Original subtitles

It was the beginning of June. It was relatively warm. It was a normal day.

And then came this call.

A farmer had called, that a vehicle

should stand at the edge of a field.

At first that was not fundamentally suspicious.

And then my then head of department said:

"Hermann, will you go there and take a look at this?"

And so I set off.

As I approached the vehicle approached the vehicle, I saw

that this vehicle has obviously been at the location for some time.

You could see it. There was some kind of infestation on the car,

a kind of tree resin.

And when I got even closer,

I suddenly had a familiar smell in my nose,

a smell of decay.

Something doesn't fit here.

For Hanover AY 606.

Suddenly we were told: "Quiet on the radio, please!"

And it then turned out that this vehicle

was advertised for a covert manhunt.

I then stood at a distance of about eight or ten meters

seen something.

In a circular fireplace lay a person.

First aid was no longer necessary. You could see that immediately.

My name is Heinz-Hermann Salge

and at the time found the body of Karl Koch.

I was thinking that this is a suicide

and the doubts about it came very quietly, very slowly.

When you burn yourself, you want people to see it.

You don't drive into a birch grove, where nobody can see it,

and then the flames escaped, and...

I don't know, there is so much unresolved in this matter.

For me, the only one who has an advantage

by Charles' death,

In this constellation, the KGB itself.

Were they people from the criminal scene?

The German security authorities? Or was it someone else entirely?

Institutions or facilities,

Who have tried to manipulate? Who want to cover something up?

Who have no interest that the truth comes to light?

More than 30 years after Karl Koch's death

have now the confidentiality deadlines have now been lifted.

Now you can, in principle anyway,

also officially view the investigation files of the authorities.

Even the interrogation protocols here of Karl Koch at the BKA

and also at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

"Me, Karl Koch,

born on July 22, 1965 in Hanover."

For me it was very, very important, that Karl Koch had something very lonely.

I am August Diehl and I play Karl Koch in the movie "23".

That was my first big role back then.

My name is Fabian Busch and I play David in the movie "23".

That was Karl Koch's best friend.

My name is Hans-Christian Schmid.

I researched the story by Karl Koch and made it into a movie.

"It felt like I was discovering a a mysterious continent.

I knocked on the doors of all the huts in the global village,

jetted with seven-league boots around the world.

I didn't have to think about a name I didn't have to think about it for long."

From Karl Koch I read in the newspaper

and I found the whole story unbelievable.

Where someone who could be my classmate,

suddenly with secret services and the KGB.

A lot of highly highly qualified people came to the site.

Half of the State Office of Criminal Investigation, the top investigators.

As far as I know, there were there were two public prosecutors on site.

The head of the of the criminal investigation department from Wolfsburg was on site.

It had to be something extraordinary.

I experienced Karl's family as very difficult and gloomy.

I was rarely at Karl's house.

He much preferred to be with us or we stayed with friends in a shared flat.

He was a friend of my son

and he caught my eye. He was a tender, tall boy

and a very polite and very friendly.

So someone that you can like straight away.

When we were at Karl's house, then that was

rather a very depressed mood, that prevailed in this apartment.

Can you please explain that?

His mother was diagnosed with cancer at an early age from cancer at an early age.

I think he was about ten.

His mother received radiation after surgery.

And the special thing about it was that Karl accompanied her.

That must be very oppressive for a ten-year-old boy

and very lonely. Because...

...he sat there for a long time then also alone,

waited for his mother was the only one who accompanied her.

And that really touched me. Yes.

Karl's father gave him a computer as a present.

I don't know, early 80s.

The hacking started very soon started very soon, whereby one can imagine the,

I say, in those days

a little differently must imagine.

Private data communication was not actually permitted.

Only universities and companies that had permission from the Bundespost,

they were allowed to operate data communication at all.

It was not until 1983 that the was released for everyone.

We did the same, when it was released, me too,

connected the computer to the network, to the telephone network back then.

My name is Volker Ulle.

I was a hacker in the early 80s

and met Karl at the Computer-Stammtisch in Hanover.

Suddenly you could communicate communicate with people worldwide,

who were in the USA or in France or Italy,

at the touch of a button. You didn't even have to even have to move away from your desk.

And that was a gigantic fascination, you have to say.

Feel free to come closer.

Have you ever ever seen anything like this?

Robots advertise in style with computer voice

for products at Germany's youngest trade fair CeBlT.

At the Hanover World Trade Center the largest exhibition in the world

for office, information and communication technology.

This fascination, which was actually technical,

then also transferred to a whole new attitude to life,

Such a spirit of optimism:

Now the whole world is suddenly open to us open to us in one way,

the likes of which have never been seen before.

"From the tenth grade, at the age of 16,

I was an irregular user of hashish and tranquilizers.

From that time onwards, my school performance began to decline."

Then he was like that too, I say, in the whole subject

of hacking in it,

that every morning on the way to school I rang him out of bed every morning on my way to school.

Sometimes he also came the second hour,

mostly not, because he just had hacked through the nights.

My name is Freke Over.

I grew up in Hanover. That's where I got to know Karl Koch

and was one of his best friends.

We have had a lot of fun together for many with each other and we have also

together through his difficult years.

Then it no longer worked.

Karl and the school no longer came together,

he finished eleventh grade a total of three times

and then abandoned the school project for himself.

"I had acute problems with my father,

shortly before my mother's death

returned to the family home had returned to the family home.

Since then, his alcohol alcohol consumption became a problem,

but which he did not realize or did not want to perceive."

I'm sending you to boarding school, so you can finally learn respect.

Then your girlfriend can can move into my room.

You can scrape it off for all I care!

When Karl was 18,

his father was also diagnosed with cancer,

but then died relatively quickly died relatively quickly.

Karl did not realize this until

experienced as a liberation, that his father was no longer there,

and yet he was something was missing at this point.

