904305

research-article2020
SDI0010.1177/0967010620904305Security DialogueHoffmann

Article

Security Dialogue

Arab students and the

1­–17
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
Stasi: Agents and objects of sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0967010620904305
https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010620904305
intelligence journals.sagepub.com/home/sdi

Sophia Hoffmann
Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Germany

Abstract
In the early 1980s, the East German Ministry for State Security systematically recruited Arab students as
covert informers. Analysis of this historical case contributes to discussions about surveillance as a social
practice and to an emerging critical literature about intelligence agencies as knowledge producers and agents
of governance. Proceeding from a close reading of archives documenting the recruitment process, I argue
that it produced, first, classic modern bureaucratic security mechanisms designed to govern populations and,
second, highly specific sovereign interventions into the lives of single individuals. By focusing primarily on
the agents of surveillance, rather than its objects, the article addresses an important gap in the surveillance
literature.

Keywords
Bureaucracy, Germany, intelligence, Stasi, surveillance

Introduction
This article engages questions about the type of governance exercised by massive state surveil-
lance, driven by security concerns about particular population groups. It contributes to surveillance
and intelligence studies via a historical case: the German Democratic Republic’s Ministry for State
Security (colloquially referred to as the ‘Stasi’ but shortened in this article to ‘MfS’) and its recruit-
ment of Arab students in the 1980s to work as informers on GDR territory. The MfS was the GDR’s
intelligence agency, carrying out both domestic and international intelligence work within distinct
departments. By providing a detailed insight into daily routines of spy work, the article adds to
studies on how surveillance has functioned as ‘the dominant organizing practice of late modernity’
(Lyon et al., 2014: 1). The focus on an intelligence agency’s bureaucratic and social framework
presents an unusual case, on which international relations and critical security studies have pro-
duced little, if any, scholarship.

Corresponding author:
Sophia Hoffmann, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Kirchweg 33, Berlin, 14129, Germany.
Email: sophia.hoffmann@zmo.de
2 Security Dialogue 00(0)

I contribute to two sets of literature: first, to the well-established literature on surveillance as a

social practice (Haggerty and Ericson, 2000; Lyon and Wood, 2012; Marx, 2014) and, second, to
an emerging critical scholarship on intelligence agencies that moves beyond the dominant under-
standing of these institutions as highly bordered producers of objective national security. This
emerging literature provides ample evidence that intelligence agencies do not produce objective
information but contextual knowledge: agencies’ targeting, collection and analysis activities are
inevitably filtered through social, historical and political context, and thus never reflect an objec-
tive reality (Bigo, 2019; Bonelli and Ragazzi, 2014; Gentry, 2017; Horn and Ogger, 2003; Iordanou,
2016; Maddell, 2015; Melley, 2012; Rezk, 2014, 2018; Rønn and Høffding, 2013; Verdery, 2018).
I combine insights from these two sets of literature to make an argument about how the MfS cre-
ated practices that contributed to a transnationalization of intelligence knowledge. Here, the article
extends arguments about the globalization of surveillance (Murakami Wood, 2013) and the exist-
ence of a transnational field of security and intelligence practice (Bigo, 1996, 2013, 2019; Kniep,
2017) by adding an example from the under-researched field of intelligence agencies. The histori-
cal case demonstrates that ‘the spread of an intensification of surveillance within nations and at an
international level . . . clearly driven by the rhetoric of security’ existed much earlier than the
‘post-9/11 era’ (Lyon and Wood, 2012: 319). The case study develops in detail the complex prac-
tices necessary to produce surveillance in a particular context, highlighting how these practices
governed those carrying out the surveillance, rather than those surveilled, which is the focus of
much of the surveillance literature.
The article is based on 12 months’ research in the MfS archives, located in Berlin. Owing to the
particular sensitivity of archival information about people who may still be alive, no names are
used, and information that provides clues to an individual’s identity have been redacted.
First, I present my theoretical framework and argue that to understand how the MfS created
a governance effect, an attention to minute, day-to-day work practices of the agency is useful.
Second, I analyse how Arab students developed into populations of special concern for the
MfS in the 1980s, which led to central directives for their surveillance. Third, I turn to the
personal files of Arab informers to analyse the precise mechanisms and interventions that
formed the basis of their recruitment and later surveillance work. Here, I argue that the recruit-
ment process was based on a transnational knowledge exchange that calls into question the
conceptualization of intelligence agencies as highly bounded providers of national security
knowledge.

Theoretical framework: Bureaucracy, security and knowledge

In March 1984, an officer at the City A1 branch of the MfS typed a report in which he presented a
Yemeni student as a possible candidate to become an informer.2 In detail, he explained his
reasons:

The undersigned officer is tasked with securing a large part of the Arab students .  .  . especially Palestinian
and Iraqi students, Tunisians and Libyans . . . as well to control more generally the students from the
university’s Section 10. As this combined task has to be solved anew during the current year, the operative
requirement arises to develop suitable agents.3

The City A officer was not alone facing this situation. Eighteen months earlier, one of his colleagues
at the City B4 branch wrote two analogous reports, in which he presented an Egyptian-Palestinian
student and a Yemeni student as possible informers. In nearly identical words and neat handwriting,
the City B officer reported:
Hoffmann 3

Currently, the university of City B hosts 74 students from the Arab world, including from Lebanon, Jordan,
Syria, Egypt, Yemen and the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] . . . At any moment it can be
expected that the Arab students develop activities that conflict with the politics of the GDR’s party and
government. To collect intelligence on the Arab students, particularly about their plans and aims, their
political-ideological situation, and to become readily aware of activities targeting the GDR’s politics, it is
necessary to find a suitable informer among the Arab, or rather among the 21 PLO students.5

In the second file, he added the following justification:

As their studies are ending in 1983, the Arab informers ‘Mustapha’ and ‘Freddy’ will leave the GDR. Thus,
the focus area ‘Arab students’ will not be sufficiently secured.6

