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| Czech Republic: Trashed Docs aid VZ in finding Commie StB staff |
| 2007-08-30 |
| A heap of discarded documents has helped the national military intelligence service (VZ) uncover an intricate database used to shield secret agents during the communist era. The VZ completed a three-year project Aug. 13 to reconstruct the records of the former military counterintelligence unit (VKR), the communist secret police StBÂ’s military branch. After sifting through 112,803 documents unearthed four years ago in a Defense Ministry storage room, the VZ uncovered a coded system that investigators had tried to crack since the fall of the communist regime. The reconstruction reveals a history of systematic cover-ups intended to conceal the identities of StB agents who continued to hold intelligence posts after the revolution. “Even 13 years after the revolution, the VZ had incomplete information about the individuals in its databases,” says VZ spokesman Ladislav Šticha. The new information may launch new queries into the credibility of current intelligence service employees. “The addition of these documents will play a decisive role in future screenings and lustrations,” Šticha says. While they do not reveal the names of previously unknown StB agents and collaborators, the recovered documents may affect the status of individuals who previously passed security screenings intended to flush out henchmen of the old regime. Evidence about these individuals already existed in the VZÂ’s database, which the VKR handed over to the VZ after the departmentÂ’s dissipation in 1990. The secret system allowed agents to purposely misidentify their status in the official database, where high-ranking agents were given low-risk flags, such as “under investigation” or “confidant.” In the recently recovered secret database, these same individuals are identified as active collaborators, secret agents and spies. According to Šticha, these agents continued to work for the Defense Ministry after the revolution. “In the end, 221 VKR agents were employed at the emergent VZ,” Šticha says. “Considering the fact that the VKR was dissolved as one of the main pillars of the oppressive power of the communist regime, itÂ’s a surprisingly high number.” The secret documents were discovered four years ago, after security concerns voiced by VZ leadership led then Defense Minister Miroslav Kostelka to issue an order that all materials formerly under the control of the VKR be consolidated under the VZ. A resulting department-wide inventory led to the discovery of 202 sacks of documents stashed away in a Defense Ministry storage room and labeled as “unimportant,” Šticha says. Before sending them to the shredder, investigators performed a routine checkup, and were amazed to discover myriad classified material including memoranda, cooperation contracts and meeting records. “For 10 years, no one missed or bothered to look for these documents,” Šticha says. “While no one can say who hid them, itÂ’s logical that the former VKR agents who managed to survive in office after 1990 and were given control of these documents would have had an interest in their disappearance.” An attempt to destroy the documents was made in 1993, when former VKR agents presented then Defense Minister AntonÃn Baudyš with a request to shred the documents as “unimportant material.” Luckily, they were unable to convince Baudyš to sign the request, Šticha says. More about the security risks posed by the former commies at the link. |
| Posted by:mrp |