In his youth he was something what today's young people

would probably call "lost". So a bit lost in the world.

He didn't really know where to go. Having no security in life like that

is certainly something that can cause can cause a lot of stress for a young person.

I got the book from my father for my 14th birthday.

This is the author. Robert Anton Wilson.

"Since the age of 14

I was infatuated with a main character in the novel trilogy "Illuminatus".

The wave of reports about of reports about hackers.

It was clear to me, I would now go under the pseudonym

"Hagbard Celine", the very character from the novel,

in the German hacker scene become active."

Somehow it's about world domination and a secret society,

who since the 18th century has controlled the fate of the world.

And Hagbard Celine is the savior from these dark forces.

"Illuminatus" was insanely confused and insanely psychedelic.

But then there was a point,

where his... from literature into reality,

so where he took the Illuminati too seriously

and where he saw the signs of the Illuminati seen everywhere.

What do you see here?

The symbol of the Illuminati

on the most important means of payment in the world.

Conspiracy theories are something,

whatever is attractive,

when a situation is threatening and confusing.

That is certainly a good heading for Karl's life as a whole

and for certain situations in particular.

Karl was the conspiracy theorist par excellence.

Well, conspiracy theory is a defamatory term,

developed by the secret services to discredit opponents.

That's why I don't like the term.

My name is Steffen Wernéry. I am 61 years old.

And I am one of the founding members of the Chaos Computer Club.

And then there were membership numbers.

Sure, I grabbed the 23 back then.

So 23 is a number of chaos.

If you want to look for the 23, it is it is everywhere. That's no problem at all.

This 23 symbolizes this,

that the reality, the true reality, is different from that,

that is played or are presented by the media.

In other words, even back then what again and again

Criticism is in the realm of lateral thinking and so on, is what I call it,

that reality has nothing to do with it,

what we are told in the media and in public.

That fascinated Karl immensely

and he just tried to see the truth behind things.

That's not possible!

The day has 24 hours and each hour has 60 minutes

and the shot is fired at exactly 23:23.

That was really excessive with the 23.

It really was every hotel room, I came to was number 23.

- That's what the production company did... - I don't know, I don't think so.

And then also train compartment numbers and that for years.

You just saw the number everywhere. And I still see it today.

In fact, it's so ingrained in me, that I notice it again and again.

My daughter was born on May 23rd.

It's already haunting me. Doesn't happen to me with the 27.

So we, the people, who, I'd say, are more like me

technical and scientific oriented

and were rather so attached to logic,

saw it more as a joke, as a joke and fun and stuff.

We didn't take that very seriously.

But Karl took it much more seriously took it all much more seriously,

than it actually would have been good for him.

I got a call that Karl was found burned and dead in the woods.

For us, it was really like a drumbeat

and left us stunned and increasingly and increasingly angry,

how this could have happened.

I heard a lot of noises, when the body was turned over,

like firefighters then...

yes, they could no longer retain what they had eaten before.

It was not a pretty sight.

The entire hacker scene,

both in the USA as well as in Germany,

has of course somehow come from the anti-authoritarian corner.

In other words, when in doubt, you were more to the left.

I was so turned on back then, rockabilly...

I then tended to into the squatter scene.

It was a mixture of new beginnings and uncertainty.

I remember the 80s the feeling of life very, very strong

something very cold,

where suddenly there was a feeling that something was above us,

what we don't have under control.

I always had the feeling there was something there.

Maybe you don't realize some things might not be noticed,

as one perhaps should have noticed.

Self-immolation, the police suspect. The farmer has his doubts.

Large-scale fire.

With so much foliage, the whole the whole forest would go up in flames.

That's why my opinion is that there has been help here

and the fire was kept in check.

This fire was circular.

I could not recognize that it was on any side

would not have possibly another bulge like this

of a fire could have been,

or an oval or whatever. It was circular.

That is very strange.

Karl Koch lay prone

in this fire scene.

Charred corpses look different.

They are huddled together. So they shrink into themselves.

Karl Koch's body was examined in 1989 at the Forensic Medicine in Hanover in 1989.

But the results, remain secret to this day.

And that is surprising, because many of the files in this case

were released for inspection.

Just not the autopsy report.

Yes, it was definitely

that this matter

is to be treated with discretion.

And we have already been asked or almost obliged,

to maintain silence about this.

And I think there had already been the reference to espionage.

We are in a time when the Cold War is at its peak.

The nuclear danger was actually really very great.

The blocs were really hostile to each other in the mid 80s were really hostile to each other.

I was insanely afraid of a nuclear war actually.

That was so... so also a concrete fear,

because we always had siren alarms like this, test alarm.

It was always like this, after five seconds or so,

when the sound dies down, then it is a real alarm.

And if it goes on to seven or ten seconds,

then it is a test alarm.

I remember lying in bed and these alarms came as a complete surprise.

How I always prayed that this wouldn't subside after five seconds,

but when the sound went on,

There was always such an incredible relief.

But at the same time it also triggers a crazy fear in you.

Karl started from the theory, so to speak,

that the Eastern Bloc was technologically was technologically backward

and could not keep up with the West

and the West was far superior.

Then there was also the consideration, we were quasi

in a special position and could be responsible for a

knowledge equalization with the Eastern Bloc,

by bringing our knowledge there.

So you have to help the East, so to speak technologically, so to speak,

to bring him up to the same level that the West is at.

And because I was a socialist anyway, or am,

it was not such a... The Eastern Bloc was not an opponent for me,

but like this... So in this idealistic way I felt turned towards it.

So obviously the starting point was a cell in Hanover

and they were grouped around some of the hackers there.

Hagbard, Karl Koch.

Boys, young people in Hanover who...

like real nerds sit at their computers all night long,

who are close to the Chaos Computer Club,

who see themselves as patrol services in one world,

which is only just emerging.