The above quotes are taken from a rich set of files documenting how the MfS systematically
recruited Arab students to work as covert informers in the early 1980s. The driving force behind
this novel development of MfS recruitment work was a set of directives from MfS headquarters
concerning how the agency should react to the growing number of foreigners in the GDR. In these
directives, the MfS began to conceptualize Arab students as a population that was both a risk and
at risk (Aradau, 2004), which for the MfS naturally meant in need of closer surveillance.
My analytical goal in this article is to understand two things: first, and primarily, in what way
did the MfS’s surveillance work create mechanisms that governed those persons mentioned in the
files? Second, what does the transnational aspect of the interactions between East German intelli-
gence officers and Arab student informers tell us about how the MfS created practices that pro-
duced and distributed knowledge?
To answer the first question, I put forward a theoretical framework arguing that a detailed atten-
tion to the micro-practices of the MfS’s recruitment work is important because it reveals the par-
ticular way in which power was exercised by and within the MfS (Feldman, 2008; Heyman, 2004).
To analyse these practices I draw on the Foucauldian idea that, in 20th-century Europe, the primary
characteristic of power is that it is distributed via calculations of probability, based on statistics,
categories and risk assessments (Foucault, 2007: 29–55). This is a relevant framework because, in
many ways, the MfS functioned like any other highly developed modern state bureaucracy, where
bureaucratic mechanisms of security operated to orchestrate interventions in the national-territorial
population as a whole, or in groups of people understood as relevant subpopulations (Heyman,
2004). As described below, this was most definitely the case with regard to the category of foreign
students, and that of Arab students in particular.
A range of academic literature has recognized and analysed the bureaucratic nature of modern
intelligence agencies (Chertkow, 1972; Davies, 2010; Hastedt, 1991; Herman, 1996: esp. 283–
304; Ransom, 1980; Wilensky, 1970). The critique of overbureaucratization is an important ele-
ment in the literature about intelligence failure and intelligence reform (Gentry, 2017; Morrison,
2011; Zegart, 2006). Primarily, this literature focuses on functional questions related to modern
management, and on the efficiency gains and losses that can be attributed to bureaucracy or
bureaucratic malfunction. However, from my perspective, this is not why the concept of bureau-
cracy is so important for an analysis of the here-described archival material. Rather, it is impor-
tant because an analytical focus on bureaucracy can reveal how bureaucratic practices shaped
the particular intervention of the MfS into the lives of, in this case, both MfS officers and Arab
students (Eckert, 2014; Feldman, 2008; Heyman, 2004; Salter, 2006). Such an approach builds
on the well-established literature on bureaucratic government within state institutions and criti-
cal analyses of the role of bureaucracy within modern government (Barnett and Finnemore,
1999; Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan, 2014; Hull, 2003; Kafka, 2012; Laiz and Schlichte,
2016; Miller and Rose, 2008; Schlichte, 2015).
4 Security Dialogue 00(0)

But, very importantly, bureaucracy and mechanisms of security are not sufficient to analyse the
files described here. This is because, as set out below, the last step of the recruitment process, as
well as most of the surveillance and informing work, was not structured according to bureaucratic
processes at all, but according to highly specific, calibrated interventions into the lives of single
individuals. Foucault’s theories of power are not well equipped to understand this process because,
as Foucault himself stated, his concepts of power are primarily concerned with ‘multiplicities’
(e.g. groups of individuals) or the population (Foucault, 2007: 11–12). To analyse the highly indi-
vidualized aspect of the MfS’s surveillance, I turn to studies of how certain forms of sovereign
state practices that are particularly violent or pernicious target individuals’ physical and psycho-
logical integrity, leading, in the worst case, to a permanent disassembling of the self. Indeed, MfS
terminology included specific terms for such measures, referred to as ‘Zersetzung’, which liter-
ally translates as ‘disintegration’, and the pseudoscience used to achieve the breakdown of an
individual during interrogation was referred to as ‘operative psychology’. Operative psychology
was taught at the MfS academy to train officers in techniques of persuasion, interrogation and
repression (Michels and Wieser, 2018). The lasting psychological effects of these techniques is
documented in the extensive German literature focused on the rehabilitation of MfS victims
(Knabe, 2012; Martin, 2014). Studies about the destructive psychological effect of intensive sur-
veillance by domestic intelligence agencies (Garton Ash, 1997; Kamali, 2017; Verdery, 2018), for
both those spied upon and those pressured to inform, show that a focus on affective destabiliza-
tion through individualized state interventions provides an adequate analytical framework for
understanding the MfS’s governance effect during the recruitment processes examined here. This
applies both to the officers carrying out manipulation via lies and flattery and to the Arab students,
whose affective reactions range from surprise, fear and sycophancy to anger and even pride, as
documented in the files.
For the second question, on whether the MfS created transnational practices contributing to a
diffusion of intelligence knowledge between the East German officers and the Arab students, I
draw on arguments about intelligence agencies as knowledge producers and on insights about the
transnational spread of surveillance/security practices, articulated particularly clearly by Didier
Bigo (1996, 2013, 2019), more recently specifically in relation to intelligence. Ronja Kniep extends
Bigo’s arguments, for example by arguing that regular exchanges between European intelligence
professionals created ‘physical and virtual spaces of joint practice’ (Kniep, 2017: 23). These spaces
are transnational and produce shared rules and conventions ‘in relative autonomy from legal and
political elites’ (Kniep, 2017: 25), including a shared sense of mission and ideas about what is at
stake in the intelligence world. I argue that the interactions between East German officers and Arab
student informers constituted precisely such a ‘space of joint practice’, in which a shared sense of
mission was articulated and both handlers and informers learned knowledge, which contributed to
their subjectivities as intelligence practitioners and their specific abilities to carry out surveillance
work. Importantly, this was not an exchange among equals: by leveraging secret knowledge, lies
and the material dependency of Arab students on the GDR, the MfS officers ensured for them-
selves a privileged position in this relationship.
The MfS’s articulation of the need to develop Arab student informers depended on a particular
set of ideas, values and concepts – in short, specific knowledge and risk perceptions relating to the
GDR, the Cold War and the Arab world – and was not a natural reaction to an objective security
threat. While this statement may appear banal to critical security scholars, it departs significantly
from the dominant intelligence studies literature, where intelligence agencies are conceptualized as
producers of objective information related to objective national security aims, whose objective
knowledge production may be ‘distorted’ owing to overbureaucratization or ‘politicization’
(Andrew et al., 2008; Davies, 2002; Dover et al., 2013; Gill, 2010; Gill and Phythian, 2016;
Hoffmann 5

Herman, 1996, 1998; Johnson, 2010; Warner, 2002). The case study presented below, rather, takes
day-to-day knowledge production within an intelligence agency at face value. The case study
shows how the MfS’s institutional structures provided a platform in which MfS officers and Arab
students exchanged, among other things, specific notions about conflict in the Arab world, imperi-
alism, threats to the GDR and intelligence tradecraft.

