Man Without A Face | 
 enlarge | Authors: Markus Wolf, Anne Mcelvoy, Marcus Wolf
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $19.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 156189
Media: Paperback
Edition: 0
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 460
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 1891620126
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.12092
EAN: 9781891620126
ASIN: 1891620126
Publication Date: July 1, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Imagine if Heinrich Himmler or Lavrenti Beria had written an autobiography! Well, a secret police chief of even greater prowess (and even greater secrecy) has done just that. For 34 years--through almost the whole of the Cold War--Markus Wolf was the head of East Germany's foreign intelligence service. As such, he gathered and disseminated to his Soviet sponsors many of the deepest top secrets of the whole era. A good example of the mirrors-within-mirrors nature of Wolf's world is his description of his service's interactions with celebrated terrorist Carlos the Jackal. Wolf relates that whenever Carlos came to East Berlin, the spymaster's main concern was "getting him out of the country as soon as possible." But this proved difficult because well, Carlos was a terrorist not above turning on his hosts. Indeed, Wolf reveals that while Carlos was a guest of his government, he made threats against East Germany's Paris embassy and that the reaction was not to expel him, but to beef up embassy security. Similarly, Wolf tells how the 1986 La Belle disco bombing in West Berlin, which killed two U.S. soldiers and resulted in a U.S. reprisal air strike against Libya, involved East Germany's knowing admission through border control of Libyan diplomats with explosives in their luggage. Here, Wolf questions the notion that such terrorists were worth coddling for their usefulness in any all-out war against the West. You have to wonder if he also did so in his old job.
Product Description
For decades, Markus Wolf was known to Western intelligence officers only as "the man without a face." Now the legendary spymaster has emerged from the shadows to reveal his remarkable life of secrets, lies, and betrayals as head of the world's most formidable and effective foreign service ever. Wolf was undoubtedly the greatest spymaster of our century. A shadowy Cold War legend who kept his own past locked up as tightly as the state secrets with which he was entrusted, Wolf finally broke his silence in 1997. Man Without a Face is the result. It details all of Wolf's major successes and failures and illuminates the reality of espionage operations as few nonfiction works before it. Wolf tells the real story of Gunter Guillaume, the East German spy who brought down Willy Brandt. He reveals the truth behind East Germany's involvment with terrorism. He takes us inside the bowels of the Stasi headquarters and inside the minds of Eastern Bloc leaders. With its high-speed chases, hidden cameras, phony brothels, secret codes, false identities, and triple agents, Man Without a Face reads like a classic spy thriller—except this time the action is real.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
"MAN WITHOUT A FACE"- Markus Wolf August 8, 2008
Markus Wolf was definitely a dedicated communist and he chose to spy for his then new "homeland" the so called Deutch Demokratiche Republik, which was neither a republic nor democratic. Perhaps the most subservient of Soviet Satellites, the DDR created the dreaded Stasi which Wolf served as a top officer until his retirement in 1986. Among other things the Stasi trained not only members of the intelligence and armed forces of other communist countries but also helped train international terrorists like "Carlos", Abu Nidal, as well as communist elements in Africa and Latin America, etc. Even though Wolf tries to disassociate himself with the brutal enforcement branch of the Stasi he chose to collaborate with them. However the book is well written and is an interesting story from a master spy, perhaps the most effective and secret of the former Soviet Bloc. In spite of his "professionalism" as a master spy, Wolf belongs to those with the erroneous belief that you can only combat one extreme, in this case nazi-fascism with the other, communism, totally failing to understand that neither works nor will ever and both do nothing but suppress human rights, and all freedoms, causing nothing but ruin to entire countries and their societies with brutality and murder.
About politics and not about spies August 27, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a long-time fan of John LeCarre's espionage novels, I was interested in reading Markus Wolf's autobiography. Wolf was rumored to have been the figure that LeCarre based his character, "Karla" -- the chief of the KGB Foreign Directorate -- on in his earlier novels. LeCarre has denied this, but the similarities are striking.
What you won't find in this book is an extended discussion of espionage "tradecraft" or gripping stories about spying operations. What you will find may be a bit more disturbing. Wolf was (he died in 2006)) an unreconstructed Communist, as other reviewers have noted. He remained a true believer in Marxism, even after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and his subsequent trial. What I found most troubling was the last section of the book, his Epilogue. In it, and as a Communist, he looks at capitalism and expresses clear disapproval of any society based solely on money and the accumulation of wealth by the few at the expense of the many. Predictable, you might say. And, he opines that money can have as powerful and as insidious an effect on a society as any form of government. And, that the notion of personal freedom in the West is sometimes used simply as a tool to facilitate business interests. Coming on the heels of Enron, WorldCom and Halliburton, these statements simply can't be dismissed out of hand. One of the chief benefits of democracy is the ability to criticize the government, and, to my mind, there is more than a bit of truth to what he says.
In the main, the book is quite candid and, as I said, more than a little disturbing. Definitely worth reading.
 In a word: Riveting June 5, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Ok, ok, here's more. Wolf was the son of a renowned German playwrite, Fredrich Wolf, so he learned to communicate exceptionally well. His autobiography reflects that. The translator was also exceptionally good; nothing jarred me out of the tale by an obvious mistranslation. Wolf wrote quite frankly about how he was raised a committed Communist, how Communism failed him and his country, how his country failed Communism, and how his country failed, period.
He's rather humorous about how the HVA was established and its early, amateur days. (Note to several reviewers--Wolf was head of the East German foreign intelligence service, not the internal Stasi.) He wrote about unintended consequences, which are quite enlightening, considering how the West blamed the HVA for a number of incidents in which it had no direct involvement. The sections on HVA attempts to influence emerging African nations and on terrorism are very interesting, indeed.
He wrote the book after he was tried by the West German government and the German Supreme Court threw out the conviction, so he was more open than one would have suspected, given all the mystery and myth surrounding him (he was quite amused about that). He did not give away any HVA sources, except several who were already blown before he began writing.
When the wall fell, several of us CI types chatted about what a good idea it would be to have Markus Wolf present briefings on how the HVA cleaned NATO's clock, without asking him to give away sources. What we didn't know was that CIA had approached Wolf about debriefing him, maybe giving him sanctuary in the US (Wolf was about to be indicted by West Germany), and paying him a lot of money. How and why Wolf refused is exactly how and why I thought he would have responded to such an approach.
The book reads almost like a novel, albiet a tad dry in places. I highly recommend it to any CI professional.
I was always impressed with Wolf's professionalism. His autobiography only deepened my respect for an honorable enemy. This book will always be a permanent part of my library.
A cold-war espionage classic April 22, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Mr. Wolf wrote a good book. He didn't apologize for his past, while providing detailing information (the most interesting thing, IMHO) about the "mood" of the times. Wolf was - in several ways - a man between two intelligence era, ss his opinion about security and computer shows: he claims having had no security leakage while handling agent files "by hand". But when information technology comes ...
This is a dramatic forseeing of what intelligence and information gathering would become in the very next future: a technology-controlled activity, able to collect a huge quantity of information, without anybody out there able to understand it.
Conclusion: as all the book of this genre, information cannot be taken as "holy spell", nevertheless the reading is really a good experience.
Into the mind of one who was there March 24, 2007
While Markus Wolf's style is understated and matter of fact, he reveals an extraordinary life and political workings. He is clear about what is not included and why -- some of which the reader would have been eager to see.
This is how he felt and thought and worked. A rare and wonderful glimpse into an honest and intelligent opponent of the US and its allies in the Cold War.
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