Apparently, this Hanover group group is also where the idea was born,

You could also turn knowledge into money.

So you could give the Russians our knowledge and the data,

the data, the documents, that we have hacked,

You could sell them to them.

That sometimes shit gets done and people do things,

which are not correct, that was foreseeable.

And even if I had looked at the whole circle of people would have looked at me,

of those who on the nets back then,

and you would have asked me, "Show me the ones who are messing up

and those who work for others for money work or something",

I would have... I wouldn't have thought of that.

So neither Karl nor Hans.

We smoked weed and talked stupidly and talked stupid stuff. At one of those hacker meetings

the idea came up,

that one should somehow should give it a try,

to talk to the Soviet Union or something.

My name is Hans Hübner.

I was born in the 80s under the name "Pengo"

together with Karl Koch in the in the so-called KGB hack.

The protagonists of the KGB hack

were DOB, who as a programmer programmed mainframes,

then Pedro, former croupier,

but was now in the cocaine business in the retail trade.

Urmel was just in the loop, that's all.

Karl and me.

That could have just could have simply remained an idea,

but Pedro then ran off

and knocked on the door of the Russian embassy and somehow ended up there

has been forwarded to someone.

"Around March 1986, DOB and Pedro approached me

with the order to obtain information from my hacker activities

on a 3.5-inch floppy disk disk.

I fulfilled the order.

It was an easy task for me.

It took me about a week."

Pedro told us that he had just met that he had just met the great Serge.

- Konrad? - Yes.

I speak German. How do you do?

And then Serge was also interested interested in meeting us.

So we took the S-Bahn there and then...

Friedrichstrasse station is a three-storey station complex,

which was connected with noisy corridors.

At that time it was the case that some of the corridors were for Westerners

and some of the corridors for easterners were. It was such a crazy labyrinth.

And then we went through it,

where I, as a West Berliner was actually not allowed through.

And that was very, very new. I just didn't know it like that.

And we were through, and then Pedro opened his suitcase

and put a rolled joint in his mouth in his mouth

and somehow got stoned...

Smoking we then went to Leipziger street,

But I was too excited. I couldn't smoke with them.

There was an office downstairs where we rang the bell. we rang the bell, we drove up.

It said "Marta Novic" at the bottom. Then we we walked into an office like this

and that's where we met Serge.

The suitcase, please.

I have no real memory, what he looked like.

It's cute.

Yes, it probably could be. But...

That's very strange, because the image from the movie...

That immediately pops into my head and then I start to compare it.

That no longer works. Some things are simply broken.

Well, of course I'm interested in that.

My name is Frank Plasberg.

Until the end of the 70s I was a police reporter,

then radio man and later presenter of a political talk show.

I have remained curious. I want to discover.

And I'm still asking.

According to the West German investigators the KGB contact is called

Sergei Markov.

The Stasi ran it under a different name: Viktor Spiridonov.

And the man allegedly liked American Marlboros.

That was worth a note to the West German investigators worth a note.

Later, his trail was lost.

The KGB needed to know: What can Western hackers do?

This new field of setting Trojans, spy on passwords,

where they used human sources,

corresponding technical access.

And of course they were happy to use Western specialists.

My name is Erich Schmidt-Eenboom

and I have been dealing with secret with secret intelligence services.

And right at the beginning of this occupation

I became aware of the case of Karl Koch to my attention.

So the KGB had been

the all-encompassing intelligence service of the USSR

with a huge intelligence center in Berlin

and next to it this small branch in Dresden, which had special orders.

Vladimir Putin was an agent leader.

One of his tasks was to at the Dresden University of Technology

the foreign students as perspective agents

for the KGB.

The previously unpublished recordings from the Federal Archives

show a very reserved young man

in a circle of older men, shoulders hunched.

Not one to make a banging entrance, but also one,

who bowed to his superiors who bowed to his superiors.

While in West Germany the first major espionage hack is underway,

Vladimir Putin works in Dresden for the KGB.

Major Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich.

I meet a man in Washington, who met Putin shortly afterwards,

professionally and even privately.

I want to know from him, how did he experience Putin?

What makes this man tick? who apparently recognized early on,

how powerful attacks from the Internet are,

who is fighting the West today with its cyber armies?

Exactly. Exactly.

That is really rare.

Oh, and he gets some kind of friendship...

Order of Friendship or something like that.

My name is Franz Sedelmayer.

I am a German entrepreneur and worked as a security consultant

and worked for years worked with Vladimir Putin.

What was special about Putin's Putin had with other people?

So as a fisher of men, we don't know him as a charmer.

But somehow you have to realize he has made a career for himself.

- Yes! - Wherever.

How did he do that? What was special about it?

He simply got the training back in the days of the KGB,

to recruit people.

Putin has always managed to to switch within a second

and can be the most entertaining, nicest person with a lot of charm.

They feel a bit like when they look in the mirror.

He tries to imitate her.

Russia is a friendly European country.

For our country, which has gone through a century of of war disasters,

the stable peace on the continent is the main goal.

So he suddenly tries to to share your values.

He tries to convey to you that he is interested in what you are interested in,

also interested.

And just as quickly it can switch over,

when he realizes that he does not need the other person

or that it is somehow is somehow inferior from his point of view.

Then he quickly becomes very cold and very arrogant. That works too.

What he completely, funnily enough, detested was corruption

in his own circles.

Putin had two things going for him, that made him stand out:

The one thing was that he was not corruptible.

He never accepted money because he knew he was making himself vulnerable.

And the second was, that he was absolutely loyal.

And the legendary treasures that he is said to have today,

ships are operated under a false name but which belong to him,

Mansions, palaces... All gossip?

This is certainly not gossip.

