OTTAWA - In the twilight of the Cold War, East German spies scooped up Canadian scientific secrets on everything from cutting-edge military technology to the manufacture of imitation leather and welding rods, new research shows.

The Stasi, the massive intelligence arm of the now-defunct German Democratic Republic, also obtained confidences of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, including the names of employees and dealings with American spy services.

One shadowy agent codenamed Siegfried diligently collected dozens of pieces of documentation such as residence and work permits -- information spies could later use to slip into Canada.

The revelations were unearthed by Helmut Muller-Enbergs of the German federal commission for the Stasi archives in Berlin.

His findings will be presented in Ottawa on Saturday at the annual conference of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies, just days before the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Hauptverwaltung A, the Stasi foreign intelligence service, had "undoubtedly deep insights into the domestic and foreign affairs of Canada," Muller-Enbergs says in a research paper detailing the clandestine operations.

For eight years beginning in 1981, Siegfried -- an agent the Stasi archivists have been unable to identify -- passed more than five dozen pieces of intelligence to headquarters, much of it during the mid-1980s when he likely lived in Canada.

The reports included information on passports, residence permits, car registration, unemployment insurance and income taxes.

"This type of information is needed in order to smuggle someone into or through Canada," Muller-Enbergs says.

"The state regulations governing everyday life were of primary concern, indicating that the country was to be used as an operational spearhead."

Indeed, the Stasi's primary interest in Canada was likely as a transit point for spiriting agents into the United States, said Gary Bruce, a history professor at Ontario's University of Waterloo.

"But to have an actual, established presence here in Canada -- not so much."

East Germany did not open an embassy in downtown Ottawa until late 1987 and the Cold War chill subsided before the Stasi could develop an extensive network of agents in Canada, Muller-Enbergs notes.

"Yet, there must have been some modest gain, as we see that most information delivered was in the form of copies of documents."

While Muller-Enbergs points to sources trolling for secrets in Canada, he concludes East German intelligence appears to have acquired much valuable information from the Soviets and other East Bloc intelligence agencies as well as sources in West Germany.

Of 1,339 pieces of intelligence about Canada from 1969 to 1989, more than a fifth came from partner agencies. Soviet intelligence made up the lion's share, followed by contributions from the spies of Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Soviet reports dealt with Canada's plan to export nuclear reactors, the country's role in NATO and then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau's trip to South America.

Three well-informed West German sources with access to documents from Canada supplied the Stasi with intelligence about Canada's views of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, relations with South Africa and even the 1979 NDP convention.

East Germany sought technical information on nuclear reactors, remote-controlled missiles and wheat yields.

It also wanted to acquire data about -- and actual examples of -- items including fake leather, heavy-duty sacks, welding rods and a 1982-era circuit board from Bell Laboratories.

Nineteen intelligence reports were traced to an agent codenamed Erich, who reported on National Defence and the agency now known as Defence Research and Development Canada.

"He provides intelligence on the Canadian military technology, going into great detail. Almost without exception, his reports were sent to the Soviet intelligence service," Muller-Enbergs says.

"But the source of this intelligence was not Canadian -- it was a female clerk, working at the West German Federal Ministry of Defence in Bonn."

The Hauptverwaltung A "showed a great deal of interest" in Canada's spy services, collecting 66 pieces of intelligence including nine about CSIS, which took over security duties from the RCMP in 1984. Much of it came via Soviet and Polish spies.

"The reports provided the real names of individual employees of the secret service," as well as material from the years marking transition between the two agencies, co-operation with American intelligence from 1983 to 1986, and the internal workings of CSIS in 1987, says the paper.

"Knowledge about the Canadian intelligence services was fragmentary and selective, but also very accurate."

CSIS had no immediate comment on the findings.

Ironically, the Canadian intelligence service may know just as much -- or more -- about Stasi operations in Canada.

In the chaotic early days of the East Bloc's demise, many of the Stasi's foreign intelligence files were destroyed and important index cards, which carried information about Canadian citizens, wound up in the hands of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Muller-Enbergs presumes CSIS is privy to at least some of this information trove.

"We, too, would certainly like to know what is on these index cards."