Bundesnachrichtendienst
Encyclopedia
The Bundesnachrichtendienst [ˌbʊndəsˈnaːχʁɪçtnˌdiːnst] (Federal Intelligence Service, BND) is the foreign intelligence agency
of Germany
, directly subordinated to the Chancellor's Office
. Its headquarters are in Pullach
near Munich
, and Berlin
(planned to be centralised in Berlin by 2014). The BND has 300 locations in Germany and foreign countries. In 2005, the BND employed around 6,050 people, 10% of them Bundeswehr
soldiers; those are officially employed by the "Amt für Militärkunde" (Office for Military Sciences). The annual budget of the BND for 2009 was €
460,000,000.
The BND acts as an early warning system to alert the German government to threats to German interests from abroad. It depends heavily on wiretapping and electronic surveillance of international communications. It collects and evaluates information on a variety of areas such as international terrorism, WMD proliferation and illegal transfer of technology, organized crime, weapons and drug trafficking, money laundering
, illegal migration and information warfare. As Germany’s only overseas intelligence service, the BND gathers both military and civil intelligence. However, the Kommando Strategische Aufklärung (Strategic Reconnaissance Command) of the German Armed Forces
also fulfills this mission, but is not an intelligence service. There is close cooperation between the BND and the Kommando Strategische Aufklärung.
The domestic secret service
counterparts of the BND are the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, BfV) and 16 counterparts at the state level Landesämter für Verfassungsschutz (State Offices for the Protection of the Constitution); there is also a separate military intelligence organisation, the Militärischer Abschirmdienst
(lit. military shielding service, MAD).
The BND is a successor to the Gehlen Organization
. The most central figure in its history was Reinhard Gehlen
, its first President.
, the Abteilung Fremde Heere Ost or FHO Section in the General Staff, led by Wehrmacht
Major General Reinhard Gehlen
. Its main purpose was to collect information on the Red Army. In 1946 Gehlen set up an intelligence agency informally known as the Gehlen Organization or simply "The Org" and recruited, initially quite modestly, some of his former co-workers, operatives of Wilhelm Canaris
' Abwehr
, but he also recruited from the former Sicherheitsdienst
, SS and Gestapo
. The organization worked almost exclusively for the CIA, which contributed funding, equipment, cars, gasoline and other materials. On 1 April 1956 the Bundesnachrichtendienst was created from the Gehlen Organization, and transferred to the West German government. Reinhard Gehlen became President of the BND and remained its head until 1968.
, the BND hustled along in the mode of its forerunner, the Gehlen Organization. For the average West German citizen, concerned at the time mainly with improving his existence, espionage was a questionable business, better left for shady characters. In that light, the BND racked up its initial East-West cold war successes by concentrating on East Germany. The BND’s reach encompassed the highest political and military levels of that regime. They knew the carrying capacity of every bridge, the bed count of every hospital, the length of every airfield, the width and level of maintenance of the roads that had to be traversed by Soviet armor and infantry divisions in a potential attack on the West. Almost every sphere of eastern life was known to the BND.
Unsung analysts at Pullach with their contacts in the East, were figuratively flies on the wall in ministries and military conferences. When an East German army intelligence officer, a Lieutenant Colonel and BND agent, was suspected as spy by the Soviet KGB and was investigated and shadowed, the BND was positioned and able to inject forged reports to ascertain that the loose spy was actually the KGB investigator, who was then arrested by the Soviets and shipped off to Moscow. Not knowing how long the caper would stay uncovered, the real spy was told to be ready for recall and he made his move to the west at the appropriate time.
The East German regime, however, fought back. With still unhindered flight to the west a possibility, infiltration started on a grand scale and a reversal of sorts took hold. During the early 1960s as many as 90% of the BND's lower level informants in East Germany were double agents for the East German security service, later known as Stasi
.
Several informants in East Berlin reported in June and July 1961 of street closures, clearing of fields, accumulation of building materials and police and army deployments in specific parts of the eastern sector, as well as other measures that BND determined could lead to a division of the city. However, the agency was reluctant to report communist initiatives and had no knowledge of the scope and timing because of conflicting inputs. The erection of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 thus came as a surprise, and BND’s performance in the political field was thereafter often wrong and remained spotty and unimpressive.
