Most of East Germany's anti-terrorist unit is made up of former members of the ousted Communist regime's feared secret police, a government spokesman said today. The Interior Ministry official said 109 of the 149 members of the special police unit worked previously as agents for the domestic security network known as the Stasi, which has been disbanded. The remaining 40 members came from the East German army, the spokesman said on condition of anonymity. The anti-terrorist unit was formed in December under the reform-oriented caretaker government led by Premier Hans Modrow, who ran East Germany after the Communist hard-liners were ousted in November. Modrow's retooled Communist Party was voted out of power in the nation's first democratic elections on March 18. But the spokesman said none of the former secret police working in the special unit took part in the violent crackdown on demonstrations on Oct. 7-8 that helped fuel the peaceful revolt that ousted the former regime. East Germany is embroiled in debate over what to do with the 80,000 people who worked for the Stasi, which used a network of surveillance and informants to enforce the rule of the former Communist government. Some people have demanded investigations of former Stasi members and the estimated 100,000 informants and those who worked with them. Others argue the network was so vast that the investigation would amount to a witchhunt. But many former bureaucrats, intelligence specialists and law enforcement officials are considered by some people to be too valuable and experienced to be removed from their jobs. Prime Minister Lothar de Maiziere and his Cabinet on Wednesday gave a vote of confidence to the embattled interior minister, Peter-Michael Diestel, who is reluctant to remove former Stasi members from the domestic security network. Many lawmakers, including those from Diestel's own archconservative German Social Union, have demanded the interior minister's resignation because of his propensity for hiring or retaining security specialists from the old regime. Opposition lawmakers say Diestel has more than 2,000 former members of the Stasi on the payroll. Diestel on Wednesday announced the formation of a new committee to oversee the dissolution of the Stasi and to decide what to do with files kept on an estimated 6 million East Germans. The committee includes prominent East German authors Stefan Heym and Walter Janka, church leaders, and members of a former citizens committee set up by the Modrow government.
