Federal Intelligence Service

fascinating.

In German news, a former head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service has been charged with a cooker's wet dream of charges, including treason charges.

Not misprision, though, just treason.

Just treason.

We have another spy scandal in Germany.

The former head of the BND, Germany's foreign intelligence service, has been arrested on charges of treason, uh, for selling secrets.

Uh, not good.

Um, I mean-

So, um, this is just not good, uh-

Right.

I mean, what, what we have here is something that ought to be familiar to a lot of former U.S. intelligence officials, which is that Hemming, who had been head of the BND, uh, back in from '90, in December 1998 to November 2005, um, was in the private intelligence business, like a lot of former spooks, right? You-

Mm-hmm

That way you won't miss a single episode and we keep the algorithm happy.

So for seven years, August Honning ran the BND, Germany's Foreign Intelligence Service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst.

It's an agency that the CIA and Britain's MI6 swap secrets with.

Not only.

So what is Germany's reputation in this domain? I mean, under Merkel, they were getting closer and closer to Russia.

Well, it's not been that great anyway, more because they weren't producing that much information.

The BND has been taking a low profile or sort of not really being a sort of cutting-edge intelligence agency ever since Gerhard Schröder, the chancellor, who in fact appointed Hanning, Andrew yesterday went to wish Vladimir Putin a happy birthday.

Maybe he went to say, oh, I guess the present I gave you, it's lost its best before date.

That is why screening must be supported by continued review, appropriate access controls, and a willingness to examine concerns regardless of someone's seniority or reputation.

August Hanning, who led Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, from nineteen ninety-eight until two thousand and five, was arrested on August sixth on suspicion of espionage-related offenses and attempted treason.

On October seventh, a federal judge ordered him held in pretrial detention.

Hanning has denied all wrongdoing.

Prosecutors allege that in two thousand and ten, several years after leaving the BND, Hanning agreed to pay his former office chief, identified as Manfred D., for confidential information.

Manfred D. subsequently served as the office chief to several of Hanning's successors from two thousand and twelve until March of two thousand twenty-six.

According to investigators, he supplied Hanning with approximately two thousand documents over the years, including classified material.

The foreign services have not been publicly identified by prosecutors.

And we have lots of great stuff on the menu for you.

A huge spy scandal in Germany, where the former head of the BND, the Foreign Intelligence Service, is facing charges of espionage and attempted treason.

I talked to Der Spiegel's Fidelis Schmitt about this extraordinary story, and I had a great chat about a blockbuster deal that went bust.

Why did the Firmus float fall over? It was gonna be the biggest launch on the Australian Stock Exchange this century.

They allege that August Hanning paid to access secret documents and used them to prepare an analysis for an unspecified foreign spy service.

It's believed that Russia was not involved.

It is a huge damage that is being done here in real time to the credibility of the BND.

The allegations strike at the heart of Germany's intelligence community and come as officials warn of an increasingly aggressive campaign of foreign espionage and sabotage.

The former head of Germany's Foreign Intelligence Service was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion that he passed state secrets to a foreign intelligence service.

That's according to the prosecutor there, August Hanning, who led the Federal Intelligence Service, which Germany calls the BND, from 1998 to 2005, is suspected of what they call there treasonous espionage and sharing state secrets.

and espionage.

Hanning is 80 years old, and he was arrested in southwestern Germany.

So essentially, the Russians, maybe indirectly or directly, got this aperture into Germany, which was a great success on their part, the Russians.

Do you think this compares to someone like an Ames or someone like a Kim Philby? How does it compare to that?

Well, if you look at just in the hierarchy, it's every single source that the BND had, all of its intelligence assessments, very well could have ended up in Moscow.

That's German assessments on relations with France, with Britain.

And that gives you some sense of the huge scandal that's rocking intelligence circles after the arrest this week of Germany's former spy chief, August Hanning.

Hanning, who led the BND, Germany's foreign intelligence agency, will appear in court next week to face charges of espionage, treason, and obtaining classified information for a foreign power.

He stands accused of passing on information from up to 2,000 intelligence documents.

For more on this extraordinary spying scandal, I've been speaking with Fidelius Schmidt, the national security reporter for Der Spiegel.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how big a scandal is this?

It's a nine, I would say.

Recruiting the former head of a foreign intelligence agency is quite a coup for a hostile state.

And who exactly is August Hanning, and how important was he?

It's really embedded in the fabric and the history of the city espionage, and this rivals anything from that era.

So August Hanning was the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service, which is known as the BND, for seven years.

He retired from that role in two thousand and five, so quite a while ago.

But on Tuesday, he was arrested on suspicion of treason, and the accusation essentially is that in his time since retirement, he has continued to acquire thousands of classified documents from the very top of the German intelligence community, apparently through his former chief of staff, who continued to serve in that role, serving other heads for several years, and that these two agreed apparently, this is the accusation from Germany's federal prosecutor, from about twenty ten or so on, they agreed that he would continue feeding this classified information to August Hanning, and that Hanning, in his retirement, was working as a consultant.

Uh, to put it in simply, this is the worst thing that could really-

Mm

... realistically happen, and it comes at an already sensitive time for Germany's spymasters because even though it's a very big agency, the German BND has sort of long been regarded as a bit of a poor relation among Germany-- a- among Europe's big spy agencies.

It's been beset by scandals before.