"This negative view of BND was certainly not justified during ... [1967 and] 1968." BND’s military work "had been outstanding," and in certain sectors of the intelligence field the BND still showed brilliance: in Latin America and the Middle East it was regarded as the best informed secret service.
The BND offered a fair and reliable amount of intelligence on Soviet
and Soviet bloc forces in Eastern Europe, regarding the elaboration of a NATO warning system against any Soviet operations against NATO territory, in close cooperation with the Bundeswehr
(German Armed Forces). It also detected the deployment of Soviet missiles to Cuba
in 1962, and subsequently warned the United States
, resulting in the Cuban Missile Crisis
.
One high point of BND intelligence work was perhaps its early June 1967 forecast – almost to the hour – of the outbreak of the Six-Day War
in the Middle East.
According to declassified transcripts of a United States National Security Council meeting on 2 June 1967, Secretary of State Dean Rusk
was interrupted by CIA Director Richard Helms
that he had reliable information – contrary to Rusk’s presentation – that the Israelis would attack on a certain day and time. Rusk shot back: "That is quite out of the question. Our ambassador in Tel Aviv assured me only yesterday that everything was normal." Helms replied: "I am sorry, but I adhere to my opinion. The Israelis will strike and their object will be to end the war in their favor with extreme rapidity." President Lyndon Johnson then asked Helms for the source of his information. Helms said: "Mr. President, I have it from an allied secret service. The report is absolutely reliable." Helms' information came from the BND.
A further laudable success was BND’s activity during the Czech crisis
in 1968. With Pullach cryptography fully functioning, the BND predicted an invasion of Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia. CIA analysts on the other hand did not support the notion of "fraternal assistance" by the satellite states of Moscow; and US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Llewellyn Thompson
, quite irritated, called the secret BND report he was given "a German fabrication." At 23:11 on 20 August 1968, BND radar operators first observed abnormal activity over Czech airspace. An agent on the ground in Prague called a BND out-station in Bavaria: "The Russians are coming." Warsaw Pact forces were in motion as forecast.
However, the slowly sinking efficiency of BND in the last years of Reinhard Gehlen became evident. His refusal to correct reports with questionable content strained the organization’s credibility, and dazzling achievements became an infrequent commodity. A veteran agent remarked at the time, that the BND pond now contained some sardines, whereas a few years ago the pond was alive with sharks.
The fact that the BND could score certain successes despite East German communist Stasi interference, internal malpractice, inefficiencies and infighting, was primarily due to select members of the staff who took it upon themselves to step up and overcome then existing maladies. Abdication of responsibility by Reinhard Gehlen was the malignancy; cronyism was still pervasive, even nepotism (at one time Gehlen had 16 members of his extended family on the BND payroll). Only slowly did the younger generation then advance to substitute new ideas for some of the bad habits caused mainly by Gehlen's semi-retired attitude and frequent holiday absences.
After Gehlen’s departure, his successor Bundeswehr
Brigadier General Gerhard Wessel immediately called for a program of modernization and streamlining. With political changes in the West German government and a reflection that BND was at a low level of efficiency, the service began to rebuild.
In 1986, the BND deciphered the report of the Libya
n Embassy in East Berlin regarding the "successful" implementation of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing
.
In 2005, a public scandal erupted (dubbed the Journalistenskandal, Journalists scandal) over revelations that the BND had in the mid 1990s placed under surveillance a number of German journalist
s, in an attempt to discover the source of information leaks from the BND.
Yet another scandal came to light in early 2006, when it was alleged that the BND supplied targeting information to American forces to facilitate the invasion of Iraq
in 2003. The BND claimed that it only supplied information on so-called non-targets, targets which must not be attacked.
Following the 2006 Lebanon War. the BND mediated secret negotiations between Israel
and Hezbollah, eventually leading up to the 2008 Israel-Hezbollah prisoner swap
.
