August Hanning

A couple of wider points, if I may, just to finish off.

What is your response to the arrest of August Hanning, the former BND chief, the head of Germany's Foreign Intelligence Service? He was arrested last Friday.

Th-there are allegations that he's been in receipt of very classified information since he left office, and he has sold some of that information on to, to a foreign power.

What is your reaction to it, and has Estonia, have your intelligence agencies been at all compromised because of his actions?

But when they emerged with their suspect, he wasn't even handcuffed.

Perhaps it was his age or maybe his reputation, because the white-haired eighty-year-old being taken into custody was August Hanning, the former head of Germany's spy agency, the BND.

[on television] Der ehemalige Chef des Bundesnachrichtendienstes, August Hanning, ist am Morgen festgenommen worden.

Er soll-

The arrest may have been genteel, but his alleged crimes could barely be more serious.

Mm.

So they had to sort of prove that they were very different from that, that they were pure, that they were there, f- in essence, to keep Germany safe, but definitely not spying on its citizens.

And when August Hanning was in charge of the BND, so between nineteen ninety-eight and two thousand and five, his whole tenure must have been completely overshadowed by nine eleven, right? Which had a German connection, didn't it?

That's who got all of the intel.

Germany's Der Spiegel, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, and others report that the, the former German spy chief, Mr. August Hanning, is under arrest this morning on a suspicion of espionage and treason.

His former chief of staff was also arrested.

So we know here that this Mr. Hanning retired from the BND, again, like the CIA, back in 2005, but he then allegedly recruited his former chief of staff, who still worked at that German spy service, to continue to provide him intel.

But the former head of German intelligence, so this is the German Mossad, German CIA, uh, between 1998 and 2005.

This is August Hanning.

He's 80 years old.

He appeared before a judge this week accused of treason and espionage on behalf of a foreign state, and the foreign state in question, this is the head of German intelligence, was Azerba- [chuckles] apparently Azerbaijan.

Like for Shia people, it's like inside you are two wolves, Iran, you know, Islamic Republic theocracy or Azerbaijan secular Zog state.

Yeah.

So these are just some of the weird news stories, but we'll see where August Hanning's, uh, court for treason and espionage goes, because how it goes forward.

But yeah, maybe the Azeri lobby is just something we just haven't spoken enough about, despite the fact that we're probably the only people, I would say extensively, who mention Azerbaijan as a major country that will have, you know, clear, clear, I think, investment in future affairs, be it on the Caucasus, in Turkish relations, the Turkish belt, and definitely in the future of Iran for sure.

This is just too big a story for me not to cover.

The man arrested is August Hanning, who ran Germany's BND from 1998 to 2005.

Also arrested was his former chief of staff Manfred Dankesreiter.

And the more I've read and watched about this case over the last few days, the stranger it's got.

It's also a story that's very much still unfolding, so this is just what we know so far.

Let's start with who this man actually is.

August Hanning isn't a mid-ranking officer or a disgruntled analyst.

For seven years, he was the head of German foreign intelligence.