The Prague Post
Hotel booking
November 22nd, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Prague Property

Home » Archives » News

Documents reveal StB cover-ups

Decoded secret system will aid the lustration process

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 22nd, 2007 issue

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 StB’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 VZ’s database, which the VKR handed over to the VZ after the department’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, it’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, it’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 Antonín Baudyš with a request to shred the documents as “unimportant material.” Luckily, they were unable to convince Baudyš to sign the request, Šticha says.
Security risks
The VZ’s findings and the recovered documents have been handed to Czech National Security Authority (NBÚ) agents, who will use the new information to search for former VKR agents who may have slipped through the cracks by having their true status concealed by the falsified database, says NBÚ legal and state monitoring department Director Lubomír Prchal.
“Our main goal is to determine whether each individual who holds a lustration certificate does not pose a security risk,” he adds.
The VKR ceased to exist months after the 1989 revolution, when the new government dissolved the StB and all its branches. However, many of its former employees were transferred to posts in the newly formed government organizations.
To continue working for the new intelligence service, VKR employees underwent a series of screenings and background checks. Individuals who passed the screenings received security clearance cards called lustration certificates.
Since 1990, ousting former communist spies from within their ranks has been a primary concern for the state intelligence. According to Šticha, the VZ was riddled with former StB agents until as late as 2005.
“The reconstructed database gives us a guarantee that an individual who cooperated with the oppressive units of the old regime does not receive a lustration certificate,” he says.
Since its discovery, the database has implicated previously cleared StB collaborators, many of whom held high-ranking government positions after 1989. In March, the VZ exposed former post-communist ministers Miroslav Vacek and Richard Sacher.
According to the VZ’s documents, Vacek, who was defense minister from 1989 to 1990, received three falsified lustration certificates between 1992 and 2005.
To Vacek, the VZ’s retrospective investigation is an attempt to cover up the department’s ineptitude, he announced in a May 30 interview with news Web site Aktualne.cz.
“In those sacks, they could easily find the names of not just the Vaceks and the Sachers, but also some of today’s active politicians,” he says.

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com


Other articles in News (22/08/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.