The DS describes the employees in the Bulgarian section of Deutsche Welle as traitors. He spread rumors in front of the media management that they were agents of the Bulgarian services. Dr. Christopher Nering tells Alexander Detev the story of DS and SG.
Dr. Nering, you organized the workshop “State Security and the Media” with the support of Sofia University and the media program of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. At it, experts discussed the relations between the Bulgarian State Security and the media. It also touched on Deutsche Welle as an “ideological opponent” of the secret services in communist Bulgaria. What steps have the DS taken against Deutsche Welle?
-DS always first acts administratively by opening a letter case in which it collects all available information and plans. This happened back in 1963, when Deutsche Welle began broadcasting in Bulgarian. Until February 1990, they worked on the topic.
It is monitored who works there. They know at all times who the employees in the Bulgarian section are and the State Security manages to partially even capture the personal relations between the employees. Many like to describe the intrigues between them, such as who wants to take a certain position. They collect this information mainly by sending agents to Cologne who know these employees directly or indirectly.
Do DS (state security) agents manage to infiltrate the Bulgarian edition of Deutsche Welle?
-These plans fail. They either contact their relatives who have remained in Bulgaria, or send people who “accidentally” meet the employees of Deutsche Welle. The goal of the State Security was to recruit Bulgarian employees, but they failed not once for nearly 30 years. They are only able to gather information and get there. They know who is who in the Bulgarian section. Also, for each decade in the literary work there is a plan of the building of “Deutsche Welle” and they know who is in which room. They also get the internal regulations and the telephone directory. They have the personal addresses and telephone numbers of most employees of the Bulgarian section. They fail with recruitment, and to some extent with discrediting.
What are the attempts to discredit?
-They are trying to discredit the employees in Bulgaria as “traitors of the homeland” and “enemies of the Bulgarian people”, as they do with those of “Free Europe“. The goal is to present them as traitors. They are also trying to spread rumors in Germany that one or another employee is a State Security agent. In Deutsche Welle this is unsuccessful, in Free Europe it is more successful. The aim is to discredit the media leadership. But I found nowhere information that these rumors had led to consequences.
In the 1970s, radio jamming began. During a visit to Bulgaria, German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher raised this issue. State Security documents also say that the German side, including the embassy in Sofia, is raising the issue. In the 1980s, this led to consequences. The head of Bulgarian intelligence is urging the departments working against Deutsche Welle to provide more evidence of criminal and hostile acts in order to show them to the German side. The DS is in fact forced to admit that Deutsche Welle is trying to provide neutral information to its listeners in Bulgaria.
And what is used as evidence that they are hostile are, for example, Georgi Markov’s broadcasts in the 1970s. The literary work is gaining more importance because other departments only monitor what Markov does. Thus, Deutsche Welle became the object of greater interest. But because Markov’s ties with Deutsche Welle are not as close as with the BBC, for example, they have failed to implement tougher measures.
When did Deutsche Welle stop being of interest to the Bulgarian services?
-Officially in February 1990. This is related to the political changes in Bulgaria. In the autumn of 1989, Deutsche Welle for the first time received the right to have a stand at the International Fair in Plovdiv. State security is very active against him, but in the end they are forced to admit that Deutsche Welle has not done anything hostile. Employees arriving from Germany for the fair are being monitored everywhere, provocateurs are sent to them to provoke physical disputes, but they also fail. The DS still wants to prevent Deutsche Welle from participating in the fair next year, but the political situation is already different.
How do you explain the presence of DS associates in the Bulgarian media to this day?
-In the 90s, the files began to open. The indirect consequences of this are difficult to prove. The media know how deeply the DS was embedded in them. Many of the people who have worked with the services remain in office since the 1990s. The media do not cover this topic because it is unpleasant for them. They are also worried that the audience will stop believing them if they find out that it is full of DS agents. This is passed on to the next generations, as over the years these people with connections, mentality and addictions remain in their posts. Former agents who know each other form a network that holds power – over financial resources, over what is broadcast, and over the way a topic is covered, such as the topic of politicians involved in state security.
In 2006, Interior Minister Rumen Petkov arbitrarily decided to declassify the files of individual journalists, thus discrediting them. This is just one example of these addictions, because the people in question could have been blackmailed much more easily before their files were declassified. For example: “Either you will download this material, or I will declare you a DS agent.” But how often this has happened, we cannot know.
You have been dealing with the topic of DS for years. Is Bulgarian society interested enough in the history and influence of the former communist services in Bulgaria?
– The public interest in this topic goes through separate waves. In 1990, the interest was huge. But the State Security and the Bulgarian Communist Party managed to prevent the declassification of files and lustration. There was again great interest in Ivan Kostov’s government, which promised to make the files publicly available. But this attempt failed. After that, the interest was low for many years, until another election was held. Again a new commission, again a new experience. In general, parties use this issue for election purposes. With Bulgaria’s accession to the EU, there is also external pressure to resolve the issue of files. Under Borissov’s first government, this process began again, but after 2010-2011 it began to weaken. People see that the files are being opened, but there are no consequences for those enlightened as DS collaborators. They remain in their positions.
The best illustration of this is probably the large number of agents on the lists of candidates. Also in the last election.
– I had the feeling that during the big wave of protests last year, this issue will be on the agenda again, along with the issue of corruption, the mafia and the invisible centers of power that are directly related to the former communist state. The older activists managed to bring up the issue of lustration and the consequences of the DS’s cooperation. The question is whether lustration can be a solution, because this problem is solved naturally – people retire or die. But the transition and transformation in Bulgaria cannot be understood without clarifying the issue of State Security.
Dr. Christopher Nering is a guest lecturer in the media program of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation at the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication at Sofia University.
