recovered at the Wiesbaden depot.) 40 It was a major setback for the RAF, and one that some saw as indicative of even deeper problems. In his 2007 book
Das Projektil sind wir,
Karl-Heinz Dellwo was characteristically blunt:
With their arrests, an infrastructure created over years was swept away, because the central depot contained a list of numerous other depots. Those of us in Celle viewed this with a mixture of sadness and solidarity, as well as angerâ¦. The central depot indicated a clear hierarchy. All experiences with resistance structure indicate that one must organize independent circles, so that if one of them collapses the rest remain intactâ¦. The collapse of the structure brought the defeat of 1977 to its ultimate conclusion. A military defeat was, so to speak, added to the political and moral setbacks without the latter ever being addressed. 41
The 1982 arrests were a disaster for the RAF, which had finally been hitting its stride for the first time since â77.
To all appearances, the initiative had passed to the state.
Verena Becker and the
Verfassungsschutz
At some point in 1981, Verena Becker, who had been captured along with Günter Sonnenberg in 1977, began providing the secret police with information. Among other things, Becker claimed that Stefan Wisniewski had been the shooter in the Buback assassinationâa story that was suppressed by the
Verfassungsschutz
in order to avoid legal complications, as Knut Folkerts was already serving a life sentence for this crime. 1
The reasons why Becker provided information are difficult to ascertain, though subsequent reports would point to the harsh prison conditions that she, like the other RAF prisoners, was subject to. Similarly, there are serious doubts about how trustworthy her claims were, some suspecting that she simply provided misinformation in order to diminish her own responsibility and curry favor with her captors.
The
Verfassungsschutz
would pick Becker up from prison with a civilian automobile under the pretext of bringing her to a medical clinic, while in fact she was taken to an apartment in Cologne where she was debriefed for days on end. Although she received no immediate benefit in terms of her prison sentence, she was paid 5,000 DM, which she spent onlanguage courses 2 âa paltry sum indeed, considering that the
Verfassungsschutz
was at the time offering up to a quarter-million DM to any RAF members at large who might turn themselves in.
Regardless of why she did it, Becker was clearly torn by her decision to cooperate with the state. At some point in 1982 she managed to get word to the other RAF prisoners about what she had done, and according to some accounts offered to kill herself. 3 The others took their distance from her, but sent word discouraging her from doing herself any harm. Strikingly, there was no public condemnation, and the matter was hushed up. While the prisoners now knew that Becker could not be trusted, they made no move to exclude her from what support they were receiving from the outside.
While it has been reported that her interrogators were mainly interested in the RAFâs internal structure, the exact details of what Becker divulged remain unknown; when the story broke almost thirty years later, in 2007, the
Verfassungsschutz
was characteristically tight-lipped about what they had learned from their informant, whose debriefing was codenamed
Operation Zauber
(âOperation Charmâ).
Indeed, they have even refused requests from the BAW for copies of their files. 4
Verena Becker from a mugshot (right) and while being escorted by police following her 1977 arrest (opposite page)
_____________
1 For more on this see pages 273â274. Ironically, in 2010, at a time when Becker and Peter-Jürgen Boock were each making public statements accusing other RAF members of involvement in the Buback hit, Becker herself was brought up on charges related to the killing. She would go to trial in
Das Projektil sind wir,
Karl-Heinz Dellwo was characteristically blunt:
With their arrests, an infrastructure created over years was swept away, because the central depot contained a list of numerous other depots. Those of us in Celle viewed this with a mixture of sadness and solidarity, as well as angerâ¦. The central depot indicated a clear hierarchy. All experiences with resistance structure indicate that one must organize independent circles, so that if one of them collapses the rest remain intactâ¦. The collapse of the structure brought the defeat of 1977 to its ultimate conclusion. A military defeat was, so to speak, added to the political and moral setbacks without the latter ever being addressed. 41
The 1982 arrests were a disaster for the RAF, which had finally been hitting its stride for the first time since â77.
To all appearances, the initiative had passed to the state.
Verena Becker and the
Verfassungsschutz
At some point in 1981, Verena Becker, who had been captured along with Günter Sonnenberg in 1977, began providing the secret police with information. Among other things, Becker claimed that Stefan Wisniewski had been the shooter in the Buback assassinationâa story that was suppressed by the
Verfassungsschutz
in order to avoid legal complications, as Knut Folkerts was already serving a life sentence for this crime. 1
The reasons why Becker provided information are difficult to ascertain, though subsequent reports would point to the harsh prison conditions that she, like the other RAF prisoners, was subject to. Similarly, there are serious doubts about how trustworthy her claims were, some suspecting that she simply provided misinformation in order to diminish her own responsibility and curry favor with her captors.
The
Verfassungsschutz
would pick Becker up from prison with a civilian automobile under the pretext of bringing her to a medical clinic, while in fact she was taken to an apartment in Cologne where she was debriefed for days on end. Although she received no immediate benefit in terms of her prison sentence, she was paid 5,000 DM, which she spent onlanguage courses 2 âa paltry sum indeed, considering that the
Verfassungsschutz
was at the time offering up to a quarter-million DM to any RAF members at large who might turn themselves in.
Regardless of why she did it, Becker was clearly torn by her decision to cooperate with the state. At some point in 1982 she managed to get word to the other RAF prisoners about what she had done, and according to some accounts offered to kill herself. 3 The others took their distance from her, but sent word discouraging her from doing herself any harm. Strikingly, there was no public condemnation, and the matter was hushed up. While the prisoners now knew that Becker could not be trusted, they made no move to exclude her from what support they were receiving from the outside.
While it has been reported that her interrogators were mainly interested in the RAFâs internal structure, the exact details of what Becker divulged remain unknown; when the story broke almost thirty years later, in 2007, the
Verfassungsschutz
was characteristically tight-lipped about what they had learned from their informant, whose debriefing was codenamed
Operation Zauber
(âOperation Charmâ).
Indeed, they have even refused requests from the BAW for copies of their files. 4
Verena Becker from a mugshot (right) and while being escorted by police following her 1977 arrest (opposite page)
_____________
1 For more on this see pages 273â274. Ironically, in 2010, at a time when Becker and Peter-Jürgen Boock were each making public statements accusing other RAF members of involvement in the Buback hit, Becker herself was brought up on charges related to the killing. She would go to trial in
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