But it just shows that his presidency

then shed all restraint in that direction.

This development into a warmonger

and tyrant, would you have believed him too?

You have to understand the motives understand.

For him, it's all about retaining power.

Everything that stands in the way of this must be combated by all means.

No dictator uses the possibilities for Internet attacks

as open and uninhibited as Vladimir Putin.

And it was Karl Koch and his comrades-in-arms, who gave the Kremlin

the way into the computers of the West.

"We, the hackers, are also taking part in this war.

Viruses are a completely new weapon,

at the beginning of a completely new form

of war and the soft revolution.

A weapon whose significance we hackers

Apart from the secret services are the only ones already collecting data today.

And that gives us a fantastic head start

in all future conflicts."

Pulling off the big hacks and learn all about it

and having great ideas, that was added to the mix.

He has mega great ideas on the side

and I liked that so much.

My name is Nadja Ungethüm. I have been hacking for over 15 years

and actually do this very successfully.

I hacked the FBI, the NSA, Google, PayPal...

That really is a very long list.

We think we are the greatest. And then you find yourself in a bubble.

One loses oneself in these thoughts, so to speak,

rake in a lot of money. Simply put.

Karl Koch had that, just like me and many other hackers too.

"Pedro told me that he had my disk

to a Russian named Sergei at a meeting in meeting in East Berlin

and would have received a cash sum of of 15,000 Deutschmarks.

This amount was divided equally between the three of us in equal parts,

so that I would be entitled to the 5,000.

The procedure is:

There are these software products that you need

and there is good money for them.

There was an embargo,

so that means western computers, hardware etc., but not software either,

were not officially be sold to the East.

So there were considerable efforts by the Soviet Union and other states,

western computer technology technology.

"I found out about Pedro in April 1986,

that I should comply with the request of the Russian Sergei to comply with him,

by hacking more intensively and more focused on military,

industrial, commercial and and government sectors.

The Russians were very interested in these access authorizations,

but especially those to military computers."

What Karl Koch and his accomplices have delivered,

was in three perspectives a huge advantage for the KGB:

On the one hand, the knowledge from the field of high technology,

Nuclear research, arms industry.

Secondly, getting to know the methodology of the hackers.

How do I set Trojan horses? How do can I get passwords and the like?

And the third aspect is counterintelligence.

Finding out: What can Western hackers do?

So that you can close your own to better seal your own bulkheads.

I know that Karl said, what they did,

that they tried to crack systems in the USA have tried to crack,

where Clifford Stoll then also found out about him.

Exactly, I can still remember very well, that he told me:

"In America there must be a totally crazy,

crazy guy, he traced us."

I am Cliff Stoll.

In 1980 I was an astronomer.

I worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Computer Center,

with the Unix computer.

I hunted down some computer hackers, on the ARPANET,

the forerunner of the Internet.

They worked worked for the KGB.

We had five, six, seven Unix computers.

One day in August 1986

everything crashed.

Why?

I saw that someone has penetrated our system,

into a military computer.

He's not hacking a civilian network, He's hacking a military computer!

We are talking about Berkeley.

In Berkeley, you would expect that someone would be looking for muesli recipes.

Or after the party for peace and freedom.

But this guy is looking for...

Nuclear energy, nuclear bombs.

He is looking for missile launch pads.

The lab manager says to me: "I want you to get him!

Take as much time, resources and equipment as you need.

Nail the bastard!

Take three weeks, if you have to."

Three weeks turned into three months,

then eleven months.

We were able to trace the connection back to Hanover.

I called the FBI. The FBI called the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Federal Criminal Police Office called Deutsche Post.

Then they sent someone to Hanover at two o'clock in the morning.

They have voltmeters and connectors everywhere.

They traced the connection back to to an apartment in Hanover.

I know that his burnt body

in a forest in Germany was found.

Karl's death is the great mystery,

still unsolved today.

And all the interview partners we had,

before the shooting, have their own thesis.

Was he killed? Was it murder?

If it was murder, the big question is: Who murdered him? Was it the KGB?

Who could really gain an advantage

have had as a result, that Karl is no longer there?

And in the end, I can only think of

the KGB itself came to mind.

First, of course, there are Thoughts direction

KGB, Soviet Union.

That Karl Koch has information,

that should not come to light, and that's why he was killed.

The Koch case, Karl Koch,

was certainly not a success for the KGB,

otherwise the good man would probably still be alive today.

And that indicates that,

that someone has tried him as a possible

source of information.

And as bad as that is, it's not unusual.

What has always puzzled me is that

from any side of this...

I say "murder theory" has been investigated

and that the investigating authorities closed the closed the files relatively quickly.

"Third-party fault could not be ruled out."

The police write this very quickly in a telex,

after the body of Karl Koch was found.

Five days later she says in the press,

Koch had killed himself, there were no clues

due to the fault of a third party or a criminal offense.

The authorities then stick to this and naturally fuel speculation.

If you could have asked Karl now could have been asked,

out of the sky, then he would have said:

"Yes, it's people from the drug scene, who have taken me aside,

to prevent from giving anything away,

which might could have been their undoing".

So the thesis that Karl possibly a drug lord

stepped on the toes, that is not absurd.

The idea is understandable.

60 drug-related deaths in Hanover last year.

So at the end of the 80s a clear explosion,

in Hanover, our drug scene.

It has a lot to do with drugs,

what we did, and would not have been drugs would have been unthinkable.

This then broadens the horizon of ideas,

This helps you to be creative,

and can therefore also help to find ideas when hacking.

"I started in 1985 snorting cocaine irregularly,

as it was offered to me free of charge by a programmer for free.

Towards the end of the year consumption became regular.

I became a drug addict."

He always had drugs, he always had

an expensive computer,

had a great modem, had a Porsche.

So, he just had money.

