Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
EMIL HOFFMAN AND HIS CIRCLES - In a jungle of secret services
EMIL HOFFMAN AND HIS CIRCLES EMIL HOFFMAN AND HIS CIRCLES In a jungle of secret services On 17 March 1959, Hungarian military intelligence, known as MNVK-2,11 requested that counterintelligence from the Ministry of the Interior (Division III/II) keep a West German citizen under surveillance. Emil Hoffmann was identified as a person suspected of being a spy and probably linked to several capitalist intelligence agencies. The source of the information was Soviet counterintelligence, the secret services of the Eastern Bloc and the agency’s own evidence. Counterintelligence took the warning from the military seriously, and, based on the preliminary information gathered, concluded that a personal dossier should be opened to collect documents on the journalist12 and assigned him the befitting alias of‘Fabulous’.13 Confirmation from the Soviet, Bulgarian, Czechoslovakian, East German, Romanian and Polish secret services, which 11 Military intelligence was Division 2 of the General Staff of the Hungarian Peoples Army (MNVK-2) between 1953 and 1990. MNVK-2 gathered intelligence against military targets, its task within the Warsaw Pact was to keep the military operational corridor along the Danube (mainly Austria and South-Germany) and military targets in Northern Italy under surveillance. As the intelligence service for a Warsaw Pact country, Hungarian military intelligence was also under Soviet supervision. By means of a liaison from the Soviets’ Second Department (for Intelligence) under the General Chief of Staff (GRU), it maintained regular contact with military intelligence in setting the direction of policy, while Hungarian military intelligence was obligated to hand over all information it acquired. In the division of labour among the military secret services of the Bloc, the Hungarian intelligence division excelled in jamming. On the history of the organisation of MNVK-2 cf. Okváth 2018. On the operation of military intelligence, cf. Magyar 2008 12 ÁBTL 3.1.5. 0-12344/1 p. 29 Recommendation to open a personal dossier, 25 February 1960 13 It is safe to assume that the alias was inspired by the great figure of German Romantic literature, E. T. A. Hoffmann. 15
