Media high-flyer unmasked as ex-spy, by Tony Paterson - 17th May 2004
(Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald)

A high-living vice-president of the publishing giant Conde Nast, the publisher of Vogue, Vanity Fair and Glamour, has been unmasked as a "highly ambitious and determined" agent for the Stasi secret police in East Germany.

It has been alleged that for eight years he spied on friends, colleagues and even his own sister to help the country's communist regime.

The allegations, involving 43-year-old Bernd Runge, the head of Conde Nast Germany and one of the parent company's four vice-presidents, have emerged in hitherto unseen Stasi files handed to the CIA in 1989 and returned to Germany only last year.

The documents, released last week by a German government agency, state that Mr Runge spied under the codename "Olden" for the secret police organisation from 1981 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

"He was open, approachable and prepared to help his state security comrades in every respect," noted a Stasi officer, Colonel Herbert Heckerodt, in Mr Runge's file.

Mr Runge, who has refused to comment on the allegations, joined Conde Nast in 1996 after working as an editor for glossy magazines in Germany and France. He was named Media Man of 2003 in Germany last year for his role in building up the company's business interests in Russia, South Africa, Greece and Brazil.

His Stasi file, however, contains detailed revelations about a secret police career: it states Mr Runge was initially hired by the Stasi in 1981 when a student in Moscow.

"He divulged all private contacts concerning his schoolmates regardless of who they were," the file noted. "He is determined and highly ambitious."

Receipts show that the Stasi rewarded him with numerous small payments. His file also suggests that Mr Runge did not baulk at spying on his own sister, Cathrin. "He reported in detail about [her] attempts to leave East Germany," his file records.

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