Stasi

John Christian Schmeidel is a graduate of Columbia Law School and Pembroke College, Cambridge University, where he earned a Ph.D. in modern history. He was for eight years a banker in Europe, briefly a consultant to the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California on middle eastern terrorism and a U.S. government-sponsored Fulbright Scholar in Tunisia. He is presently a criminal prosecutor in northern Arizona."

• 1. Origins and Development of the East German Secret Police 2. The Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter Informant System 3. In Unequal Battle: Stasi and the Churches 4. Stasi Penetration of the Artistic Community and Universities 5. Foreign Espionage Operations 6. Cooperation between the Red Army Faction and Staatssicherheit

Finally, a concise, readable history of the Stasi. John Schmeidel has done a wonderful job. Western intelligence agencies agreed that the Stasi was the most efficient and successful of the former communist intelligence services. The number of damaging East German spies uncovered after the fall of the Wall confirmed this.Why should one care today? Not only because the Stasi once trained radical Latin American, Asian, Middle Eastern and African intelligence organizations still active in 2007. Since 1990, former Stasi officers have gone into business as "security consultants" around the world to governments, private industry, organized crime and terror groups. Stasi skill has improved the lethality of modern terrorism.Richard Palmer, CEO of Cachet International, twenty year CIA operations veteran and former Chief of Station in Europe.