Germany Arrests Double Agent Recruited by US to Spy on Berlin’s NSA Inquiry
German authorities have arrested a man identified by media as a German intelligence officer who allegedly passed secrets to the U.S.
German media warned that if the man is found guilty, it would be “the biggest scandal involving a German—American double agent since the war,” The Daily Telegraph reported.
Federal prosecutors said that a 31-year-old German was arrested on July 2 on suspicion of spying for an unidentified foreign power. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, called the case “a serious matter,” declining to elaborate on the prosecutors’ statement.
“The Chancellor was also informed of this case yesterday,” Eibert told reporters in Berlin.
He declined to comment on reports by Der Spiegel magazine and the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung that the man worked for Germany’s foreign intelligence service, known by its German acronym BND. The newspapers, which didn’t identify their sources, said the man was suspected of passing on information about a German parliamentary inquiry into the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies in Germany.
Seibert said the inquiry’s committee members had also been informed of the arrest. “I will have to leave the conclusions to you,” he said.
The man reportedly worked as a support technician for the BND agency. He also may have worked closely with the president of the intelligence service, Gerhard Schindler, Die Welter reported.
The arrested man was allegedly a double agent for the U.S. for two years. He met U.S. agents at least three times in Austria between 2012 and 2014 and gave them hundreds of secret documents for which he was paid €25,000 (US$34,000), the Bild newspaper reported, citing security officials it didn’t identify. The documents were seized on a thumb drive containing 218 stolen files and a laptop at the suspect’s home, Bild said.
The emergence of a double agent on top of two German probes into NSA surveillance and espionage threatens to compound a U.S.-German rift following allegations that the NSA spied on citizens and hacked Merkel’s mobile phone. The allegations have caused friction between Berlin and Washington since they were first published last year, based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
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