"The dissidents in the East had to trust us," he says. "But we had to trust them too. We weren't in a position to fact check whether an arrest at this or that demonstration had really taken place."
Not surprisingly, the Stasi were some of the show's most dedicated listeners, but their activities were not limited to monitoring.
At this time, Gorbachev ceased jamming Voice of America and the BBC in the Soviet Union, yet the East German authorities launched their first jamming campaign in a decade.
But the measure backfired. Radio Glasnost simply repeated the blocked shows, thanking the Stasi for the free promotion.
As the Stasi began to lose its grip on East German society, it gave up jamming the show. Radio Glasnost served as a vital communication channel for the resistance movement for over two years until it was no longer needed. The final show was broadcast just three weeks after the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989.
"I still get emotional now when I think about that last show," Jahn says. "How we all came together for the first time in our studio and celebrated the fall of the wall and the peaceful revolution."
Even today, Jahn — still a broadcast journalist at heart — believes the power of radio should not to be underestimated: "By November 1989, Radio Glasnost had done its job."
"It had contributed to the fall of the wall," he says.
Germany
Berlin
Berlin Wall