complete original files from East Germany's foreign spy operations, including the true identities of its thousands of agents, most in West Germany and other NATO countries.[1]
The operation was carried out immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. A senior Scandinavian intelligence officer recalled to Dirk Pohlmann that he was informed that a US helicopter had landed on the roof of a building at the Stasi headquarters in Berlin. This operation was impossible without preparation, consultation and securing by the highest Stasi officers. Rosewood was probably not the only information transfer of a special kind. What this data made possible was the extortionate contact with all the Stasi agents, that the CIA could now give the choice of either working for the US services in the future or rotting in prison. The East German agents who had worked against the Western states were therefore still active under new leadership from now on.[2]
Known Participants
All 4 of the participants already have pages here:
| Participant | Description |
|---|---|
| CIA | The most high profile of the US intelligence agencies, a covert agent of foreign policy. Funded by a 'black budget' derived from the global drug trade, the CIA is experienced at assassination, blackmail, instigating coups and other such covert deep state actions. Its scrutiny in the early 1970s however led to the development of more secure bases for the most sensitive deep state operations. |
| Alexander Principalov | KGB officer who might have sold the entire archive of East German agents in Western Europe to the CIA after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. Died a few years later of mysterious heart attack sitting in his car. |
| Stasi | The East German intelligence agency |
| Rainer Wiegand |
