Jäger did not respond to the letter at the time, according to Hanning, who spoke to WELT before his arrest.
Hanning’s subsequent arrest, notably for attempted treason, caused considerable concern abroad. Grzegorz Malecki, the former head of Poland’s foreign intelligence service, told WELT that the case was “extremely worrying” and could increase allies’ distrust of the BND. He warned that this risked compromising intelligence sharing with Germany.
The BND has also caused concern within the German intelligence community following allegations that it allowed Hanning’s former chief of staff, also in custody, to work for Hanning outside of his official duties.
While civil servants are generally allowed to take outside employment, any permission allowing a BND member to work for Hanning should have been decided at the senior management level, said Günter Heiss, a former intelligence coordinator under former Chancellor Angela Merkel. “Without knowing the details, I would never have approved such a thing if I had held a responsible position at the BND.”
Bernd Schmidbauer, former state minister and intelligence coordinator under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, told WELT that Hanning had made a major contribution to Germany’s national security. The case was therefore “not only a tragedy for the German intelligence services, but also for the former senior official himself,” Schmidbauer said.
Hanning was one of Schmidbauer’s closest collaborators in the 1990s and led the BND from 1998 to 2005.
Dirk Banse is an investigative journalist at WELT. Philipp Fritz is WELT’s Eastern Europe correspondent. Uwe Müller is an independent journalist based in Berlin.
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