Spies in Germany’s soft underbelly

“The poison of betrayal is by no means as rare as we like to think; it is not a pleasant part of our existence, but it is entirely predictable.” Over the past few days, I have had good reason to recall this cynical observation on human nature and espionage as an extraordinary scandal has rocked Germany and its allies. My ‘spy-philosopher’ was Markus Wolf, who had spent four decades at the helm of East Germany’s feared foreign intelligence services, earning himself the nickname ‘the faceless man’ – a title that would also have been given to our book.” So wrote Anne McElvoy, editor-in-chief of Politico, in The Telegraph.

“It was the early 1990s and we were working long days and evenings at his dacha, near an elite government holiday resort outside East Berlin. My assignment, as a journalist who had covered East Germany, came from the American publisher Random House: to get his memoirs on track and ask him tough questions. Over his customary afternoon coffee and cigarette, Wolf continued on the subject of betrayal. There was, he said, ‘a kind of betrayal that is felt particularly keenly and is never forgotten, and that is the betrayal by a traitor within one’s own secret service. Someone you know well, who passes information to another. This kind of betrayal is poison for any intelligence service, and the countermeasures we have against it often have limited effect’. His words echoed this week following the bombshell revelation that August Hanning, head of German intelligence from 1998 to 2005, had been arrested on a series of charges of espionage and treason. I found myself wondering what Wolf, who died in 2006 at the age of 83, would have thought of all this, at a time of extraordinary vulnerability within NATO and of threats within Germany and the UK from hostile Russian, Chinese and Iranian operations. The bigger the revelation, the more impassive the veteran spy tended to be. Hanning’s arrest came as a blow to the BND, the German counterpart to MI6. He is accused of paying Manfred Dankesreiter, his former chief of staff, to supply him with 2,000 classified documents from 2010 onwards. Hanning, now 80, is alleged to have intended to use the information for Azerbaijan. Part of the material is said to relate to Iran’s nuclear programme. Hanning is also alleged to have had repeated contact with Wang Jianzheng, who had been stationed in Berlin as a military attaché. He has denied treason and the investigation is ongoing. But no one seriously denies that this is an enormously damaging moment for the BND (…)