"The inheritance of 100,000 Deutschmarks gave me my freedom,

that my father didn't want to give me,

namely household.

But since I couldn't get over the sudden death of my father,

I found the money from the inheritance as dirty

and spent as much as possible."

I don't think the inheritance three years, really.

Then there was no more money, then it became difficult.

"The free supply of cocaine ended in February or March 1986.

From that point on I had to pay for it."

One gram of cocaine has 150

to 300 Deutschmarks at the time. That was a lot of money.

In the event that he has now several grams a day,

we quickly arrive at a sum,

which cannot be financed by legal means cannot be financed by legal means.

"Pedro and DOB had gotten me so addicted to cocaine,

that I was dependent on them.

I supplied them with practically everything, they wanted,

as far as it was possible for me, to obtain these things."

If you think about the profits possible in the possible in the business then and now,

then of course it is conceivable, that people also use violence,

to secure their business networks.

I can well imagine that he by some people in the drug scene

has also been endured, perhaps even sexually.

But the fact that in this way insights have been created

and relationships and connections have arisen,

that could have been critical for people from the could have become critical.

So the drug career of Karl Koch is very typical for hackers.

Especially at the beginning, especially when they are very young, they have the money.

They think they are the greatest anyway,

can hack in anywhere,

and then you just take the drugs and have fun.

And after half a year you realize you need the stuff

or gets psychoses or something similar.

"I lived in strict isolation from my environment

and my circle of friends with hack sessions lasting days and nights

and frequent drug use in my apartment

at Comeniusstrasse 24.

Since May '86, drug use has led to

to steadily increasing parapsychological perceptions."

Karl Koch did not start his life into his life unencumbered.

There is information that at least his father and his sister

were mentally ill. There is talk of

of depressive symptoms, suicidal tendencies and addiction.

My name is Dr. Johanna Thüncker.

I am a psychological psychotherapist.

I have read up into the Karl Koch case,

in order to from the psychological perspective

and describe them.

Yes, how can I put it? He was in a bad mental state.

I realized he wasn't feeling well.

I always had the feeling he was not well,

but he was worse off, than I knew him.

So after Clifford Stoll had found out

where Karl lives, where the computer is,

the American secret services then stepped on his toes.

There was paranoia from Karl

was much more real, than I believed at the time.

Karl Koch's main diagnosis was psychosis.

Back then, people simply knew very little about what it does to people,

when you spend nights and days in a virtual world.

Today we know a lot more about it,

there are terms like computer addiction and whatnot.

This connection with cocaine, drugs, loneliness and in the virtual world,

that's a bomb. Hardly hardly anyone could stand it, really.

A psychosis is something which proceeds in phases

and where there is a surge like this, where it's very acute,

where reality can no longer be assessed,

where you are also helpless, dependent on support.

He complained, simply, that he takes strong psychotropic drugs

and that he doesn't know where to go and that he somehow...

that he was baptized.

And I found it all totally strange.

"To support the therapy I still receive to this day

once a month Haldol decanoate injected once a month."

Karl could no longer sit still

and had trembling hands, when he didn't get his Haldol,

which they used to keep him in a psychiatric ward in irresponsibly high doses

to keep him quiet.

Karl froze more and more in his body.

He seemed very choppy, stiff, wooden in his movements.

When Karl was on Haldol withdrawal, he was like this...

So he was already a nervous person anyway,

But then he panicked.

And that was pretty intense, to watch.

We're talking about the 80s. These older drugs

are now only given at very short notice, because the

a very dampening, i.e. calming effect,

but therefore also restrictive function.

Of course I then also reproached myself,

that I didn't try pull him to the ground

or somehow to be a better friend to him,

or to help him somehow, to cope better.

It has always kept me very busy, where could we have gone other ways?

Where could we as friends have given him other support we could have given him

or take a different path?

And where did he take taken the wrong path?

Yes, that is sad. I find it sad,

that he was so alone.

When I found out that Karl was dead,

was actually the first reaction,

that there was no doubt at all, that it was suicide.

Perhaps Karl simply saw clearly,

saw clearly for the first time, what his situation actually is,

and perhaps he has seen it once too often.

It still bothers me today. Was it a suicide?

Then it was very cleverly prepared and also carried out.

Or was it an external influence? that led to this,

that Mr. Koch died there?

We can imagine a psychosis in such a way that

lives in this delusional world, but the brain but otherwise functions normally.

It would be quite possible that such steps as,

I buy gasoline, I take care of it,

that this very place is prepared accordingly,

that you take such precautions. That also works for someone,

who suffers from psychosis.

I immediately thought, that fits,

that he killed himself,

and was immediately in opposition

to any murder theories.

And one of the key indicators for me was for me was, of course, the date,

namely May 23rd, the day the day he killed himself.

And...

In the end, it is clear that this the connection to the Illuminati

and all these stories, that played a huge role for him,

that it was simply there.

I think Karl killed himself in the end. killed himself.

But of course there was a prehistory,

and that includes some journalists, who have done him a lot of harm.

Between the media and Karl or hackers in general

existed and still exists today a certain symbiosis.

Some do something illegal, that is exciting and interesting,

and the media naturally have great interest in it,

such exciting, interesting content to the public.

Karl always had

the need, to create publicity about...

his hack, to explain his mission,

his approach, and he was short of money.

The first time I came into contact with Karl Koch I came into contact with

as part of the Hannover Messe, i.e. the CeBlT.

There were always hack sessions and meetings of hackers.

And then we have Karl

and Karl now operates the system.

I was actually impressed by him.

Karl was actually a bit of a the philosopher in the scene.

That was the reputation that preceded him.

In a way, the other hackers some way also for his visions

and for the way he thought about thought about networks, how he also

about the possible threats posed by digital systems,

they admired him in a way.

Perhaps he was also scary to many.

