Coffee, cigarettes and schnapps: How the CIA promoted secret contacts with West German politicians

In an interview with the news magazine “Spiegel”, the former head of the US intelligence service CIA for West Berlin, Peter Sichel, chats about the closet. One wanted to know what West German politicians were planning, said the ex-secret service agent.

From an interview with the news magazine Spiegel with the former head of the US intelligence service CIA for West Berlin, Peter Sichel, it emerges that the CIA cultivated and promoted secret contacts with numerous well-known West German politicians in the Federal Republic in the post-war period.

According to Sichel, the future SPD Chancellor Willy Brandt, the later SPD parliamentary group leader Herbert Wehner, the two later Bundestag presidents Hermann Ehlers and Eugen Gerstenmaier (both CDU) and the two later CDU ministers Jakob Kaiser and Ernst Lemmer should be among the confidential interlocutors have heard. Sichel said he was friends with Gerstenmaier. With Wehner he “drank cognac with me for hours at night”.

According to the ex-secret service agent, the Americans wanted to find out “what German politicians were planning at the time: How should a government be formed, how should the economy get back on its feet?” In the interview, Sichel is also asked whether the politicians had received any money. Then the ex-CIA boss:

“Payments to German politicians were taboo. However, we gave away cigarettes, coffee, alcohol or chocolate, which you could use on the black market back then. We were very generous. After all, it was an easy path to friendship.”

more on the subject – Media report: Willy Brandt was kept for four years by the US military intelligence service CIC as an informant