Wolf liked to boast that many of the counter-espionage failures he had exploited in West Germany stemmed from the fact that the security services were run ‘like a post office’, obsessed with fussy procedures at the expense of their mission. It would not have taken the counter-espionage genius of George Smiley to realise that this was highly risky. Hanning’s tendency to maintain links with Kremlin favourites, former Soviet intelligence officers and Chinese military figures was well known in Berlin’s inner security circles. The former head of the BND had been a man of the elite German state apparatus — a Spitzenbeamte — with a career stretching back to representing West Germany in East Berlin during the final days of communism. He is credited with providing intelligence that contradicted the American version regarding Iraq’s possession of active weapons of mass destruction. German intelligence, despite its flaws, has a solid track record in the Middle East. Hanning was sceptical about Iraq and refused to back down from his agency’s analysis even as the United States sought to pressure its allies into supporting military action against Saddam Hussein. I was standing next to one of the most senior figures in British intelligence when another story of a mole within the BND caused a stir in 2023. This time, it was the news that a senior official, identified only as Carsten L, had shared classified intelligence with Russia regarding the war in Ukraine and the monitoring of the Wagner mercenary group in exchange for money. Once again, there was recognition of Germany’s particular problem with traitors in the face of a resurgent and aggressive Russia. Successive chancellors espoused a stance of ‘Wandel durch Handel’, or ‘change through trade’, which sidelined security concerns in favour of cheaper oil and gas from Russia and the opportunity for German manufacturers to export to China. As the threat grew, this stance was defended with a naivety that frustrated allies. John Foreman, a former British military attaché in Moscow, notes that German intelligence ‘has had a specific problem of trust amongst allies, partly due to its structures and constraints’. That bureaucracy ‘has its roots in the country’s history and in the desire to maintain tight control over what the agencies can do’, he adds, ‘but it is also cultural and a blind spot because there has been a history of excessive institutional optimism regarding Russia’. Foreman cites the fact that Germany was taken by surprise in 2022 because its intelligence services did not believe the warnings from the US and the UK that a large-scale invasion of Ukraine was imminent. This left Bruno Kahl, then head of the BND, stranded in Kyiv on a fact-finding visit just as Moscow launched its assaults across the country. Kahl had to be rescued by a special emergency operation. In Hanning’s case, Foreman believes that his links with Azerbaijan will require a thorough investigation. The country has had an on-and-off relationship with Vladimir Putin’s Russia since the days of the Soviet Union. It is also ‘a powerful, oil-rich state that is very astute and aware of its strategic position in the region, and keen to gain a better understanding of Western intentions’. German spies, oblivious to what was happening right under their noses, were one of Wolf’s favourite subjects in the early 1990s. His stories still haunt the BND, which was West Germany’s intelligence agency during the Cold War. My work with Wolf turned into a three-year project. There were days and long evenings of intense conversation and sifting through thousands of files. At times he was cordial, but often tense as we debated fact-checking and evasions, whilst his wife Andrea tried to lighten the atmosphere with hearty dinners and evenings in front of the telly. One theme that emerged seems surprisingly relevant today: just how vulnerable Germany’s intelligence services – both foreign and domestic – were to infiltration by hostile states, both before and after the end of the Cold War. It was under Wolf’s leadership, for example, that Günter Guillaume – whom he had recruited and trained as an East German sleeper agent – managed to build a career within the Social Democratic Party and gain entry into the inner circle of Willy Brandt, then Chancellor of West Germany, as an aide. The affair became the country’s biggest espionage scandal when Brandt resigned in 1974. He had been slow to heed warnings about Guillaume, who had such intimate access to his office that he was nicknamed ‘the coat-hanger’, because he was always standing in the corner. After retiring, Wolf admitted that the operation had partly failed, because the East was benefiting from Brandt’s policies of openness. Another figure who left her mark on a long list of BND double agents was Gabriele Gast, another ‘nemesis’ of the service, in Wolf’s words. For two decades, right up until 1990, she provided East Berlin with reports on Eastern European security and risk assessments, which were passed on to the KGB. Wolf described her as the highest-ranking woman in the BND. Her insightful reports landed directly on the desk of Kohl, then Chancellor of West Germany. ‘What neither he nor his superiors knew was that they also landed on mine,’ Wolf recalled. The Stasi had been particularly fortunate with Gast. Her doctoral supervisor was a distinguished professor of Eastern European studies with links to the BND. When she completed her thesis in 1973, she was offered a coveted post as an analyst at the service’s Pullach institute, near Munich. As Gast rose through the ranks, she became immensely valuable, providing intelligence on NATO deployments, the BND’s own intelligence-gathering operations, and the Gaddafi regime in Libya. Exposed following the collapse of the GDR, Gast was arrested in 1990 and convicted in 1991, receiving a sentence of six years and nine months to be served in the 19th-century Stadelheim Prison in Munich. Gast had been drawn into espionage by a sense of romance, but money is more often the motivation, and many people drawn into dubious activities have financial problems, like Hanning, or have convinced themselves that they do. In the early 1980s, Wolf’s Stasi recruited Klaus Kuron from the West German intelligence service, who passed on information about counter-espionage and the identities of agents. Kuron was sentenced to 12 years. But as in Hanning’s alleged case, it was a curious coincidence rather than effective counter-espionage that led to his capture by the authorities. Now the Cold War is back, and as Blaise Metreweli, the head of MI6, said upon taking office last year: ‘The front line is now everywhere’. One place where this story will be greeted with unadulterated joy is in the inner sanctum of the Kremlin. There, a KGB officer who was stationed in Germany and who rose to power on the back of domestic repression and the wings of war poses the greatest threat to European peace in our lifetime. Vladimir Putin is watching.”

August Hanning, head of German intelligence from 1998 to 2005, has been arrested on a number of charges of espionage and treason (his alleged clients were Azerbaijani and Chinese).

The Cold War is back and, as Blaise Metreweli, head of MI6, said: “The front line is now everywhere”. One place where this story will be welcomed with open arms is in the inner sanctum of the Kremlin