Most of the Western news media failed to see the big story in the months and years that led up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even in the final weeks before the epochal event, they did not foresee that the Wall would be breached by an irresistible push for freedom, and that the entire East German regime would come crumbling down in the aftermath.
The news media were not alone in failing to predict the epochal event. Intelligence services, both eastern and western, did not see it coming. Even the leaders of East and West Germany were taken by surprise.
East German leader Erich Honnecker, who had one of the world's most extensive internal spy services, predicted early in 1989 that “the wall will be standing in 50 and even 100 years.”
Helmut Kohl, the West German chancellor, was also blindsided. Only weeks before the wall fell, he told Polish leader Lech Walesa “the grass will be growing on my grave before it falls.”
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