My name is Thomas Ammann. I have been a a television journalist for many years.

And from the very beginning

computer technology, the networks that were already in existence at that time,

also the social consequences of computer technology,

that fascinated me. And so it was almost only natural that you

came into contact with hackers at one event or another came into contact with hackers.

And that's how we came came into contact with Karl Koch.

I first had to explain to the editors I worked with, I first had to explain:

"There are computers." Perhaps they already knew that.

But there are computers, that can be accessed via data networks.

That was already completely unimaginable for most unimaginable in a certain way.

"What do these computers do over the data networks?"

"Yes, they exchange research data or there are military networks."

One day Karl Koch arrived with a stack of telexes,

which undoubtedly came from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).

I have read through them with my colleagues,

and there were very explosive messages in it

between police authorities in Germany, where it is about

planned assassinations by the RAF against federal ministers,

for example against against the Research Minister Riesenhuber.

At that time I had already founded a small company

and had the task of processing a telex system for the police.

The police had their own telex network. Telex is a telex machine,

you could send text messages.

When Karl visited me in our company,

I had nothing better to do than to give him these telexes.

There are few things that I really regret,

but that was a very clear stupidity,

because he tried to make money with these telexes to make money with these telexes by

ran to a journalist, or two, it was one or two.

Anyway, he told them, he knew hackers,

who can penetrate the telex network of the police.

And when we saw the material

and we were also convinced that it was real,

of course we finally had finally had something in our hands,

to turn it into a story for the NDR story for the NDR.

I think the NDR then checked whether these telexes were genuine,

by asking the State Office of Criminal Investigation in Bavaria,

"Are they real?"

And they were real and they didn't like that.

That was real theater.

Because they wanted to know, of course: Where is the hole and how does this

confused drug addicts to this material?

Then, of course, the story was dead again, of course,

because that was a completely normal theft, but not a hack.

My name is Bernd Scheunemann. I come from Hamburg.

In the 80s I worked at Norddeutscher Rundfunk

worked in youth radio and together with

filmed with Karl Koch Hacks.

Karl then arrived at some point with these journalists

and told me that he had been offered offered money for it,

that they are doing an exclusive story about hackers.

As editors, we personally did not not paid them any money at all.

What motivation should Karl should have had,

to do such a story except for the money?

Karl has told me about it several times,

that Scheunemann offered him 10,000 marks,

if he helps him to a corresponding hacker story.

That was at a time when Karl was already very dependent on money.

Where are you going in now, Hagbard?

We used the DATEX line to the gateway of the computer.

Now it asks me to log in.

- Do you need a password for this? - That's right.

- Where did you get that from? - Trade secret.

And we have the hacker scenes,

which of course important for us in terms of image material,

only re-enacted during filming. So that means,

and that was also important to NDR, because hacking is a criminal offense.

You know that there are now there are severe penalties.

Aren't you afraid that you'll get caught?

No.

Good. What happens now? How do you get hold of the fuel rods?

So first of all you can look around the computer look around a bit now. And then...

- Then you can't go any further. - Why not?

Because you can't just can be driven around so easily.

The NDR never gave them the opportunity to hack.

But me personally, I was a freelance journalist at the time,

who has mainly worked for worked for the NDR,

I gave them both the opportunity,

in my apartment back then, in Hamburg, at Markstraße 28,

to show that they really can do this hacking.

Because for me it was important for my research

to see that it really works. That's why I never told them that.

But it was 35 years ago now, you can talk about it.

How difficult is it for a resourceful hacker,

manipulate the control systems of a of a nuclear power plant?

You had the fuel rods up and down. Right?

Nonsense! Who says that?

Oh nonsense.

So that's all total humbug and nonsense.

There is no truth in that fuel rods that have been shut down.

So in principle it's quite simple. The computers are just poorly protected.

- Now let me have a go... - I'm not going to be taken for a ride!

We hacked into Jülich. That's all we should do, okay?

Yes, and then comes this decisive scene,

when it turned out that was not true.

When we said goodbye, we talked a little a little longer at the station,

he told me at some point: "Bernd, I have something else to tell you.

I have the material, that we hacked,

sold to the KGB".

That was, of course, at the time a revelation,

that nobody really expected.

The KGB was also the great myth of the Cold War.

And then, of course, I was electrified again.

Then, of course, there is also the fact that as a journalist, especially if you

is young, still has a hunting instinct

and of course a great story would like to research.

I admit that even back then was enthusiastic about it,

to find out anything significant.

That's when I started, to get scared,

that Karl will tell someone our story.

Whether it is the authorities or whether it's the journalists,

at least obviously so the future plan of Karl,

from our common hacker story to make money.

That's how it was... That's how it was for me. That was why I was afraid.

Then there was a conversation in the NDR editorial office,

where Karl has been made clear,

So we can't pay money,

but we can take care of it,

through appropriate contacts with investigating authorities,

that he gets out of out of the matter.

Bernd Scheunemann and Axel Lerche,

two journalists who, so to speak

have betrayed their journalistic ethos in the sharpest possible terms.

They knew that Karl was undergoing psychiatric treatment,

and they tried to use Karl,

to create their own great story,

to further their careers.

They didn't care about Karl Koch, I don't think they cared at all.

So I believe that we

correctly and responsibly have behaved towards him.

Especially when it became clear, that it was about these KGB hacks,

because we follow his wish, "I want a lot of money...

between us, so that I can continue coke and chopping",

have not complied, but have already have already sought the conversation:

Are there other ways to deal with Karl Koch?

"In July 1988, I then

to West German defense authorities,

because after finishing my therapy and school time

wanted to lead a clean life."

Then I will now ask you a few questions, Mr. Koch.

"I also wanted to prevent possible blackmail,

and settle accounts with DOB and Pedro,

because they got me addicted to cocaine had made me addicted to cocaine."

