That's fascinating! I served in US Air Force intelligence in West Berlin for 5 years during the Cold War, and my male colleagues and I were often briefed on being aware that German women trying to romance us might be spies.

A colleague of mine told me back then that he suspected a young woman he went out with a few times was a Stasi agent. I poo poo'ed him, but decades later he looked her up in documents that have been made public, and it turns out he was right. That's not proof that she was targeting him, of course, but it's pretty suspicious.

Interestingly, though, the Stasi seemed to use more traditional honeypot sort of bait when going after men. The young Stasi agent who probably targeted my colleague was young, super-sexy, and "easy." I guess the Stasi figured that's what men wanted. Or maybe they figured that's what a young American man must want.

I'm fascinated to see that they were so much more sophisticated targeting women.

How sad that things were so bad for women that those tactics made sense.