My brother sent along this link to an obituary of Markus Wolf, former East German spy master.
Known as "the man without a face," because for years Western intelligence agencies did not even possess a photograph of him, Wolf died in his sleep in his apartment in Berlin, according to his stepdaughter, Claudia Wall. She did not specify a cause of death.Wolf had lived quietly in the German capital since the last of several efforts to punish him for his role in spying on the former West Germany ended in 1997 with a two-year suspended sentence.
For 34 years, Wolf headed the foreign intelligence service of East Germany's feared Ministry of State Security, or Stasi. He ran a network of 4,000 spies who infiltrated NATO headquarters and the West German chancellery, even bringing down a chancellor, Willy Brandt. Wolf was not directly responsible for Stasi's primary business of spying on East Germans, which made it a reviled instrument of repression, but not all critics were convinced of this.
As so many Cold Warriors pass on it becomes easier to forget just how terribly evil Communism is. The obituary is quite a puff peace, considering that this man was instrumental in oppressing millions of people for over three decades.
