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With a strength totalling almost 4,000, lavishly funded and equipped, the HVA was especially adept at penetrating West Germany with ‘sleepers’. One of these, specially trained and sent into the West in 1956 among many thousands of refugees from the GDR, was Günter Guillaume. Guillaume’s cover was that of a firmly anti-Communist Social Democrat, and so it was that over the years he rose through the ranks of the SPD to become a prominent aide to Willy Brandt and finally, in 1972, his personal assistant and constant companion. Early on the morning of 24 April 1974, the doorbell rang at the villa in Bonn where Guillaume lived with his wife (also a Stasi agent) and his children (who knew nothing of their father’s true identity). Guillaume answered the door in his dressing gown. His visitors identified themselves as officials of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, West Germany’s equivalent of the FBI or M15. ‘Are you Herr Günter Guillaume?’ asked one of the officials. ‘We have a warrant for your arrest.’ At this point, Guillaume made a fatal error. He drew himself up to his full height and announced: ‘I am a citizen and officer of the GDR – respect that fact!’ Actually, they had no conclusive evidence against Guillaume until he incriminated himself.
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