- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion@lemmy.world
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spying on behalf of an overseas intelligence agency
Overseas? That’s not a normal term in mainland Europe unless it’s the Americas.
They are very close to insinuating that the spying was on behalf of USA.I think what they mean is simply “foreign” and not “overseas”.
As the article gives no other indication that I can spot on who he was allegedly spying for.But, but, I mean, uh isn’t that his job?
Not since December 2005
Since this was AFTER he was chief of intelligence it obviously wasn’t.
Arresting a former intelligence chief is a big deal for any country. Curious whether this turns out to be a long-running operation or something recent. Will be watching how much detail the prosecutors release.
We had a case here in Denmark, where the chief of military intelligence was accused of revealing secrets, although they were publicly known because they were part of what Snowden had revealed.
That whole case reeked of political abuse of power, because he didn’t just do whatever he was told.
They even tapped his phone and he was also accused of having told his wife when he expected to go on holiday or something of that sort.Absolutely insane government overreach. And of course the whole thing ended with the accusations dropped, but at that point he had been replaced.
When Denmark is stated as the least corrupt country in the world that may be true regarding economic corruption.
But we absolutely have corruption.However this story seems a lot more legit.
August Hanning was president of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from December 1998 to November 2005.
The prosecutor’s office said Manfred D had worked as Hanning’s chief of staff. After Hanning’s tenure at the BND, he became chief of staff for several subsequent presidents of the BND from March 2012 until March 2026.
Both suspects are believed by prosecutors to have agreed, in the spring of 2010, to Manfred D continuously transmitting valuable intelligence from the BND to Hanning “in exchange for remuneration”.
So…Hanning or Manfred D was either the top German foreign intelligence guy or chief of staff for the top German foreign intelligence guy for 21 of the last 28 years.
whistles
Yeah, that sounds like a big deal.
EDIT: His German-language Wikipedia article has more on him than English-language. Going off that, he had his fingers in a lot of stuff. Using Google Translate to English, some highlights:
- 1986–1990: security officer in West German embassy to East Germany.
- 1996: Coordinator of federal intelligence services
- 2005–2009: State Secretary of the Interior
- Head of British consulting firm “G3 in Russia”
- Member of board of German-Azerbaijani Forum
- Member of supervisory board of Latvian PNB Banka since 2017, where apparently he had some dispute over which they were claiming millions in damages
Who wants to bet against me that he was working for Russia? There must be some gullible person out there that wants to give me their cash lol
spying on behalf of an overseas intelligence agency
For Europe overseas usually means USA. But it is not an expression a European would usually use.
I think they used that term because it’s written by a British reporter, and it was used incorrectly.
For continental Europe it is AFAIK not normal to use “overseas” about foreign countries, that’s a US and UK thing.goes searching
According to information obtained by the SZ newspaper, the case does not involve Russia.
Obviously, not the strongest source, but it’s a data point.
I’d assume that more information will be released by Germany soon.
EDIT: I wonder if it might be us in the US. According to this, apparently the material involved stuff on Iran’s nuclear program and the Russian military, which I imagine is probably both things that American intelligence would be wanting to know about:
Public broadcasters WDR and NDR and the daily Suddeutsche Zeitung reported that the service in contact with Hanning was not Russian, though the files he allegedly received included material on the Russian army and other classified subjects.
The outlets said the cache also included material on Iran’s nuclear program and documents from foreign partner services. Security officials said a leak of that kind would be a worst-case breach, because allied services could lose confidence in the BND and cut it off from information.
EDIT2: Israeli intelligence would be very interested in the Iranian nuclear program, but I assume not be terribly interested in the Russian military. I guess maybe Turkey would be interested in both. Maybe the UK?
Ok, maybe i spoke to soon. Why do i always forget about Mossad? They are doing something right there if they slip my mind so often.
It might not be one service that is interested in both Iran’s nuclear program and the Russian military. According to the latest update on this article, Hanning was apparently in contact with multiple foreign intelligence services:
On one occasion, Hanning used classified intelligence from Manfred D. to draft an analysis for an officer of a foreign intelligence service, prosecutors said. It has not been established whether the material reached the intended recipient.
He was also in close contact for several years with a representative of another foreign intelligence service, and passed that person political information, some of it based on material from Manfred D., the office said. Prosecutors did not name either service.
If that’s accurate, I’d say that that broadens the field a good deal, since there are a lot of countries that might be interested in just one or the other of the Iranian nuclear program and the Russian military.
Oh, not even a double agent, but a multi-agent, available for the highest bidder. Great morals from that guy, really. May he burn in hell.
Germany (and Austria too) has been far to blue-eyed in the last decades. I fucking hate that Europe is forced to ramp up military production, but if we don’t defend our values, they will be taken from us, if we want that or not.
