Word: stasis
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...virtually everyone in East Germany cooperated with, or was compromised by, the enforcing agencies of a totalitarian state. Some 2.3 million people -- effectively, the elite -- were members of the Socialist Unity Party, the communists. Then there were the 85,000 full-time employees of the Ministry for State Security (Stasi), as well as its 109,000 still mostly anonymous informers. Finally, thousands of journalists, judges, mayors and policemen gave at least lip service to what they knew to be a gigantic...
...rapid political and economic unification of the two Germanys is paying an unexpected dividend: a combined attack on terrorism. After pooling information from West Germany and the impounded files of the now defunct East German secret police, the Stasi, East German authorities this month arrested seven people believed to be members of West Germany's notorious Red Army Faction, whose bloody campaign claimed more than 20 lives between...
...married to an East German scientist, is accused of taking part in the 1977 killings of Jurgen Ponto, chairman of the Dresdner Bank, and industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer. East German Interior Minister Peter- Michael Diestel said the arrests provided evidence of a "devilish connection" between the R.A.F. and the Stasi -- a connection that is now certain to be further investigated...
...Stasi has been disbanded, although a few dozen former officials remain on the payroll to help a 100-member citizens' oversight committee supervise storage of dossiers on an estimated 5 million individuals. The supervision has not been leakproof: two prominent politicians were ruined by disclosures that they served as Stasi informants, and ex-agents are suspected of providing the damaging leaks. There are also rumors that a ring of former Stasi agents is using the files to blackmail ex-informers...
...most of his former colleagues, Dieter has found work -- this time as a regular policeman in East Berlin. He has started walking a beat, and earns a monthly wage of 1,600 East German marks, which is worth about $330 in buying power and is almost equal to his Stasi pay. (A few former agents have even found employment as policemen in West Germany.) But Dieter has lost a packet of coveted perks, among them paid vacations at choice resorts along the Baltic coast. Because the Stasis were in a special category set apart from the typical East German civil...