| ▲ | cowlevel 3 hours ago |
| > Hanning is strongly suspected of treasonous espionage, attempted treason, and espionage. Well that clears that up. Is anyone else shocked that the head spy was a spy, or that Germany was being blackmailed by Mossad? |
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| ▲ | riedel 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Actually the even more fun part is that they only found out because they raided his house due to this really sketchy case he was contracted for via his really sketcy swiss(!) private eye company: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/20/germany-christ... |
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| ▲ | layer8 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | “Among several alleged accomplices are August Hanning, a former head of Germany’s federal intelligence service, the BND, who according to prosecutors forged the initial contact between Block and the Israeli spy firm believed to have carried out the abduction.” The connection to the current case may actually be a more direct one, via the Israeli spies. |
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| ▲ | hylaride 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| As a geopolitical nerd, I've consumed a lot of non-fiction espionage content. In general, there's a general theme that German intelligence is a joke at best. He must have gotten too greedy or very lazy/sloppy. |
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| ▲ | riedel 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The CIA actually build the Gehlen Org (now BND) from some ex-Nazis as spy's against the communists. Is all a very sad joke.[0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jun/08/secondworldwar... | |
| ▲ | someone4958923 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "If you want to tell Putin something, say it to the BND" is more or less known in that context. | |
| ▲ | trhway 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >German intelligence is a joke at best i'm not qualified to pass any judgement here, just Wirecard comes to mind. Routing sensitive payments, including to the network of secret informants, through Wirecard while the Wirecard guy (son of a KGB spy) was safari-ing (and posting photos of it) in Syria with the Wagner mercenaries... He lives right now in Russia, and it looks like German intelligence hasn't exacted any revenge. | | |
| ▲ | woadwarrior01 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | TBF, Jan Marsalek (the Wirecard guy) is Austrian, although Wirecard was a German company. | |
| ▲ | throw1234567891 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Neither has anybody else towards any individual living in "run away to Russia" street. |
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| ▲ | fakedang 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Name one EU country's intelligence service that has a reputation, any reputation - good or bad. European intelligence services (ex-Russia/Ukraine) are a bunch of jokers. They are lagging behind so much vs their adversarial peers. | | |
| ▲ | dauertewigkeit 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The French have a reputation. And the British although they are part of Europe, not the EU. | |
| ▲ | yread 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Didn't European intelligence services warn US of specifics of 9/11? | |
| ▲ | garbawarb 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Maybe that's what they want you to think. | |
| ▲ | hylaride 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Name one EU country's intelligence service that has a reputation, any reputation - good or bad. European intelligence services (ex-Russia/Ukraine) are a bunch of jokers. They are lagging behind so much vs their adversarial peers. MI5/MI6 (unless you literally mean the European Union). They benefit from Five Eyes, though. The French system is considered quite good, but focused on the Middle East and Africa. It's actually quite capable, considering how independent minded they are, often refusing cooperation with others. Though their intelligence quality can vary outside those core areas. The Dutch are quite highly regarded and punch above their weight. The AIVD got inside the Russian Gozy Bear hacking group and the MIVD also caught the GRU trying to hack the OPCW in The Hague - even exposing their taxi receipts. The Nordic states are known to have capable services that operate quietly, especially focused on Russia. The Finns especially. The Baltic states also take it seriously, obviously focused on Russia. TL;DR there are many capable intelligence agencies working in the EU, but they're usually much smaller and focused. Also - they usually prefer to NOT be in the limelight. | | |
| ▲ | fakedang 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I meant the EU. Obviously including MI5 is kinda cheating. The French are too myopic around the Middle East and Africa. They don't have any visibility into, say, Russia, even though Russia is asymmetrically embedded into them. That's an example of the problem they, and most others, face - they can't adapt rapidly to changing trends in the global scene. I still remember the disaster that is January 2022. The US was continually stating that the Russians were planning an invasion, based on CIA intelligence, yet in the lead-up to the war, literally every EU country was calling the US a warmonger. And now with the US becoming increasingly hostile to the EU, the EU countries have been completely blindsided by that too. And let's not forget, no Western nation has any reasonable intelligence presence in Israel, the culprit here, except for maybe the US and UK. Israel enjoys a disproportionate amount of intelligence asymmetry vs them. | | |
| ▲ | tome 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The culprit where? | |
| ▲ | hylaride an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm not saying the French are perfect, but French intelligence can be solid - their dossiers on Iraq WMDs were accurate and they (rightly) concluded that Saddam's opaqueness was to give Iran pause on any thoughts of attack. The myopia is more an issue with politicization, which I would argue is a real and persistent problem with French intelligence - and yes, they had a huge gap with Russia. Politicization of intelligence is toxic anywhere it's applied. The US/UK fell victim to it in the 2003 Iraq invasion run up, and core to that politicization was politicians selectively bypassing intelligence analysts and grabbing raw collected data - which contains all manner of bad stuff from people just trying to get money, etc. A counter example is back in the Iraq run-up, an American diplomat wanted to themselves present the Iraq WMD "evidence" to a senior Canadian official, and the Canadian official curtly responded "no, send it via our intelligence channels and our analysts will compile a report" - which the diplomat knew that via the five eyes alliance, they'd very quickly and correctly realize that the evidence was weak. I'm not saying that Canadians brilliant and invincible to politicization, but the incentives at the time for the Canadians were to "do it properly". Israel is a special case, and it is not a fair comparison (even against the CIA) as a country constantly threatened and attacked . Even they fell victim to warning failures (if recent allegations are even half true) of the Oct 7th attacks when politicians wanted to focus more on Hezbollah over Gaza and ignored other warnings (including literal videos of Hamas training attacks on tanks and wall breaches that Israeli border guards recorded). Also, and I cannot stress this enough, a good chunk of intelligence credited to the US/CIA is correlated and collected via the five eyes alliance. There is no intelligence alliance like it in the world and it gives a far greater picture than the US alone could. |
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| ▲ | lofaszvanitt 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Good luck untangling who is at what level. Especially if your connection to the outside world is barely more than a needle's eye. |
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| ▲ | 133af 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| He was a career bureaucrat who got position after position. BND was just one of them. The list of German politicians and bureaucrats with scandals is long, ranging from Olaf Scholz to von der Leyen. So this isn't too surprising. |
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| ▲ | dudefeliciano 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| There is no evidence of Mossad involvement. Far from me to defend Israel's spy agency but the article only mentions a possible connection to Azerbaijan. |
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| ▲ | thisislife2 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | The Russians claim otherwise - https://www.rt.com/news/646794-german-spy-chief-arrested/ -... According to them, his private agency also sub-contracted some high-profile kidnapping to Yaakov Perry, the former chief of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet. | |
| ▲ | cowlevel 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This one doesn't since it's a US outlet and they don't have free speech in the US, on Israel-related matters. The Irish Times reported the Israel connection though. | | |
| ▲ | dudefeliciano 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The Irish Times reported an Israel connection regarding a separate case involving him, the Block Scandal. As far as I am aware that case did not involve giving out state secrets to other governments. This article mentions Der Spiegel which reported the investigation on the possible Azerbaijan connection. | | |
| ▲ | raffael_de 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Azerbaijan doesn't give a rat's *** about German state secrets. :) It's either BS or they served as a proxy. | | |
| ▲ | rotis an hour ago | parent [-] | | Azerbaijan is a former soviet republic. So them playing role of a proxy for Russia or stealing secrets to sell to Russians makes sense to me. |
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