The arrest of August #Hanning, #BND president from 1998 to 2005, has sharpened long-standing doubts in #London about sharing secrets with #Germany’s foreign intelligence service.
– Investigators believe Hanning spent 16 years after leaving office collecting highly sensitive material—situation assessments, partner-agency documents, and papers on the Iranian nuclear programme and the Russian military—and selling some of it to an undisclosed foreign power.
– British agencies are said to be checking whether their own material or personnel were compromised.
– US agencies are reportedly reviewing what they shared with European partners over the same period.
– This is the latest symptom of a deeper problem:
– After the Cold War, Berlin took a deep “peace dividend.” Defense spending fell from about 3.9 % of government outlays in 1991 to roughly 1.1 % of GDP by 2014.
– The BND was left underfunded and tightly constrained; until reforms this summer, officers could not fire service weapons, sabotage abroad, or spread disinformation. A later chief compared the service to Gulliver “tied up with a thousand threads.”
– Post-Gestapo and post-Stasi politics produced heavy oversight. After Snowden, a 2016 law restricted sharing with the #UK and #US, and a 2020 court ruling made foreign interception much harder.
– Failures reinforced the “weak link” label: the BND missed the 2022 invasion; officer Carsten Linke was arrested in late 2022 for allegedly passing #Ukraine secrets to Moscow; a 2024 air-force call leaked on Russian television exposed British personnel in Ukraine.
– Merz has raised the BND budget by about a quarter to €1.51 billion and granted limited sabotage and weapons powers.
– Is it late?
– I think it is, but better late than later.
– Is it enough?
– Probably not.
– Germany has to meet the foriegn end of #Russia’s hybrid campaign, Chinese collection, #Iran‘s plots against dissidents and Jewish targets, #ISIS infiltrations and #Hamas attack planning at the same time, and none of those threats is shrinking. Intelligence is slow, highly specialized, labour-intensive work. You cannot recruit, clear and train a service on demand, or rebuild source networks and technical capacity that were run down for decades.
– Funding is only half the problem. The other half is people like Hanning: a former chief now accused of collecting and selling secrets long after he left office, on top of a serving officer already charged with passing Ukraine material to Moscow. Extra money and new powers do not restore a service partners already treat as porous.
– This is a cautionary tale for much of #Europe: a starved service is a liability, and a penetrated one is worse.
telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2…
– Investigators believe Hanning spent 16 years after leaving office collecting highly sensitive material—situation assessments, partner-agency documents, and papers on the Iranian nuclear programme and the Russian military—and selling some of it to an undisclosed foreign power.
– British agencies are said to be checking whether their own material or personnel were compromised.
– US agencies are reportedly reviewing what they shared with European partners over the same period.
– This is the latest symptom of a deeper problem:
– After the Cold War, Berlin took a deep “peace dividend.” Defense spending fell from about 3.9 % of government outlays in 1991 to roughly 1.1 % of GDP by 2014.
– The BND was left underfunded and tightly constrained; until reforms this summer, officers could not fire service weapons, sabotage abroad, or spread disinformation. A later chief compared the service to Gulliver “tied up with a thousand threads.”
– Post-Gestapo and post-Stasi politics produced heavy oversight. After Snowden, a 2016 law restricted sharing with the #UK and #US, and a 2020 court ruling made foreign interception much harder.
– Failures reinforced the “weak link” label: the BND missed the 2022 invasion; officer Carsten Linke was arrested in late 2022 for allegedly passing #Ukraine secrets to Moscow; a 2024 air-force call leaked on Russian television exposed British personnel in Ukraine.
– Merz has raised the BND budget by about a quarter to €1.51 billion and granted limited sabotage and weapons powers.
– Is it late?
– I think it is, but better late than later.
– Is it enough?
– Probably not.
– Germany has to meet the foriegn end of #Russia’s hybrid campaign, Chinese collection, #Iran‘s plots against dissidents and Jewish targets, #ISIS infiltrations and #Hamas attack planning at the same time, and none of those threats is shrinking. Intelligence is slow, highly specialized, labour-intensive work. You cannot recruit, clear and train a service on demand, or rebuild source networks and technical capacity that were run down for decades.
– Funding is only half the problem. The other half is people like Hanning: a former chief now accused of collecting and selling secrets long after he left office, on top of a serving officer already charged with passing Ukraine material to Moscow. Extra money and new powers do not restore a service partners already treat as porous.
– This is a cautionary tale for much of #Europe: a starved service is a liability, and a penetrated one is worse.
telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2…