Karl has to get out of this story out of this story somehow.

You also have to his situation: Surrounded by

Drug dealers, people who have pushed with cars

and in some other way were involved in the criminal milieu.

"In November, Pedro told me in the presence of DOB,

I'd get a bullet through my head, if I talked about it."

It didn't take long for this group, which was very worried,

that at some point Karl Koch in Hanover that he goes crazy

and that the whole story might then story comes to light.

And that's exactly what happened.

Here at the KGB headquarters in Moscow

the new era of high-tech espionage was was strategically prepared.

A hastily abandoned apartment in Hanover,

as we now know, a headquarters of the spy ring that was exposed today.

This morning in Berlin, Hanover and Hamburg

Several apartments searched.

Five men were provisionally arrested.

They are being investigated by by the Attorney General

because of secret service agent activities.

The so-called hackers are under suspicion,

on behalf of the Soviet secret service KGB

western computer systems systems.

With electronic gimmickry has nothing to do with electronic gimmicks.

If secret services now take on the computer hackers,

then that is espionage.

I was still in contact with Karl Koch after after the broadcast

and in the phase,

when he had an apartment, had a job

and also was undergoing medical treatment,

he made a very stable impression on me impression by his standards.

Can I read out a statement before the interrogation begins?

But please.

But one thing first:

We are not conducting any interrogations here. It's just an interrogation.

When the constitutional protectors say:

"We are the best thing thing that could have happened to Karl.

We have taken him out of this story.

He could be a key witness.

We got him a place in therapy got him a therapy place, got him an apartment..."

Then I don't think that's true.

I think it was a path that Karl could go,

but not the best, that could have happened to him.

He was under massive under massive pressure.

When Karl revealed himself to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Criminal Police Office

he was completely mentally depressed.

They must have questioned him more often and for a very long time.

"Here's that name. We have heard that...

Could it be that... Is that right?

is it called X, is it called Y?

Can you tell me that again?"

It was always about: "You have to do this then you can go home again."

"If you tell me any more any more bullshit,

then I'll pull the chain and flush you down."

"This is the only way you can get your impunity."

Of course, it was also about that he doesn't just talk about hacking,

but also about the autonomous scene,

about that, what his political past is,

and the past or the actions of his friends.

From what I know of the behavior of the secret services in relation to Karl

and Karl's psychological distress,

it was immoral how the secret services secret services have behaved.

They have no regard for the person and their mental state

and their needs used a human being,

to obtain information, regardless of losses.

And then that is already morally reprehensible to the highest degree,

what the secret services have done there.

Karl Koch was not only the drug-addicted hacker,

who somehow always lived on the edge of physical resilience,

but he was actually actually also a visionary,

the development of data networks, computer security

and global surveillance.

If you leave out drug addiction and his psychotic side,

then he is also someone who simply sees something,

what we just have not yet seen.

"The electronic media are triggering revolutions today.

The development offers plenty of space for negative visions.

The transparent human being,

Communication profiles and Big Brother are the buzzwords.

However, it is pointless to discuss these visions to continue discussing these visions in purely theoretical terms.

Data processing is now so comprehensive,

that the technical possibilities for a fascist state,

that can completely control its citizens have long since been created."

At the end of the day, these sentences not so much like someone,

who dreams or has visions, but who describes exactly in which direction

everything is already possible.

German security authorities continue to see a very great danger

for companies and authorities, victims of cyber attacks.

We are clearly in the cyber war. It's clear.

In the worst case there is a super-GAU.

Quite simply put, in the worst case, the lights will be out tomorrow.

I assume that Russia will its full capacities

has not even played out yet, but is quite capable of doing so,

when things get serious, far greater damage

the supply infrastructure, the railroad lines,

for hospitals, at government offices

and the like.

The threat is not new.

The federal government acted after the KGB hack.

And the decision was made here in Bonn:

Germany needs its own hacker defense agency,

the Federal Office for Information Security in Information Technology.

Will be through Russia today,

- computer systems attacked by Putin? - We're not just talking about Russia here.

We are also talking about various other players.

- We also see the whole spectrum. - China?

For example. We also see Iran. We see North Korea.

We have ransomware. We have sabotage. We have espionage.

We have disinformation and destabilization.

We really have the complete spectrum

in various types of attacks.

And they also have various players at the back.

If you have to make sure that the other person stops,

then you can hack it yourself.

And that's not the point. That is the crucial point.

It's really only about to stop an attack.

I can only strongly advise you to take the take the issue of cyber security seriously.

It's for virtually everyone out there, for every institution,

for every company, for every organization

actually no question, whether it will be hit at some point,

but rather a question of when it is made.

"Everyone be warned. Hagbard is back.

The rumors that I had left my

Bondwell Portable has been eaten. Hey hey hey!

Nothing there. Here I am."

The last meeting before his death was at a Tuesday meeting

and Karl came to me, tapped me on the shoulder

and said: "Volker, can we sit down sit at a separate table?

I have something to talk to you about."

One must mention this, it was already at a point in time,

where he was in a mentally was in a very stable condition again,

also had a new job as a driver for the CDU,

and things were actually looking up for him.

All I know is that he also had a girlfriend,

who was very devoted to him and where there was also a spiritual connection.

So he was clean. He no longer took drugs

and he also made a very clear and tidy impression.

And he then told me,

that he was afraid for his life.

I am Hartwig Fischer.

I was elected General Secretary of the of the CDU in Lower Saxony in 1986.

In January 1989

Karl Koch with us in the regional office.

I was the last superior of Karl Koch.

You hear so many things, but you have to then come up with the idea and say:

"I am offering this person a job."

What gave you the idea to say,

"That works here, we can help a boy like Karl Koch"?

I think I'm the type who accepts everyone

and I had confidence,

that he wanted something to give himself to give himself a chance again.

