Re: Radioactive tags were used to track dissidents

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@hotmail.com>]

There is a Reuters version also (see below if you missed it).

Bjorn Cedervall   bcradsafers@hotmail.com
--------------
Wednesday January 3 2:12 PM ET
Report: E.Germany Used Nuclear Tags on Dissidents

LONDON (Reuters) - In a ploy worthy of a James Bond villain, East German 
dissidents were ``tagged'' with radioactive chemicals that allowed secret 
agents to track them with hidden Geiger counters, New Scientist magazine 
said on Wednesday.

So that targets would not hear the distinctive clicking of the counter at 
close range, Stasi secret police agents wore the detector strapped under one 
arm, while a vibrating alarm was slung under the other arm.

The magazine's article was based on a paper by Klaus Becker, a leading 
radiation protection expert.

Evidence of the radioactive tracking exercise, dating from the 1970s and 
1980s, was found in the vast Stasi archives by officials of the Berlin-based 
Gauck Commission, a German government agency investigating the former secret 
police.

``It is a remarkable story,'' Becker was quoted as saying. ''It's the first 
well-documented case of such a thing.''

``It really is the stuff of James Bond movies,'' said Barrie Lambert, a 
radiobiologist at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London.

``It's an unpleasant thing to do. The risk is not limited to the person 
being tagged. You'd be exposing other people, such as a spouse.''

The Stasi files revealed that dissidents were labeled with radioactive 
substances in a number of ways. If people could not be sprayed with a 
radioactive solution the spies would label their cars, documents or paper 
money, according to Becker.

If the floors of rooms used for meetings by dissidents could be treated, the 
Stasi could follow anyone who attended.

The Stasi also developed an airgun that could fire tags made of small pieces 
of silver wire into car tires.

Becker said that while doses of radiation were usually below what would 
seriously harm or kill, there were mishaps.

``The Stasi marked West German deutschmarks with large amounts of scandium 
to see how they circulated and for what purpose. While they expected to 
retrieve them, they didn't and the notes disappeared without trace,'' said 
Becker.

The Stasi later calculated that if more than one note was in a man's pocket, 
the effect on his fertility ``came close to castration,'' said Becker.

It has long been suspected that the Stasi used radiation as a weapon, but 
Becker said it would never be officially proved whether it was true that 
large X-ray machines were used to covertly irradiate dissidents in political 
prisons.

Becker left East Germany in 1951, aged 18. He later became a senior official 
of the Juelich Nuclear Research Establishment in West Germany.

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