Arab students as a problem of government

In February 1981, the MfS’s chief Erich Mielke issued Order No. 3/81, which stated that ‘imperial-
ist secret services .  .  . try to use the growing presence of foreigners in the GDR to organize subver-
sive activities against the GDR and the socialist community of states’.7 In consequence, all
operative MfS units were from then on required to keep foreigners in their area under surveillance,
focusing on three key aims: first, to prevent enemy agencies from using foreigners against the
GDR and other socialist states; second, to protect foreigners from enemy attacks; and, third, to use
foreigners as a means to improve surveillance of other foreigners at home and abroad. MfS units
were advised to concentrate, inter alia, on individuals and groups connected to international con-
flicts or crises and thus amenable to political activities, on those at particular risk of attack, and on
those suitable to become informers. Foreign students, in particular those from the conflict-ridden
Arab world, matched this description.
Since the mid-1970s, a growing presence of Arab students and army trainees had developed
throughout the GDR. This was primarily owing to a rapidly expanding network of bilateral training
and cultural exchange agreements with Arab states.8 Such bilateral agreements were struck with
Libya (1978), North Yemen (1981), South Yemen (1982), the PLO (1983), Syria (1983), Iraq (1989)
and Lebanon (1989) (Storkmann, 2012: 389–405). For the poorer states of socialist orientation, such
as South Yemen, the study and army training programs were provided gratuitously as an expression
of international solidarity. Oil-rich states such as Libya and Iraq were required to pay between
25,000 and 50,000 dollars per student, over the course of the entire study period (Storkmann, 2012:
408–410).9 From this time onwards, thousands of young Arabs arrived in the GDR, and East German
universities and army training facilities developed into sites of international political and social
exchange, in which the conflictual politics of the Middle East played a prominent role.10 Archival
documents show a steady growth of Arab students, from 1,275 current students in 1975, to 1,475 in
1983, to around 2,500 in 1986 (in addition to similar numbers of army trainees). This development
did not go unnoticed by the MfS, which, in the early 1980s, began to issue directives about the need
to improve the surveillance of foreigners living in or visiting the GDR.11 The subject of how to inte-
grate foreigners into the work of the MfS became the focus of academic studies, as well as of MfS
training material and internal discussions documented in the archives.12 In these documents, Arab
students exist as a specific subgroup into which individual subjects could fall if they met certain
objective criteria, and to which certain codified assumptions attached.
In consequence, from the mid-1980s, different MfS units wrote reports on the political and
operative situation among Arab students.13 In 1983, a report provided detailed analysis about the
political organizations of each national group of Arab students, including their attitudes and pro-
clivity for action.14 A 1986 report singles out Arab student organizations as particularly volatile,
their management requiring expert knowledge and intervention.15 Special attention was given to
the risk that Arab students might fall victim to imperialist agencies or anti-communist organiza-
tions. For example, the 1986 report announced a growing number of attacks by anti-socialist stu-
dent organizations against pro-socialist or communist foreign students in the GDR, a category into
which many Arab students, hailing from newly independent republics, fell. The report describes
‘the preemption and suppression of terrorist and other violent activities in connection with the
6 Security Dialogue 00(0)

effective securing of foreign students’ as a prime goal of the MfS. Specific national groups among
Arab students posed different problems. For example, with regards to Iraq, the Iraqi government’s
increasingly vicious persecution of Iraqi communists living abroad meant that the MfS developed
detailed lists of Iraqi communists living in the GDR, which were considered in need of special
protection. Many of these were students. On the other hand, Iraqi students that supported the Iraqi
government were observed trying to collect intelligence on the GDR’s secret, and controversial,
arms shipments to Iran. Such context-specific security concerns also existed for Palestinian, Libyan
and Yemeni students. Arab students thus moved onto the MfS’s surveillance radar both because
they were at risk of foreign attack and because they themselves posed a growing risk because they
could be turned into foreign agents, create unwanted political disturbances in the GDR and/or dam-
age the GDR’s international reputation in some way. As a solution to this problem of government,
the MfS created a new field of systematic surveillance: that of Arab students studying at GDR
universities. This new field connected the MfS’s foreign intelligence knowledge, ideas and assump-
tions with domestic surveillance strategies. As the analysis presented below shows, even low-
ranked officers possessed a detailed understanding of Arab personalities, events, ideologies and
groups shaping politics in the Middle East, including preconceived notions of drivers of conflict.

‘Honest characters’ and ‘false premises’: The recruitment and

informing process
To kick off his search for suitable informers, the above-mentioned MfS officer in City B – all of
whose file entries were checked off with a dated signature of his superior – first produced a docu-
ment in which he outlined the general characteristics required of a good informer-candidate. For
this, he relied on a set of abstract assumptions, according to which the success of his search for
suitable recruits could be maximized. Here, we see a clear reference to bureaucratized security
mechanisms based on a set of calculations, which are believed to improve the odds that a particular
individual would develop into a useful and secure informer. According to a document titled
‘Necessity and Goal of Recruitment’, the required candidate had to be an Arab student in his first
semesters, with a ‘progressive political attitude’ and strong political-analysis skills. The candidate
needed a positive attitude towards the politics of the GDR, good grades, and an open, honest, reli-
able and disciplined character. Further, the candidate had to be extrovert and able to create a social
network among Arab and GDR students.16
Existing informers within the university tipped off the MfS officer about the existence of two
potential candidates, called ‘M.’ and ‘S.’. In the following weeks, the officer reviewed the two
candidates’ personal paper trails, consisting of application documents and written evaluations from
teachers and party organizations. He checked their names against several MfS databases and col-
lected human intelligence from his existing informer network. Gradually, this systematic process
revealed significant, personal differences between M. and S.. Both were reported to hold political
views in line with GDR policy, yet their academic situations differed. A report from a covert
informer noted that candidate M. ‘works hard and has consistently improved’, although ‘several
meetings with him were necessary to convince him of the importance of independent study’.17
Candidate S., on the other hand, had to leave his faculty due to poor performance. After his embassy
had already requested his transfer home, an intervention by the international students’ office
secured him a place on a different university course, of his preferred choice.18 For this, S. expressed
gratitude towards the university, and his resentment against his unsupportive embassy ‘makes it
unnecessary to approach him under false pretences’, the officer noted. Rather, ‘he can be approached
Hoffmann 7

openly by an MfS member. He will not inform his embassy.’19 Indeed, about his second explorative
meeting with S., the officer wrote:

To further bind the candidate closer to the MfS, he was informed of the false premise20 that his change
of study had been permitted owing to an intervention by the present officer . . . The candidate repeatedly
expressed his gratitude and asked after the reasons for this support . . . The candidate was informed that
the MfS knew of his clear political stance and of his wish to help his country to build socialism . . . The
candidate, in conversation, stated that he was very proud that the MfS had come to this conclusion
about him.21

As this exchange was protocolled by the officer in charge, it is impossible to know whether S.’s
naive reaction to the officer’s blatant flattery itself was genuine. But what is clear is that, in this
conversation, the officer leveraged his covertly acquired knowledge about S.’s personal situation
to mobilize S.’s gratitude and flatter his vanity. Here, recruitment was not being carried out via
bureaucratic mechanisms based on calculations of probability, but via the leveraging of a sovereign
power to secretly collect information about, and manipulate, specific individuals.
Despite this promising start, the officer held another six explorative meetings with S. before
successfully approaching him with a proposition to become an informer on 15 October 1983,
nearly a full year after opening his investigation. Around nine hours of discussion between handler
and informer-candidate are documented for this first, explorative year, and a handwritten protocol
of 4–8 pages exists for each meeting. Despite the officer’s stated aim of using S. for surveillance
of local Arab students, these protocols focus nearly entirely on Middle Eastern politics (aside from
a few points about life in the GDR and two suspicious German students). S. delivered analyses
about the Muslim Brotherhood, then relatively unknown to the MfS, about the relationship between
North and South Yemen, and, after returning from a trip home to Aden, about developments in the
national government. These exchanges on foreign rather than domestic intelligence served as trust-
building measures, but also educated the MfS officer about S.’s political attitude and the politics of
his home country and region.
Despite being opened according to identical bureaucratic procedures, candidate M.’s file took a
different trajectory from the start. His calm and confident personality and his strong interest in
political affairs made it appear ‘likely that he will develop into a leadership figure among the PLO
students’. Within a month, the investigating officer had held three explorative meetings with M.,
who agreed to inform in mid-December, around ten weeks after moving onto the MfS’s radar.
In his written plan for his first meeting with M., the officer outlined that he had decided to hide
his MfS affiliation and to introduce himself as a member of the GDR’s ruling party, the Socialist
Unity Party of Germany (SED). Further, the officer described his idea to use details about recent
political dynamics in the Middle East to ensnare M.:

In reference to the recent Lebanon events,22 the conversation will be directed in such a way that the
candidate has to comment on the contradictions in Syria and Iraq, or rather about the contradictions within
the Ba’ath party in relation to supporting the PLO. On the basis of this, the candidate’s attitude towards the
Ba’ath party and towards the politics of the Egyptian government can be assessed . . . and the candidate’s
potential be better understood.23

The meeting took place two days later, but despite the officer’s attempts to make M. express his
opinions, M. remained cautiously vague, especially in his statements about local PLO students:
8 Security Dialogue 00(0)

Only when the officer asked about the splintering of the PLO and showed expertise about the composition
of the PLO student group did the candidate partially let go of his reserve . . . The candidate agreed to
further meetings and asked the present officer not to make use of anything he said vis-a-vis the other PLO
students.24

In this conversation, the MfS officer’s ability to present his detailed knowledge about Arab politics
in a manner palatable to M. functioned as an important step towards winning M.’s cautious trust
and continued to form the basis of the handler–informant relationship. By showing himself as a
worthy conversation partner with pertinent opinions, the officer inserted himself into M.’s social
and political network as a relevant person with whom information and analysis might be shared.
Here, the circulation and performance of international knowledge worked as a platform for surveil-
lance and intelligence work: without it, it is unlikely that M. could have been added to the MfS’s
pool of informers.
During their second meeting, M. earnestly discussed the possibilities for the Palestinians’
fight for justice and independence. M. explained that, since arriving in the GDR, he had reached
the conclusion that only political measures, together with armed struggle, could lead to success,
and that it was his aim to unite the 21 PLO students in City B to that goal. When, towards the end
of the conversation, the officer revealed his identity as an MfS officer, ‘the candidate reacted
nervously, stating that no Arab student should find out about these conversations; this was
promised’.25
After a third tentative meeting, the actual recruitment took place, during which the candidate
was formally asked to support the MfS’s mission, described to the candidate as

securing the achievements of recently independent nation-states, including the PLO, in the struggle against
imperialism . . . It was explained again to the candidate that the GDR strives for the implementation of
workers’ internationalism, and that the MfS uses specific, secret methods to effectively counter the enemy
plans of imperialism.26

After further discussions, M. agreed to support the MfS on certain conditions, stating that ‘he had
much to tell the GDR and in addition would learn about the clandestine fight, which would one day
be very useful for him’. As he refused to sign a written declaration, for fear of being compromised,
the agreement was sealed with a handshake, after which ‘the candidate embraced the officer and
declared that he would always behave in accordance with the officer’s wishes’.27
From the recruitment of both S. and M., the combined effect of both the MfS’s bureaucratic
apparatus and the MfS officer’s careful, personalized assessments and interventions become clear.
While bureaucratic security mechanisms determined the framework of the MfS officer’s initial
research, and the characteristics according to which M. and S. were identified as candidates, indi-
vidualized intervention was required to shape the candidates’ worldview and self-understanding in
such a manner that they agreed to inform. For both S. and M., the officer modelled his approach
according to their personal situation, their character and their politics, from which he deducted dif-
ferent motivations due to which they might be convinced to inform. Rather than disciplining or
moulding the students into the pre-existing characteristics of good informers, the MfS officer used
the individual elements of their personalities and circumstances to craft his conversations and per-
formances towards them.
Each candidate’s file contains a document titled ‘Suggestion for a Recruitment’, in which the
recruiting officer presents the informer-candidate to his superiors, who needed to give the go-ahead
via their signature. These documents are structured in terms of identical subheadings and provide
a succinct picture of each candidate’s personal background, his personality, family and economic
Hoffmann 9

situation, his social network, and his behaviour towards the recruiting officer.28 Many descriptions
consist of standardized paragraphs; these make up at least two-thirds of the thus rather monotonous
text. But nuanced observations of the candidate’s particularities are included. For example, in S.’s
file, under the subheading ‘Reliability and Honesty Towards the MfS’, it says:

currently, the candidate’s connection to the MfS is primarily based on gratitude. Experience has shown
that, if this continues, the candidate will continuously try to make use of the MfS and expect its support.
The first phase of work must thus urgently seek to awaken true motives within the candidate for his
cooperation.

‘True motives’ here referred to an inner attitude of loyalty and honesty towards the MfS and an
inner conviction that one’s informing work was an important contribution to the MfS’s fight against
imperialism. Thus, the officer was explicitly referring to the need to shape M.’s understanding of
himself and of his relationship with the intelligence agency in a way that would create a shared
sense of mission. The aim was to shape M.’s subjectivity in such a way that he would not consider
his relationship with the MfS as instrumental, because, while this may have been a useful recruit-
ment mechanism, it could weaken his attitude in the long run.
One further evident purpose of the ‘Suggestion for a Recruitment’ documents was to demon-
strate to the MfS officer’s superiors that the candidates were good prospects. Occasionally, the
officer pointed out his own, smart decisions about how to approach and guide the candidates. But
gaps in the investigation, including conflicting information and remaining risks about the candi-
dates, were also openly discussed, adding to the neutral, quasi-impersonal language that charac-
terized all of the reporting (exemplified by the way the ‘undersigned officer’ is always referred to
in the third person throughout the files). Under the subheading ‘Subjective Conditions and
Personal Suitability’, reference is made to the candidates’ (non-)compliance with German stereo-
types about Arabs (thus revealing, of course, the officer’s own ‘subjective’, racist conditions of
knowledge production). While M. ‘does not possess a typical Arab appearance and could, indeed,
be taken for a European’, S. ‘possesses a typical Arab appearance’ and ‘his “typical Arab mental-
ity” has to be taken into account – for example, that he becomes agitated during discussion and
thus appears subjective’.29

