Product Description

More fascinating than fiction, Seduced by Secrets takes the reader inside the real world of one of the most effective and feared spy agencies in history. The book reveals, for the first time, the secret technical methods and sources of the Stasi (East German Ministry for State Security) as it stole secrets from abroad and developed gadgets at home, employing universal, highly guarded techniques often used by other spy and security agencies. Seduced by Secrets draws on secret files from the Stasi archives, including CIA-acquired material, interviews and friendships, court documents, and unusual visits to spy sites, including "breaking into" a prison, to demonstrate that the Stasi overestimated the power of secrets to solve problems and created an insular spy culture more intent on securing its power than protecting national security. It recreates the Stasi's secret world of technology through biographies of agents, defectors, and officers and by visualizing James Bond-like techniques and gadgets. In this highly original book, Kristie Macrakis adds a new dimension to our understanding of the East German Ministry for State Security by bringing the topic into the realm of espionage history and exiting the political domain.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34318 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-21
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 392 pages

Review
"Thoroughly researched, Seduced by Secrets gives us an important, unmatched, insider account of East German intelligence. Kristie Macrakis writes with a scholar's eye and novelist's skills, revealing secrets and spy tradecraft never meant for public disclosure."
Pete Earley, best-selling author of Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War

"This book on the vaunted GDR secret service provides a fascinating inside view of the Stasi's spying efforts as well as technologies. Written in an accessible style, it is nonetheless based on exhaustive research in the Stasi files and many oral interviews. The first part paints vivid pictures of some of the major spy cases of the Cold War. The second part, which will gladden the heart of any espionage aficionado, discusses spy technology from invisible ink to smell samples. The result is a remarkable and readable synthesis of the East German spying operations."
Konrad Jarausch, Lurcy Professor of European Civilization, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

"Easily the most detailed, painstaking research yet undertaken on the Stasi's techniques and secrets. Certainly the most absorbing analysis of an organization hitherto steeped in mystery."
Nigel West, Director of Counterintelligence Studies, The Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, Washington DC

"Seduced by Secrets makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of how the Stasi did what it did..." -Daniel Johnson, Commentary

About the Author
Kristie Macrakis received her Ph.D in the History of Science from Harvard University in 1989 and then spent a post-doctoral year in Berlin, Germany. She is currently a professor of the history of science at Michigan State University. She is the author of numerous articles and books on science and politics in modern Germany, including Surviving the Swastika (Oxford, 1993) and Science Under Socialism (Harvard, 1999). She has received grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, Fulbright, Humboldt, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

Customer Reviews

Secrets of the Stazi!
This book contains some very interesting information and I was very curious to read it. What makes it difficult to read is that the very technical nature of the writing and the dryness of the writing style. Reading it was difficult for me to retain the information though I read it within a day. I suspect the problem is that the information comes almost solely from the Stazi files. There is little humanity to attach the stories too. It is amazing what people did to spy on other people and what lengths they had to go through to get information. I found the discussion of spying during the advent of computers and the machinery made up for spying the most interesting. How ironic that now it is as easy as having an MP3 recorder and a cell phone. The section on the scentific creation of forensic science using dogs and smells were interesting too. Obviously there must be a problem with it or it would be used more today. I learned from the book and was glad I read it but it felt more like medicine rather than enjoyment.

Shining a light into some dark corners
After the fall of the USSR there was a period of time when the doors of the Soviet archives (KGB in particular) were thrown open for research and review. Although those doors did not remain open permanently and access to Soviet archives is now more difficult enough information was made available for a host of historians and academics to create a whole host of books on life in the Soviet Union. The doors opened in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) as well although it always seemed that the focus there was on the creation and maintenance of a society in which it seemed as if almost every East German citizen was either the provider of information to the GDR or the target of surveillance by the GDR's security forces, primarily through one of its security organs known as the STASI. The brilliant film Lives of Others really captures the essence of this focus on the Big Brother is Watching you nature of life in the GDR.

Kristie Macrakis has taken her thorough and exhaustive research into newly available DDR archives and has taken a fresh look at the technological and other tools used by the STASI to pursue its goals. The result is a highly-detailed and informative book. The book is divided into two parts. The first takes a look at the methods used by the STASI in obtaining information. Although it touches on the technical aspects of spying it really focuses on the mechanics of spying. Macrakis focuses more on story-telling here; one could almost call it the human-interest side of spying. As such this first part flowed pretty smoothly for me. The second part takes a far more technical, scientific look at the technology of spy craft. It is precise and provides minute details of the weapons, gadgets, and advanced tools used, developed, or stolen by the STASI. It was here that the story, through no fault of Ms. Macrakis bogged down a bit for me. I love the gadgets, I love reading about them. But as a product of an education that focused too much on the humanities and not enough on the hard sciences I struggled with some of the details. I think anyone with a more technical bent than me will get through the material with ease.

Ultimately, I was very pleased with Seduced by Secrets. It provided me with a wealth of information that was pretty much all knew to me and shined some much needed light on one aspect of life in the GDR. Recommended. L. Fleisig

Seduced By Knowledge
Kristie Macrakis's book SEDUCED BY SECRETS, lives up to its title. This report of papers from the East German Ministry for State Security, Stasi, after the fall of the Berlin Wall at times reads like a glorified term paper then at other times reads like a real page turner. Unfortunately, there are other time when it is confusing, and, even worse, boring.

As a member of the "James Bond' Nation," having read all the Ian Fleming books and seen all the movies, I am one who is "seduced by secrets, but Ms. Macrakis shows us that, like John Le Carre's THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, spying is often boring...until one gets caught! The notion of the fast life, fast women/men, and danger at every corner-type of life does not exist except in the movies and in some adventure books. And while spying by governments for other government secrets still exists, it is the industrial spy who has offered the East Germans and Soviets the greatest reward for their. So much so, that the East Germans fell behind in their technological development because they could "steal" technology instead of coming-up with their own. So much so that when the Berlin Wall fell, East Germany's industries were way behind in developing their scientists.

This is an interesting book, and I would recommend it to anyone who truly wants to know what "real" spies, for the most part, do.

For me, the best parts of the book were the sections that covered "why" a scientist or government worker decided to spy for another country, and the section on "Invisible Ink," while I at first questioned, my it was so long, turned-out to be very interesting.

The book's readability suffers from the author's constantly giving the reader an almost word-for-word account of what was written in the reports she read, and it may be a small point, but one I found annoying, is her use of both "MfS" and "Stasi" as abbreviations for the East German Ministry for State Security. While various spy organizations used one or the other, I didn't think it helped the book for Ms. Macrakis to vary what she called it.