Streaming: Sky documentary: “23 – The mysterious death of a hacker”

Streaming
Sky documentary: “23 – The mysterious death of a hacker”

On May 23, 1989, the hacker Karl Koch from Hanover disappeared without a trace. A week later, a police officer discovered his charred body in a forest near Gifhorn. With difficulty it was possible to see the remains of a petrol can next to the body. Did the 23-year-old actually pour the fuel on himself and set himself on fire, as the police announced a short time later? The Sky documentary “23 – The Mysterious Death of a Hacker” not only sheds light on the mysterious circumstances of his death, but also attempts to shed light on the political background and get closer to the person Karl Koch.

Together with his friends, Koch chopped for him KGB and thus found himself caught between the fronts of the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Russian secret service in the middle of the Cold War. The hack was later described in the TV magazine “Monitor” as “the biggest espionage case since Günter Guillaume”. The comparison with the spy at the side of Chancellor Willy Brandt turned out to be completely exaggerated.

Film quotes from original statements by Karl Koch

The host of the TV documentary is Frank Plasberg, who began his journalistic career as a police reporter for the “Münchener Abendzeitung”. The reason for the new research was the fact that many of the files that had previously been kept secret could now be viewed for the first time. The film quotes from original statements by Karl Koch during his interrogations by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution after the KGB hack was exposed. The interrogation protocols signed by Koch are spoken by actor August Diehl, who once portrayed him in the film “23 Nothing is as It Seems”. The feature film from 1998 is also currently being shown on Sky and WOW.

The TV documentary contains interviews with contemporary witnesses such as Hans-Heinrich Hübner, who was involved in the so-called “KGB hack”, Karl’s school friend Freke Over, his “foster mother” Hannah Over and Steffen Wernéry – founding member of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC). The film also deals with the question of what responsibility the media had for the tragic death, which at the time ran its big story, sometimes without considering the drug-addicted hacker’s troubled psyche.

In an interesting side story, the film also raises the question of the role of today’s Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin was working for the KGB in Dresden during the time the Hanover hackers were working for Moscow. A former Putin confidant who now lives in Washington provides insights into this. In any case, CCC pioneer Wernéry sees the KGB as the main suspect. The secret service benefited the most from Koch’s death.

Autopsy report remains under seal

However, the film does not rule out the possibility that Koch killed himself in desperation. The hacker, who called himself “Hagbard Celine” after the main character of the science fiction novel “Illuminatus” in the scene, disappeared without a trace on May 23, 1989. The date is symbolic: 23 and 5 are considered sacred numbers by the global conspirators. And in the first volume of the trilogy it says: “All the great anarchists died on the 23rd of one month or another.”

However, when solving the mysterious case, Plasberg and his team struggle at one point. They managed to bring many previously unknown files from the authorities’ archive cabinets to the public. The autopsy report is still with the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office to this day. “We called in lawyers, but the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office stonewalled us and argued with Karl Koch’s postmortem personal rights,” reports author Benjamin Braun. “That’s surprising, because many files in this case were released for inspection. Except the autopsy report,” says Frank Plasberg.

dpa