Candidates S. and M. as informers

S. and M. developed into remarkably different informers. Whereas S. became a veritable super-
source with a very close relationship to his handler, even undertaking planned information raids
into West Berlin and returning from Yemen to help with specific operations, M. throughout
remained aloof, frequently cancelling meetings, sometimes breaking off contact for months and
often requiring follow-up from his handler.
Both S. and M. remained in contact with their recruiting officer between 1983 and 1989.
However, the frequency of their meetings differed considerably, as did the volume and value of the
information they provided. While S. met with his handler on average every two weeks between
1984 and 1986,30 M. averaged less than one meeting every two months. Both S. and M. were
tasked broadly with the observation of the political and social atmosphere among local Arab stu-
dents, with a particular focus on the local PLO group. While, throughout, M. informed mostly in
general terms about political positions and factionalism among the local PLO members, S. from
the beginning reported in much greater detail, and on a much wider range than his stated task. S.
offered miscellaneous observations about international love affairs, political disagreements and
attitudes towards specific events, personal situations of German students, trips abroad, or brawls,
10 Security Dialogue 00(0)

which sometimes became standalone lines of investigations. To acknowledge his contributions,

after three years S. received two official commendations from his officer and occasional financial
rewards of between 200 and 400 marks (the monthly stipend for a foreign student was 330 marks).
M., his file notes, refused financial compensation, and he received no commendations.
To pass on information, S. and M. would meet the officer at a covert MfS flat, mostly in the late
morning or afternoon. The length of the meetings is rarely noted; when it is, meetings lasted between
60 and 90 minutes. Between meetings, officer and informants had no contact, aside from phone calls
to arrange the next meeting if this had not been arranged during the previous meeting or, as hap-
pened occasionally, after a planned meeting had resulted in a no-show. Instructions on how to main-
tain cover and how to prevent discovery were provided to both candidates during their first meetings
and formed part of the ‘ongoing training in Chekist methods’ that the MfS aimed to provide their
informers with.31 While this was no challenge with regards to M., who remained extremely invested
in secrecy and significantly worried about the possibilities of being discovered, S. had to be reined
in to prevent him from engaging in risky or reputation-threatening behaviour, such as covertly join-
ing enemy organizations with the aim of collecting better information. While M.’s relationship with
the rest of the Arab student group faltered, S. developed into a leadership figure, which was the
opposite of the initial expectations raised during the MfS officer’s investigation.
The officer’s meeting reports consisted of terse summaries of the meetings in general and much
more detailed descriptions and occasional analyses of any valuable pieces of information. The
summaries allow for glimpses into the personal relationships between officer and informant. While
the informants quite often raised their personal problems, such as illnesses, exams or problems
with fellow students, information on the situation of the handler – such as when meetings have had
to be cancelled due to his illness or vacations – is sparse. While S. repeatedly asked the officer for
help, especially early on, M. never engaged in this type of building of social capital, and instead on
occasion became angry or refused to impart certain information, including when pressured.

The production and circulation of transnational intelligence knowledge

In what sense did the MfS’s recruitment of Arab students create a transnational space of knowledge
production and circulation? After all, the entire recruitment process and nearly all of the surveil-
lance was carried out inside GDR territory. Yet there is significant evidence in the files of the
transnational character of the exchanges between officer and students.
The recruitment clearly aimed to build a relationship based on mutual values, a shared interpre-
tation of foreign politics, a shared threat perception and a shared sense of carrying out an honour-
able task in the name of a greater good. The officer’s frequent references to the MfS as a defender
of anti-imperialism and a supporter of Arab independence and international workers’ solidarity, as
well as the noted need to awaken ‘true motives’ in S. to carry out surveillance, are evidence of this.
The emotional aspects of the recruitment process are further indicators that it aimed at building a
relationship around much more than rational interest. The protocols for all students registered and
described the moment in which they chose their cover names: the MfS considered this ritualized
moment as the crossing of a threshold into the informal service of the MfS, as becoming a member
of the service. The documents emphasize the personal choice of the cover name as ‘free’, and in
the cases of both S. and M. it was followed by an emotional moment, in which handler and inform-
ant shook hands and embraced, and in which both informers stated that they considered their han-
dler a true friend. S. stated that he ‘would always work for the GDR, because it had done much for
him’. This shared understanding between East German intelligence officials and Arab students
created an arguably very small instance of what Didier Bigo (2013) has referred to as ‘transnational
networks of (in)security professionals’ and Ronja Kniep (2014: 24) has referred to as ‘spaces of
joint practice’ among intelligence professionals. MfS recruitment of Arab students contributes to
Hoffmann 11

Murakami Wood’s (2013: 317, 320–321) arguments about the transnational diffusion of surveil-
lance as global mode of ordering, showing that this has a long trajectory, including in spaces most
decidedly not characterized by a neoliberal political economy.
The transnational character of the space shared by MfS officers and students emerges from the spe-
cific knowledge around which their relationship was built. The initial conversations via which officer
and informer-candidates became acquainted were primarily an exchange of opinions and statements
about the international politics of the Middle East. While the officer used his existing knowledge about
the region to probe the candidates’ suitability, he also sought novel information, contributing to the
MfS’s stock of foreign intelligence. The officer invited the students to describe and analyse the politics
of their places of origin, a topic of extreme personal interest to them and one that they were keen to
discuss. From the onset, the officer–informer relationship was based on differences in knowledge and
expertise that resulted from different national origins and experiences. The officer instructed the stu-
dents about why the MfS was interested in their surveillance capacities and whom the MfS considered
as an enemy and a risk to the Arab student population. The students learned about the MfS’s analysis of
and interest in their home countries and became aware of the MfS as a stakeholder and agent in the
Middle East, with an evidently powerful and relevant knowledge-apparatus at its disposal.
A transfer of practical intelligence knowledge from the officer to the informers can be traced. M.
expressed awareness of this when he stated that he ‘would learn about the clandestine fight, which
would one day be very useful for him’. This transfer included the students’ training in ‘Chekist methods’
and their learning about the MfS’s use of covert flats and simple techniques for maintaining cover or
approaching relevant targets. Here, the MfS transferred secret knowledge – mostly considered in intel-
ligence literature as precious arcana imperii not to be divulged – to foreign citizens who in all likelihood
would return to their home countries with this knowledge. For S., who maintained contact with his
officer after returning to the Middle East, where he worked as a senior civil servant, this process can be
explicitly traced in the files, for example in the letters that he wrote to the MfS officer from abroad.
Remarkably, of all the surveillance work carried out by M. and S. during their time as informers,
only a single instance truly falls into the category of fighting the imperialist enemies of the GDR
(this operation concerned a Palestinian student who held Israeli citizenship and was suspected of
spying for the Israeli government). On nearly all other occasions, M. and S.’s work consisted of
rather ignoble informing about the conversations, plans, dreams and personal lives of members of
their social network at university, including, of course, oppositional attitudes that may have resulted
in repressive measures by the GDR authorities.
S.’s ability to obtain travel permits to West Germany encouraged his officer to use him for at
least one foreign intelligence operation, in which S. investigated a suspicious organization in West
Berlin. According to the MfS’s administrative divisions, this type of activity was not within
the remit of officer B, and his reports were most probably transferred to the HVA, the MfS’s
(in)famous foreign intelligence branch. The likelihood of this is increased by the fact that several
of the domestic Arab informers were at some stage formally transferred to the HVA to be devel-
oped into international agents.32 Here, we not only see further evidence of transnational knowl-
edge-circulation as a result of the MfS’s recruitment of informers to address a domestic governance
challenge, but also a porous boundary between domestic and foreign intelligence work.