Another scandal is one where the BND (partially) admitted to using journalists to spy on fellow journalists. This supposedly was done to protect the security and authenticity (i.e. the truth) of the BND's investigations. It was quickly decided to set up a parliamentary investigation committee ("Parlamentarischer Untersuchungsausschuss") to investigate the allegations. The affair quickly became controversial, and if the allegations are substantiated, it would be tantamount to a violation of freedom of speech
which is protected under the German constitution.
In the beginning of 2008, it was revealed that the BND had managed to recruit excellent sources within Liechtenstein
banks and had been conducting espionage operations in the principality since the beginning of 2000s. The BND mediated the German Finance Ministry's $7.3 million acquisition of a CD from a former employee of the LGT Group - a Liechtenstein bank owned by the country's ruling family. While the Finance Ministry defends the deal, saying it would result in several hundred millions of dollars in back tax payments, the sale remains controversial, as a government agency has paid for possibly stolen data.http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Analysis_Spy_agency_hunts_tax_evaders_999.html See 2008 Liechtenstein tax affair
.
In November 2008, three German BND agents were arrested in Kosovo
for allegedly throwing a bomb at the European Union
International Civilian Office, which oversees Kosovo's governance. Later the previously unheard of "Army of the Republic of Kosovo" (ARK) had accepted responsibility for the bomb attack. Laboratory tests had shown no evidence of the BND agents’ involvement. However, the Germans were released only 10 days after they were arrested. It was suspected that the arrest was a revenge by Kosovo authorities for the BND report about organized crime in Kosovo which accuses Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi
, as well as the former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj
of far-reaching involvement in organized crime.
. The following persons have held this office since 1956:
{border=0 cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1"
Presidents of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND)
Name (lived)
Beginning of service
End of service
1
Reinhard Gehlen
(1902–1979)
1 April 1956
30 April 1968
2
Gerhard Wessel
(1913–2002)
1 May 1968
31 December 1978
3
Klaus Kinkel
(b. 1936)
1 January 1979
26 December 1982
4
Eberhard Blum (1919–2003)
27 December 1982
31 July 1985
5
Heribert Hellenbroich (b. 1937)
1 August 1985
27 August 1985
6
Hans-Georg Wieck (b. 1928)
4 September 1985
2 October 1990
7
Konrad Porzner (b. 1935)
3 October 1990
31 March 1996
8
Gerhard Güllich (b. 1937) (interim)
1 April 1996
4 June 1996
9
Hansjörg Geiger (b. 1942)
4 June 1996
17 December 1998
10
August Hanning
(b. 1946)
17 December 1998
30 November 2005
11
Ernst Uhrlau
(b. 1946)
1 December 2005
The President of the BND is a federal Beamter
paid according to BBesO order B, B6 (can be viewed here)
{border=0 cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1"
Vice-Presidents of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND)
Name (lived)
Beginning of service
End of service
1
Hans-Heinrich Worgitzky (b. 1907)
24 May 1957
1967
2
Horst Wendland (1912–1968)
8 October 1968 (suicide)
3
Dieter Blötz (1931–1987)
4 May 1970
August 1979
4
Norbert Klusak (1936–1986)
1 April 1980
27 February 1986
5
Paul Münstermann (b. 1932)
1986
27 August 1994
6
Gerhard Güllich (b. 1937) (interim)
1994
1996
7
Rainer Kesselring
18 June 1996
8
Rudolf Adam (b. 1948)
July 2001
31 March 2004
9
Werner Schowe (b. 1944), military affairs VP
December 2003
2005
10
Rüdiger von Fritsch-Seerhausen
1 May 2004
11
Georg Freiherr von Brandis (b. 1948), military affairs VP
4 October 2005
February 2008
12
Arndt Freiherr von Freytag-Loringhoven
Intelligence agency
An intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to information gathering for purposes of national security and defence. Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public...
of Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, directly subordinated to the Chancellor's Office
German Chancellery
The German Chancellery is a federal agency serving the executive office of the Chancellor, the head of the German federal government. The chief of the Chancellery holds the rank of either a Secretary of State or a Federal Minister ...
