The accessibility of the archives of the East German Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit; MfS or Stasi) puts at the disposal of researchers not only a rich and valuable source: about the East German foreign intelligence service and secret police, but also, thanks to records of the Stasi's foreign espionage activities, a wealth of information about intelligence services elsewhere—information that would not be available otherwise. Helmut Müller-Enbergs and Thomas Wegener Friis are therefore justified in saying that the opening of the MfS archives brought about “a revolution in intelligence history” (p. 7). They have edited an anthology that explores the potential of these archives to analyze the espionage activities undertaken by the Hauptverwaltung für Aufklärung (HVA) of the MfS outside the German Democratic Republic.
Müller-Enbergs and Friis devote their introduction, accompanied by a note on the source material, to critical reflections on the epistemological difficulties connected with intelligence...