Gerald Amster

I was born during World War II in the city of Paterson NJ. At the age of six months my parents divorced, leaving me to be cared for by my mother and maternal grandparents. My mother was a hard working single parent, who compensated me for the lack of a father. I attended high school in Paterson and always worked part time after school in order not to be a burden to my mother.

At age 17, I attended NYU evenings and worked full time at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in the EXPERIMENTAL SURGERY DEPARTMENT, working with the husbandry of animals, preparing them and caring for them after surgical experiments. At that juncture of my life, I thought that I would want to be a surgeon someday. The next year I attended Columbia University, and decided I would want to major in Linguistics, with a minor in Political Science. I worked at the school of Library Sciences when I had not any study hours and managed to live in the dormitory during that time. At the end of my second year at Columbia, I saved enough money to take a charter flight to Paris where I attended L’ Alliance Française, and later some classes at La Sorbonne of the University of Paris. After a year in Paris, I returned to the US and registered for my junior year, studying at the Otto-Suhr Institute fuer Politik-Wissenschaft at the Free University of Berlin.

I returned to the US at age 21 continuing my studies at Columbia and worked as an instructor of German language while occasionally also giving lessons in French at various private schools including the Berlitz School in New York City.

I married for the first time in 1964 to a beautiful and gifted German girl who was raised in Sao Paulo Brazil. Our son Darrin was born the same year and we moved to California. Until 1968, I had worked at various job positions.

That same year I applied for a trainee position with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The application was denied and I had a long discussion with my wife Gisela and we decided to go our own ways for a while excluding the idea of divorce.

I flew to West Berlin and made many acquaintances along the way of the social strata. Notwithstanding a diplomatic acquaintance who introduced me to the world of strategic information acquisition on a non-contractual basis. Finally, I got my way, albeit, not with the CIA per se, but for the ill-fated organization known as the USIA (US Information Agency) which wasn’t as trivial or picayune as the former.

My mission was to make frequent trips to East Berlin and glean Intel information and try to establish whether a terrorist organization in West Germany known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, aka Rote Armee Faktion was receiving any financial or logistical help from certain persons or organizations in the east, who originally emanated from the west.

This non contractual work continued until I flew back to the US and invited a friend, Darrell, to accompany me to Amsterdam where Transit Point Moscow begins.

After the adventure ended in December of 1980, I have become involved with the import of medical devices from many countries, mainly China. I market my products via the internet. I do a limited amount of consulting for companies wishing to set up businesses in Eastern Europe and the People’s Republic of China.