What could he do with you?

He ran the errands, he ran the errands.

He has also never been a failure anywhere.

So it came as a surprise to us that he had suddenly disappeared.

This job as a driver at the CDU office

and there any files around the neighborhood,

that doesn't fit at all

to this other image of the human being, who does not live in this world at all.

That has... That's how it was for me.

So not at all in any way

tied to any reality. And that was quite funny.

I have a very dark memory,

that my son said: "Karl's gone" and gave me a fright.

We started looking for Karl on May 24, 1989, looking for Karl.

And then after just under a week after just under a week.

And they said: "Well, we can't find him."

That was very depressing.

For the first day or two we still had hope.

Then came the news of his death

and that was very shocking.

Yes, I was shocked beyond belief

and found the way of dying of death quite terrible.

But the information came with it,

I already had that it was that it was suicide.

And that was completely implausible for me,

because the way I had experienced him, even during our last conversation before that,

it was that I had the feeling that...

that now at the moment

was the smallest construction site for him,

that he could have suicidal thoughts could have thoughts of suicide.

When you got the news, Karl Koch is dead,

His body has been found...

Can you still remember what your first thought was?

Yes, the first thought with something like this is is of course horror.

Don't understand. I was completely surprised

and certainly also overwhelmed in the situation.

How fast was the stand then? he killed himself,

that was conveyed to you, how quickly did it come?

I found out a little later.

I personally could not not imagine that.

A petrol can was found

by the burnt body.

At the time, they had company cars at the regional office.

- Did they all have spare canisters on board? - No.

Nobody asked us about this either.

- Have you been questioned at all? - No.

That is unusual.

Yes, there is so much unusual in this case.

It surprised us all, that his body was not released,

because the funeral was to take place.

And it took an endless amount of time, the release.

And we all asked ourselves: What is being done for so long?

That's why we would all have been very interested in the results of the autopsy,

what exactly has been determined.

The trial has been running for six months,

the Attorney General's Office to get the piece of the puzzle,

namely the autopsy report of Karl Koch.

At first the authority does not react not at all.

Only after involving a lawyer comes the news:

"We have no files on the death of Karl Koch.

We handed them over in 2019 to the Federal Archives in 2019."

Ask the Federal Archives. They say:

"The files are with the Attorney General."

And lo and behold, suddenly the files are actually there.

An internal oversight was was the problem, it is now said.

But you are still not allowed to see the autopsy report.

Reference is now made to the post-mortem Karl Koch's right of personality.

Karl's case is not closed to this day and therefore

he appears again and again. And again and again when he appears,

then of course certain questions come up for me.

Against the background that he now led a relatively stable life,

1989,

I quickly asked myself:

"Why would he kill himself kill himself right now?"

And in that respect, for me, and I know others did too,

At some point the subject came up: Maybe it wasn't suicide,

but there were some interests,

on whichever side, Karl Koch out of the way.

It's actually a black box, the whole story

about Karl's death and everything that

information could perhaps have been could have been gained after his death.

And that still makes me be very dissatisfied.

Through background research on Karl Koch's autopsy report

details have emerged, that simply make you wonder.

For example his hands were cramped.

Were they perhaps tied up?

The fingertips were also missing.

Did someone want to disguise his identity

or were they perhaps animals from the forest?

And neither Karl Koch's shoes

the car keys were found at the scene of the crime.

If Karl Koch was alone, where did the things disappear?

All questions for the Attorney General.

But there are no answers.

I sometimes wonder what would be going on on the net today,

if such a case were to happen. I think the net would explode.

Back then, social media didn't exist in this form at all.

In this respect speculation was already rampant.

But today I could imagine the network would collapse

under the conspiracy narratives would take place.

So when a friend kills himself, that's something that stays with you for a long time.

And today, on May 23rd I'm still thinking about it,

why today is such a shitty day.

So it was such a shitty day for me.

Yes, because the memory is then is also connected to the anniversary.

At that time I missed him very much,

because he was one of the essential link in the group.

After Karl's funeral we moved to the banks of the Ihme,

where we had often had also been with Karl,

sat on the meadow,

music from the ghetto blaster have heard,

as long as the batteries lasted.

'The dream is over!

It was a day when a lot of Ton Steine Scherben,

but also ran Slime...

Music that connected us with him.

And we have tried, in a cheerful form

to say goodbye to him. And then we thought of friends,

We have to give a eulogy there too.

We have tried a little bit of our helplessness

and also our anger

in this eulogy

and to say things again,

which for us has to do with Karl's death.

"Dear Karl,

When the night is at its deepest, the day is closest.

That was not only a favorite song of yours, Karl,

but also a self-chosen motto.

Anger and grief over your death do not the memories and feelings,

that we have lived together.

Now that I think about it,

what has been missing has been missing so much since you left,

That is humanity.

The humanity of those who labeled you,

have sorted and cheered away,

without feeling your hardship, your struggles and wounds.

Who have made you the object of sensationalism and distortion,

without respecting your dignity.

The dignity of a young man,

that had too few boundaries,

in order to survive in this world.

You should betray your friends and isolate yourself.

They criminalized you for that,

by making you the enemy of internal security,

which jeopardizes the technological from the East.

In their interest, they asked you to do the same,

that you from your circle of friends,

after they unceremoniously to the terror scene.

When I think about what you have learned from us in your last time

may have been missing before you left,

I notice the many stones, called tiger's eye stones,

from the family jewelry of your mother.

Tiger's eye stones are good for the heart, as they say.

We would have needed the vigilance of tiger eyes,

to see what crisis you were in.

Now you're dead. Everyone understands the language.

You have become, what you might have wished for:

A mystery. The anarchist,

Drug addicts, superhackers and crazy people.

The fact that you were human is history.