Concluding analysis
The remarkable archival legacy of the MfS, made available by the bravery and determination of East
German citizen protestors in 1989 (Adams, 2000, 2005), provides a treasure trove for scholars of sur-
veillance and intelligence. So far, little academic attention has been paid to the minute social practices
of the MfS beyond the reconstruction of historical events and outside the extraordinary work carried
out by the MfS archive’s in-house scholars (the monumental Anatomie der Staatssicherheit: Geschichte,
12 Security Dialogue 00(0)

Struktur und Methoden [Anatomy of the State Security Service: History, Structure, Methods], consist-
ing of 28 detailed volumes, is only one example).33 In this article, I showed that the MfS files of indi-
vidual Arab student informers document social practices that constituted surveillance work in this
specific historical context. From these social practices, the MfS’s governance effect can be recon-
structed: carried out both via predetermined bureaucratic procedures and security mechanisms, and by
calibrated manipulations of the material and immaterial life-worlds of the student informers. The latter
were enabled by the recruiting officer’s ability to acquire, analyse, manipulate and leverage secret
knowledge about the students’ private lives, inner attitudes and reputations.
This close reading of the social-ordering effect of surveillance within a socialist intelligence
agency adds a novel perspective to the wide range of contexts in which surveillance practices have
been studied (Bonelli and Ragazzi, 2014; Dijstelbloem et al., 2017; Kamali, 2017; Kindervater,
2016; Pallister-Wilkins, 2016; Salter, 2007). The MfS officer’s manipulations and access to secret
knowledge, unique to the context of an intelligence agency, provide some indication as to why
intelligence agencies create a particularly intensive fear about the unknowable power of the sover-
eign. This ‘kernel’ of sovereignty within intelligence agencies exists regardless of regime type and
highlights that, in Foucauldian terms, the ‘king’s head’ may have never been completely cut off
when it comes to intelligence agencies (Neal, 2004). Further research into the relationship between
intelligence agencies, secrecy and sovereignty is sorely needed.
The relationships between MfS officers and Arab students were based on a transnational
exchange of knowledge, in which each party contributed their distinct national experience and
perspective. While students were encouraged to describe and analyse Middle East politics, MfS
officers instructed them on the MfS’s threat perception and its self-understanding as a bulwark
against imperialism and defender of national emancipation. Arab students were given basic educa-
tion in the MfS’s covert techniques. From this exchange, a shared social space emerged, in which
both officer and students at least performed a shared sense of mission, strengthened by a set of
financial and emotional bonds. A number of Arab student informers for the MfS (including informer
S. of the case study) developed into agents for their own national intelligence service or became
foreign agents for the MfS’s foreign branch, the HVA.
The existing academic literature on intelligence agencies conceptualizes them as highly bounded
service providers of objective national security knowledge, which is strongly safeguarded from the
outside (Davies, 2002; De Graaf and Nyce, 2016; Phythian, 2014). The present case study justifies
a re-evaluation of this perspective. Further research is required on how intelligence agencies pro-
duce and circulate knowledge and specific ideas about security, risk and threat. As this article’s
case study shows, the transnational aspect of surveillance work was even present in an instance of
domestic intelligence work, and not just within the more famous and celebrated world of foreign
intelligence and intelligence cooperation.

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers, my colleagues at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient and
André Bank for their readings and comments, which helped strengthen my arguments. Most importantly, I
wish to thank Angelika Weiss, from the BStU/MfS archives, for her unwavering research support and interest
in my work over several years.

Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article: The research for this article was funded by a Freigeist Fellowship from the Volkswagen
Stiftung, Germany’s second-largest independent research-funding foundation.
Hoffmann 13

ORCID iD
Sophia Hoffmann https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6128-5535

Notes
  1. City A is a regional capital in East Germany with a large university.
  2. MfS, BV City A OD TU/H, Vorschlag zum Anlegen eines IM-Vorlaufs, 14 March 1984, in BstU, BV Ddn
AIM 1294/88, Part I, Vol. 1, pp. 42–45.
  3. See note 2 above, p. 42. Author’s translation. Note: In MfS jargon, ‘securing’ always means, among other
things, keeping under close surveillance and collecting intelligence on a target.
  4. City B is a large city in East Germany with a significant university.
  5. MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Notwendigkeit und Zielstellung der Werbung, 29 September 1982, in
BstU BV Rst AIM 85/91, Part 1, Vol. 1, pp. 7–9. The Palestine Liberation Organization was the most
important Palestinian resistance group, with which the GDR maintained broadly positive relations.
  6. MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Notwendigkeit und Zielstellung der Werbung, 29 October 1982, in BstU
BV Rst AIM 87/91, Part 1, Vol. 1, pp. 26–29.
  7. Ministerrat der DDR, MfS, Der Minister, Befehl Nr. 3/81.
  8. Such agreements were also struck with other socialist states and national liberation movements, for
example Mozambique, Angola, Vietnam and Nicaragua.
  9. Eventually, these student exchanges on a commercial basis became an important source of foreign-
exchange income for the chronically cash-strapped GDR; MfS, HA II, Einschätzung zur politisch-oper-
ativen Lage unter ausländischen Studenten, in BstU HA II 23575, S. 51.
10. MfS, HA XX, Einschätzung der politisch-operativen Lage unter den ausländischen Studierenden in der
DDR, 15 May 1986, in BstU HA XX 4156, pp. 208–222.
11. SAG 5, Leiter, Massnahmeplan zur Gewährleistung der politisch-operativen Sicherheit und Ordnung im
Rahmen von Ausbildungs- und Qualifizierungsaufgben für ausländische Kader, October 1981, in BstU,
HA XXII 557012, pp. 51–67; Ministerrat der DDR, MfS, Der Minister, Befehl Nr. 3/81 zur weiteren
Qualifizierung der politisch-operativen Sicherung der sich ständig oder zeitweilig in der DDR aufhal-
tenden Ausländer, 25 February 1981, in BstU BdL/Dok Nr. 6694, pp. 1–17.
12. MfS, HA II, Analyse der politisch-operativen Sicherung von sich in der DDR aufhaltenden Ausländern,
1980, in HA II 28377, entire file.
13. MfS, HA XX, Stimmung unter den irakischen Studierenden in der DDR zur Situation in der irakischen
Baath Partei, 10 October 1984, in HA II 28996, S. 37–38; Komitee für Angelegenheiten ausländis-
cher Studierender in der DDR, Information über die Situation unter den Studierenden aus der VDRJ,
26 August 1986, in BstU, HA XX 3019, p. 144; MfS, HA XX, Politisch-Operative Situation unter
Studierenden aus arabischen Ländern in der DDR, 18 November 1983, in BstU HA II 28254, pp. 54–56;
MfS, HA XX, Einschätzung der politisch- operativen Lage unter den ausländischen Studierenden in der
DDR, 15 May 1986, in BstU HA XX 4156, pp. 208–222.
14. MfS, HA XX, Politisch-Operative Situation unter Studierenden aus arabischen Ländern in der DDR, 18
November 1983, in BstU HA II 28254, pp. 54–56.
15. MfS, HA XX, Einschätzung der politisch-operativen Lage unter den ausländischen Studierenden in der
DDR.
16. MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Notwendigkeit und Zielstellung der Werbung, p. 9. Arab students offered
the particular value of being able to observe and inform on all national Arab groups, due to the shared lin-
guistic and cultural heritage among Arabs, heightened by the (embattled) belief in pan-Arabism, which
was still strong in the 1980s. Although Arab students were divided into national groups by the GDR
international student administration, and important differences and antagonisms existed between some
of these national groups, the MfS was clearly aware of the ability of, for example, a Yemeni student to
easily interact with, say, Iraqis, Egyptians and Palestinians.
17. MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Einschätzung zu M., 2 December 1982, in BstU BV Rst AIM 85/91, Part
1, Vol. 1, p. 52.
14 Security Dialogue 00(0)

18. MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Problem S. aus der VDR Jemen, 22 September 1982, in BstU BV Rst AIM
87/91, Part 1, Vol. 1, pp. 32–33.
19. MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Vorschlag zur Kontaktaufnahme, 3 March 1983, in BstU BV Rst AIM
87/91, Part 1, Vol. 1, p. 68.
20. The German word used is ‘Legende’, a term that in the intelligence context describes a false narrative;
the adjective ‘legendiert’ is exclusively applied to stories or identities that have been faked.
21. MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Bericht über das Kontaktgespräch mit dem IM-Kandidaten, 10 March
1983, in BstU BV Rst AIM 87/91, Part 1, Vol. 1, p. 72.
22. This refers to the 1982 war in Lebanon between the Israeli army (plus affiliated militias), on the one side,
and the PLO and the Syrian army, on the other. Many Palestinian students interrupted their studies in the
GDR for several months to participate in the fight.
23. MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Bericht über das Kontaktgespräch mit dem IM-Kandidaten, 10 March
1983, in BstU BV Rst AIM 87/91, Part 1, Vol. 1, p. 72.
24. MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Bericht über die Kontaktaufnahme zum IM-Kandidaten, 30 October 1982,
in BstU BV Rst AIM 85/91, Part 1, Vol. 1, pp. 57–58.
25. MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Bericht über das Kontaktgespräch mit dem IM-Kandidaten, 12 November
1982, in BstU BV Rst AIM 85/91, Part 1, Vol. 1, pp. 60–61.
26. MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Bericht über die durchgeführte Werbung, 15 December 1982, in BstU BV
Rst AIM 85/91, Part 1 Vol. 1, pp. 64–66.
27. See note 26 above.
28. MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Vorschlag zur Werbung, 10 December 1982, in BstU BV Rst AIM 85/91,
Part 1, Vol. 1, pp. 68–75; MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Vorschlag zur Werbung, 22 July 1983, in BstU
BV Rst AIM 87/91, Part 1, Vol. 1, pp. 88–97.
29. See note 28 above.
30. The frequency of meetings is noted in two assessment documents from October 1985 and October 1986,
respectively: MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Vorschlag zur Auszeichnung des IMB . . . 2 October 1986,
in BstU BV Rst AIM 87/91, Part 1, Vol. 1, pp. 160–161; MfS, BV City B Abt. XX/3W, Einschätzung der
bisherigen Zusammenarbeit mit dem IMS . . . 1 October 1985, in BstU BV Rst AIM 87/91, Part 1, Vol.
1, pp. 123–124.
31. The Cheka was the first Soviet secret police organization under the leadership of Felix Dzerzhinsky, a
hero figure within MfS mythology.
32. This process can be traced: When the first volume of an informer’s file, which contains all the documents
pertaining to recruitment and person, is missing from the archive, it would have been transferred to the
HVA, whose archives have not been preserved.
33. See Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic
Republic (1996–2018).

References
Adams J (2000) Probing the East German state security archives. International Journal of Intelligence and
CounterIntelligence 13(1): 21–34.
Adams J (2005) The strange demise of East German state security. International Journal of Intelligence and
CounterIntelligence 18(1): 1–22.
Andrew C, Aldrich R and Wark W (eds) (2008) Secret Intelligence: A Reader. London: Routledge.
Aradau C (2004) The perverse politics of four-letter words: Risk and pity in the securitisation of human traf-
ficking. Millennium – Journal of International Studies 33(2): 251–277.
Barnett M and Finnemore M (1999) The politics, power and pathologies of international organizations.
International Organization 53(4): 699–732.
Bierschenk T and Olivier de Sardan J-P (2014) States at Work: Dynamics of African Bureaucracies. Leiden:
Brill.
Bigo D (1996) Police en Reseaux: L’Experience Europeenne [Police in Networks: The European Experience].
Paris: Presse de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques.
Hoffmann 15

