Germany's Former Spy Chief Arrested on Treason Charges Over Secrets Sold a Decade After He Left Office
August Hanning once ran Germany's foreign intelligence service. Prosecutors say he spent years afterward trading roughly 2,000 of its classified files to a foreign spy agency.
August Hanning, who led Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, for seven years in the early 2000s, was arrested Tuesday on charges of treasonous espionage, obtaining state secrets and attempted treason, German federal prosecutors announced.
A former BND office manager identified only as Manfred D., in keeping with German privacy law, was arrested alongside him on charges of supplying classified documents. Both men were due to appear before a judge at Germany's Federal Court of Justice, according to NPR's report on the arrests.
Hanning headed the BND from 1998 to 2005. Prosecutors allege that roughly five years after he left the post, he struck an arrangement with Manfred D. to receive confidential intelligence documents in exchange for payment, a scheme they say continued for years afterward.
Thousands of Documents
Manfred D. is accused of funneling Hanning about 2,000 BND documents over the course of the alleged scheme, many containing material intended strictly for internal intelligence use, including senior-level briefings originally prepared for the chancellery, according to ABC News Australia's account of the case. Prosecutors say Hanning used at least some of that material to prepare an analysis for an officer of a foreign intelligence service, and that he shared political information with a representative of that same agency on multiple occasions.
THERE CAN BE NO COMPROMISES ON INTERNAL SECURITY.
German authorities have not publicly identified which foreign intelligence service is alleged to have received the material, and it remains unclear whether the analysis Hanning is accused of preparing ever reached its intended recipient.
The case is a striking reversal for a man once entrusted with running the country's foreign spy service and who later served as a senior Interior Ministry official overseeing domestic security matters. Germany's intelligence establishment has faced a string of embarrassing breaches in recent years, and prosecutors have signaled the Hanning case will be pursued aggressively through the federal courts.
Both men remain in custody pending further proceedings. German officials have given no timeline for when formal charges might be filed or a trial might begin.