Germany’s Spy Scandal Shaping Up as Biggest Since End of World War II

In what is shaping up as the biggest German spy scandal since the end of the Cold War, a former president of Germany’s foreign intelligence was arrested today on suspicion of selling secrets — “treasonous espionage” — to agents of two foreign intelligence agencies.August Hanning, 80, who led Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, between 1998 and 2005, was arrested on suspicion of “treasonous espionage.” After retiring from government service in 2010, prosecutors say, Mr. Hanning bought about 2,000 secret documents from his former chief of staff. Mr. Hanning’s partner was identified only as Manfred D., a man who served as chief of staff for three heads of the BND. He reportedly sold secrets for 14 years, stopping only a few months ago. He also was arrested yesterday. Information sold reportedly included weekly briefings larded with secrets provided by the CIA, MI6, and other Western agencies. At the time, Mr. Hanning and his wife ran a consulting company that counted Russian bankers and businessmen among its clients. Prosecutors did not identify which countries received secret information.“Hanning was to capitalize on said information in the context of his private consulting services, which he had been offering,” the prosecutor’s statement said today. “Over the years, Manfred D provided Hanning with approximately 2,000 documents, many of which contained classified information to be used exclusively by the BND for internal purposes.”The second largest spy agency in the West after the CIA, the BND is believed to employ 6,500 people. Despite its size, the agency failed to predict Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The invasion caught the agency flat-footed. The then-BND president, Bruno Kahl, was in Kyiv at the time. He had to be spirited out of the country.Germany’s shock over today’s arrests was compounded by the fact that, after retirement from the BND, Mr. Hanning worked between 2005 and 2009 as the top civil servant in the Interior Ministry. After full retirement from government service, Mr. Hanning remained a respected figure, giving interviews and writing newspaper essays on geopolitics and security topics. Today, his arrest is being compared to the 1974 affair of Günter Guillaume, a close advisor to the then-chancellor, Willy Brandt. Guillaume was exposed as a long-term Stasi agent, and Mr. Brandt resigned. The arrest comes at a sensitive time for Germany’s current Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. Although low in the polls, Mr. Merz pushes ahead what he sees as a reform agenda. One step is to give the BND more operative powers. Although it is the largest intelligence agency in Europe, the BND has limited capacity for action, a legacy of its creation a decade after the collapse of Nazi Germany.Just yesterday, the current president of the BND, Martin Jaeger, told an annual public hearing of intelligence chiefs in parliament that the agency needed expanded powers to parry hybrid warfare attacks by Russia.“The confrontation we are facing with Russia has taken on a new, more dangerous dimension,” he said. “Germany is in danger of becoming embroiled in a violent conflict with Russia. The attempted attack in Leipzig is just one example.”German authorities say that on August 4, Russia orchestrated a pre-dawn attack on cargo jets by as many as three drones at Leipzig airport. In the first, a drone carrying almost two pounds of Semtex explosive bounced harmlessly off a fuel tank of a massive Antonov An-124 cargo jet. This Ukrainian-owned jet, capable of carrying 150 tons, had just unloaded a load of ammunition from France. In the second case, a Boeing cargo jet was aborting its landing at Leipzig when a drone hit its fuselage. Apparently this second drone was an unarmed reconnaissance drone sent to film an explosion by the first. Ten days later, the remains of a third drone, this one loaded with 50 grams of RDX explosive, was found 10 miles from Leipzig airport.Today’s arrests are a blow to Western confidence in Germany’s intelligence agency. They come just as Moscow is pushing East-West relations beyond Cold War tensions, to the realm of real actions in Europe. Last week, a joint investigation by Britain’s Telegraph and Germany’s Welt am Sonntag named as mastermind of the Leipzig attack Oleg Levushkin, a Russian linked to Russia’s main foreign military intelligence agency, the GRU. Mr. Levushkin and another Russian agent, Andrei Karshakou, reportedly traveled to Germany to carry out the drone attacks.Mr. Hanning is believed to be the first head of the BND to be arrested since its founding in 1956. Over the last decade, several officers have been detained on suspicion of selling secrets. In 2023, prosecutors arrested a BND manager, Carsten Linke, and accused him of selling highly classified material to Moscow. On trial for high treason, Mr. Linke could face life imprisonment if convicted.To this day, Western agencies are never sure how long a secret will stay secret with the Germans. Last week, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the August visit to Moscow by the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, was intended to warn the Kremlin that Russia risks a Soviet-style collapse if it continues its war against Ukraine. The German news site cited as its source “a high-ranking diplomat familiar with the CIA’s briefings to Western partner agencies.”

Germany’s Spy Scandal Shaping Up as Biggest Since End of World War II

Germany’s Spy Scandal Shaping Up as Biggest Since End of World War II

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