The Stasi Playbook, Translated: Directive 1/76 and the Equibit File PDF

In January 1976, Erich Mielke, East Germany's Minister for State Security, signed a secret rulebook for his officers. It was called Directive No. 1/76, and it explained how the Stasi should open, run and close an "Operational Case" against a person it had decided was a problem.

The Stasi archive in Germany still holds the original, under reference BArch, MfS, BdL/Dok. Nr. 3234. We have translated it into English, page for page, and the full PDF is attached at the end of this post. Each quote below gives the section number and the page of our translation ("p.") so you can check it yourself.

This post reads that rulebook next to what has happened to Equibit Group and its founder, Chris Horlacher. The allegations described here are pleaded in four Ontario lawsuits. Where a document backs a point, we link it. Where something is Equibit's own view or inference, we say so.

What the Stasi meant by "hostile-negative"

One phrase runs through Directive 1/76 from start to finish: feindlich-negativ, or "hostile-negative".

The Directive opens by saying that the point of an Operational Case is that "the effectiveness of hostile-negative forces is above all to be prevented preventively" (Preamble, p. 7). In other words, stop people before they become effective.

The targets were not limited to people who had broken a law. Officers were told to go after "hostile-negative acts, influences and dangers, as well as other phenomena that disrupt and impede social development" (§1.1, p. 8). Their informants were to track "political-ideological diversion": "which means and methods are applied", "through which channels it becomes effective" and "who belongs to its bearers and disseminators" (§1.2.1, p. 11).

The Directive is blunt about lawful conduct. Officers had to watch for "those hostile-negative acts that the enemy deliberately keeps below the threshold of criminal-law relevance" (§1.2.1, p. 12). Informants were to report "on the dissemination of revisionist and anti-socialist theories" and "on statements and reactions pointing to hostile-negative attitudes and aims" (§1.5, p. 19).