Interview: 'A brilliant piece of Russian espionage'
Dear Reader,
Shortly before Christmas, police raided the apartment and offices of a spy in Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). At the centre of the investigation is an agent, known only as Carsten L. who is suspected of betraying state secrets to the Russians.
The investigation is taking place in utmost secrecy for fear that any leaks could tip the Russians off to what the BND knows. But it is clear that that the affair is one of the most spectacular cases of double agent work inside a western intelligence agency in decades.
Carsten L. wasn’t any old spy, he was a division head inside the BND’s signal intelligence unit, which listens in on enemy communications. Media reports suggest that he was handing over highly sensitive battlefield information from Ukraine to his Russian handlers.
To understand a bit more about the case, I spoke with Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, the author of numerous books on the BND.
Schmidt-Eenboom is one of Germany’s most cited intelligence experts. His work on uncovering the inner workings of the BND so unnerved the agency in the 1990s that it illegally spied on him over several years.
Mr Schmidt-Eenboom, thank you for taking the time to talk to me. The arrest of Carsten L. is being described as one of the most spectacular cases of counter espionage in the BND’s history. How unusual is it?
If you look at the history of the BND, then there has been a multitude of moles in the agency. It began with the most serious case of all in 1961 - the arrest of Heinz Felfe, who had worked for the KGB for years. After reunification we learned that BND senior agent Alfred Spuhler had been working for East Germany’s foreign intelligence agency. In 1990, Hungary’s spy service revealed that it had a BND senior lieutenant in its pay. In 2003, a BND division head was unmasked as an agent of Bulgaria’s spy agency. Then there was the recent case of Markus Reich who spied for the CIA.
I’ve only mentioned the most serious cases here. There have been a whole series of foreign moles inside the BND. Internal security has always been a weakness.
What explains this leakiness?
It is clear that background checks are pretty strict when agents are recruited. The agency looks into their past and talks to people who know them. But the permanent security controls once people are inside the agency seem to be lacking.
The internal security department, whose job it is to do background checks, is considered by many agents to be a career killer. The employees in the internal security department are extremely unpopular inside the BND.
That’s why I’ve always said that we should switch to a model like the American one. In the US system, the FBI are responsible for doing security controls on the CIA. In Germany the BfV (domestic intelligence agency) could take over security checks on the BND - that would ensure more distance between those checking and those being checked.
Do Russian spies specifically target the BND?
The Russians have of course targeted the Anglo-Saxon agencies over the years as well. I could mention the Cambridge spy ring in the UK or Aldrich Ames in the US. But it hasn’t happened to the same extent. The BND is the frontrunner when it comes to eastern moles. What is astonishing is that over decades there has never been such an incident inside the French intelligence services.
At the same time, it is true that Germany has always been of particular interest to the Russians. In the Cold War it was a front line country, and now Germany is of special interest because of its leading role inside the EU.
That’s the political dimension. But then you also have the intelligence dimension. A study that I published recently showed that the BND started working with their Ukrainian counterparts all the way back in 1992. That cooperation has become ever deeper in the years since. Nowadays the BND is, along with the CIA and British intelligence, the most important source of partner intelligence for the Ukrainians. So that explains why the Russians were so desperate to find out through Carsten L. what information was being passed on.
And we shouldn’t forget - this is a brilliant achievement of Russian counter-espionage. It is the pinnacle of espionage work when you find people inside an enemy’s service and bring them onto your side. There are rumours going around that Carsten L. was blackmailed. But you need to find the weakness that can used for a kompromat first. As I said, that is the crowning achievement of counter espionage.
What impact will this case have on relations with other western agencies?
I fear that the impact will be deep. That’s because Carsten L. didn’t just have access to the analysis of the BND’s signal intelligence unit, he also had access to the reports of partner agencies, in particular to those of the (American) NSA. If he passed them on, then damage hasn’t just been done to the BND, but to the whole Nato intelligence community.
There is a very acute danger that the British and US agencies will now say that the BND is so leaky that they will have to be very careful in the future about what they share.
Is there evidence that they have already done this?
The British in particular are said to be furious. They are most likely to be considering whether they will keep providing top secret information to the BND.
Pamphlets from the far-right AfD were reportedly found in a locker belonging to Carsten L. Is it a problem for Germany if agents support the AfD?
If you look at the Russia policies of the AfD, it would of course be disastrous if people close to this party are working in the German intelligence services. On domestic intelligence, there is a risk that their work in watching the AfD will end up being fed to the party. And when it comes to the BND, one only needs to think about the AfDs connections to far-right groups in other European countries, or even outside Europe. It would be disastrous if agents with links to the AfD leaked information to the party leadership, who could in turn pass it on.
Do you think there are lots of German spies who support the AfD?
I would assume so. There are people in all the German security services, especially in the army, who share the political convictions of the AfD, of the Reichsbürger and similar movements. According to my sources, a Reichsbürger was unmasked inside the BND and has since been fired. Since then they have been very careful about this issue. But it is always the case that people from the extreme right try to make their way into the German security services.
German media have criticised the BND for failing to see the Russian invasion coming. Why did this happen, given that they are so well connected in Eastern Europe?
When you talk to people inside the BND, they were saying even before 2014 that they had concerns that Putin would start a war. The BND was always convinced that Putin was aggressive. But those warnings were ignored by the government of Angela Merkel and her Foreign Minister at the time, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
There is a historical analogy. In the late 1970s, when the agency was led by Klaus Kinkel (who would become Foreign Minister in the 1990s), he forbade his agents from passing on information to the government that indicated that the Soviets were planning to invade Afghanistan. He thought it would harm the policy of detente (between Bonn and Moscow) and told his agents that they’d interpreted the data wrong.
It was the same case after the Cold War. The Chancellery was always very close to Putin, it built up close economic relations with Russia and ignored the warnings that it was being given.