Bigo D (2013) Analysing transnational professionals of (in)security in Europe. In: Adler-Nissen R (ed.)
Bourdieu in International Relations. London: Routledge, 114–130.
Bigo D (2019) Shared secrecy in a digital age and a transnational world. Intelligence and National Security
34(3): 379–394.
Bonelli L and Ragazzi F (2014) Low-tech security: Files, notes, and memos as technologies of anticipation.
Security Dialogue 45(5): 476–493.
Chertkow P (1972) The nature of bureaucratic control in Soviet intelligence agencies. Millennium – Journal
of International Studies 1(3): 2–14.
Davies P (2002) Ideas of intelligence: Divergent concepts and national institutions. Harvard International
Review 24(3): 62–66.
Davies PHJ (2010) Intelligence and the machinery of government: Conceptualizing the intelligence commu-
nity. Public Policy and Administration 25(1): 29–46.
De Graaf B and Nyce J (eds) (2016) The Handbook of European Intelligence Cultures. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield.
Dijstelbloem H, Van Reekum R and Schinkel W (2017) Surveillance at sea: The transactional politics of
border control in the Aegean. Security Dialogue 48(3): 224–240.
Dover R, Goodman M and Hillebrand C (eds) (2013) The Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies.
London: Routledge.
Eckert A (2014) ‘We must run while others walk’: African civil servants, state ideologies and bureaucratic
practices in Tanzania, from the 1950s to the 1970s. In: Bierschenk T and Olivier de Sardan J-P (eds)
States at Work: Dynamics of African Bureaucracies. Leiden: Brill, 205–219.
Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic
Republic (1996–2018) Anatomie der Staatssicherheit: Geschichte, Struktur und Methoden [Anatomy of
the State Security Service: History, Structure, Methods]. 28 vols, with various authors. MfS Handbook
series. Berlin: Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German
Democratic Republic.
Feldman I (2008) Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917–1967. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Foucault M (2007) Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France (1977–1978).
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Garton Ash T (1997) The File: A Personal History. London: Flamingo.
Gentry JA (2017) The intelligence of fear. Intelligence and National Security 32(1): 9–25.
Gill P (2010) Theories of intelligence. In: Johnson LK (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of National Security
Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 43–58.
Gill P and Phythian M (2016) What is intelligence studies? The International Journal of Intelligence, Security,
and Public Affairs 18(1): 5–19.
Haggerty KD and Ericson RV (2000) The surveillant assemblage. The British Journal of Sociology 51(4):
605–622.
Hastedt GP (1991) Towards the comparative study of intelligence. Journal of Conflict Studies 11(3): 55–72.
Herman M (1996) Intelligence Power in Peace and War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Herman M (1998) Diplomacy and intelligence. Diplomacy & Statecraft 9(2): 1–22.
Heyman JMcC (2004) The anthropology of power-wielding bureaucracies. Human Organization 63(4):
487–500.
Horn E and Ogger S (2003) Knowing the enemy: The epistemology of secret intelligence. Grey Room 11:
58–85.
Hull MS (2003) The file: Agency, authority, and autography in an Islamabad bureaucracy. Words and Beyond:
Linguistic and Semiotic Studies of Sociocultural Order 23(3–4): 287–314.
Iordanou I (2016) What news on the Rialto? The trade of information and early modern Venice’s centralized
intelligence organization. Intelligence and National Security 31(3): 305–326.
Johnson L (2010) National security intelligence. In: Johnson LK (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of National
Security Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3–32.
Kafka B (2012) The Demon of Writing Powers and Failures of Paperwork. New York: Zone Books.
16 Security Dialogue 00(0)

Kamali S (2017) Informants, provocateurs, and entrapment: Examining the histories of the FBI’s PATCON
and the NYPD’s Muslim Surveillance Program. Surveillance & Society 15(1): 68–78.
Kindervater KH (2016) The emergence of lethal surveillance: Watching and killing in the history of drone
technology. Security Dialogue 47(3): 223–238.
Knabe H (2012) Gefangen in Hohenschönhausen: Stasi Häftlinge Berichten [Imprisoned in Hohenschönhausen:
Stasi Inmates Tell Their Stories], 7th edn. Berlin: List/Ullstein.
Kniep R (2017) Eine nicht mehr ganz so geheime Welt [A world not quite so secret as it was]. WZB
Mitteilungen 155: 22–25.
Laiz ÁM and Schlichte K (2016) International organizations, their staff and their legitimacy: Max Weber for
IR. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 29(4): 1441–1447.
Lyon D and Wood DM (2012) Security, surveillance, and sociological analysis. Canadian Review of
Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie 49(4): 317–327.
Lyon D, Ball K and Haggerty K (2014) Introducing surveillance studies. In: Lyon D, Ball K and Haggerty K
(eds) Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies. London: Routledge, 1–12.
Maddell P (2015) The Image of the Enemy: Intelligence Analysis of Adversaries Since 1945. Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press.
Martin E (2014) ‘Ich Habe Mich Nur an Das Geltende Recht Gehalten’. Herkunft, Arbeitsweise Und Mentalität
Der Wärter Und Vernehmer Der Stasi-Untersuchungshaftanstalt Berlin-Hohenschönhausen [‘I Was
Just Applying the Law’: Origin, Working Methods and Mentality of the Guards and Interrogators of the
Stasi Remand Prison Hohenschönhausen]. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Marx G (2014) ‘Your papers please’: Personal and professional encounters with surveillance. In: Ball K,
Haggerty K and Lyon D (eds) Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies. London: Routledge, xx–
xxxi.
Melley T (2012) The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction and the National Security State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Michels M and Wieser M (2018) From Hohenschönhausen to Guantanamo Bay: Psychology’s role in the
secret services of the GDR and the United States. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
54(1): 43–61.
Miller P and Rose NS (2008) Governing the Present: Administering Economic, Social and Personal Life.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Morrison JNL (2011) British intelligence failures in Iraq. Intelligence and National Security 26(4): 509–520.
Murakami Wood D (2013) What is global surveillance? Towards a relational political economy of the global
surveillant assemblage. Geoforum 49: 317–326.
Neal AW (2004) Cutting off the king’s head: Foucault’s Society Must Be Defended and the problem of sov-
ereignty. Alternatives 29(4): 373–398.
Pallister-Wilkins P (2016) How walls do work: Security barriers as devices of interruption and data capture.
Security Dialogue 47(2): 151–164.
Phythian M (2014) Cultures of intelligence. In: Dover R, Goodman M and Hillebrand C (eds) Routledge
Companion to Intelligence Studies. London: Routledge, 33–41.
Ransom HH (1980) Being intelligent about secret intelligence agencies. American Political Science Review
74(1): 141–148.
Rezk D (2014) Orientalism and intelligence analysis: Deconstructing Anglo-American notions of the ‘Arab’.
Intelligence and National Security 31(2): 224–245.
Rezk D (2018) The Arab World and Western Intelligence. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Rønn KV and Høffding S (2013) The epistemic status of intelligence: An epistemological contribution to the
understanding of intelligence. Intelligence and National Security 28(5): 694–716.
Salter MB (2006) The global visa regime and the political technologies of the international self: Borders, bod-
ies, biopolitics. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 31(2): 167–189.
Salter MB (2007) Governmentalities of an airport: Heterotopia and confession. International Political
Sociology 1(1): 49–66.
Schlichte K (2015) Cubicle Land – Bürokratie und Demokratie in der Regierung der Welt [Cubicle land:
Bureaucracy and democracy in the governance of the world]. In: Martinsen R (ed.) Ordnungsbildung
Hoffmann 17

Und Entgrenzung: Demokratie Im Wandel [Ordering and De-bordering: Democracy in Flux]. Wiesbaden:
Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, 175–197.
Storkmann K (2012) Geheime Solidarität: Militärbeziehungen Und Militärhilfen Der DDR in Die ‘Dritte
Welt’ [Secret Solidarity: The GDR’s Military Relations with and Military Aid to the ‘Third World’].
Berlin: Ch. Links.
Verdery K (2018) My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Warner M (2002) Wanted: A definition of ‘intelligence’. Studies in Intelligence 46(3): 15–22.
Wilensky HL (1970) Intelligence in industry: The uses and abuses of experts. The Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science 388(1): 46–58.
Zegart AB (2006) An empirical analysis of failed intelligence reforms before September 11. Political Science
Quarterly (Academy of Political Science) 121(1): 33–60.

Sophia Hoffmann is a research fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin, where she
leads a five-year research group on the exchange of knowledge between German and Arab intelligence agen-
cies during the past 50 years.