. Its headquarters are in Pullach
Pullach
Pullach, officially Pullach i. Isartal, is a municipality in the district of Munich in Bavaria in Germany. It is serviced by the S 7 line of the Munich S-Bahn, at the Großhesselohe Isartalbahnhof, Pullach and Höllriegelskreuth railway stations....
near Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, and Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
(planned to be centralised in Berlin by 2014). The BND has 300 locations in Germany and foreign countries. In 2005, the BND employed around 6,050 people, 10% of them Bundeswehr
Bundeswehr
The Bundeswehr consists of the unified armed forces of Germany and their civil administration and procurement authorities...
soldiers; those are officially employed by the "Amt für Militärkunde" (Office for Military Sciences). The annual budget of the BND for 2009 was €
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
460,000,000.
The BND acts as an early warning system to alert the German government to threats to German interests from abroad. It depends heavily on wiretapping and electronic surveillance of international communications. It collects and evaluates information on a variety of areas such as international terrorism, WMD proliferation and illegal transfer of technology, organized crime, weapons and drug trafficking, money laundering
Money laundering
Money laundering is the process of disguising illegal sources of money so that it looks like it came from legal sources. The methods by which money may be laundered are varied and can range in sophistication. Many regulatory and governmental authorities quote estimates each year for the amount...
, illegal migration and information warfare. As Germany’s only overseas intelligence service, the BND gathers both military and civil intelligence. However, the Kommando Strategische Aufklärung (Strategic Reconnaissance Command) of the German Armed Forces
Bundeswehr
The Bundeswehr consists of the unified armed forces of Germany and their civil administration and procurement authorities...
also fulfills this mission, but is not an intelligence service. There is close cooperation between the BND and the Kommando Strategische Aufklärung.
The domestic secret service
Secret service
A secret service describes a government agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For instance, a country may establish a secret service which has some...
counterparts of the BND are the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, BfV) and 16 counterparts at the state level Landesämter für Verfassungsschutz (State Offices for the Protection of the Constitution); there is also a separate military intelligence organisation, the Militärischer Abschirmdienst
Militärischer Abschirmdienst
The Militärischer Abschirmdienst or more officially Amt für den Militärischen Abschirmdienst , is one of the three federal intelligence agencies in Germany, responsible for military counterintelligence...
(lit. military shielding service, MAD).
The BND is a successor to the Gehlen Organization
Gehlen Organization
Gehlen Organization was an intelligence agency established in June 1946 by U.S. occupation authorities in the United States Zone of Germany, and consisted of former members of the 12th Department of the Army General Staff...
. The most central figure in its history was Reinhard Gehlen
Reinhard Gehlen
Reinhard Gehlen was a General in the German Army during World War II, who served as chief of intelligence-gathering on the Eastern Front. After the war, he was recruited by the United States military to set up a spy ring directed against the Soviet Union , and eventually became head of the West...
, its first President.
History
The predecessor of the BND is the German eastern military intelligence agency during World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the Abteilung Fremde Heere Ost or FHO Section in the General Staff, led by Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
Major General Reinhard Gehlen
Reinhard Gehlen
Reinhard Gehlen was a General in the German Army during World War II, who served as chief of intelligence-gathering on the Eastern Front. After the war, he was recruited by the United States military to set up a spy ring directed against the Soviet Union , and eventually became head of the West...
. Its main purpose was to collect information on the Red Army. In 1946 Gehlen set up an intelligence agency informally known as the Gehlen Organization or simply "The Org" and recruited, initially quite modestly, some of his former co-workers, operatives of Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Franz Canaris was a German admiral, head of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, from 1935 to 1944 and member of the German Resistance.- Early life and World War I :...
' Abwehr
Abwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
, but he also recruited from the former Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...
, SS and Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
. The organization worked almost exclusively for the CIA, which contributed funding, equipment, cars, gasoline and other materials. On 1 April 1956 the Bundesnachrichtendienst was created from the Gehlen Organization, and transferred to the West German government. Reinhard Gehlen became President of the BND and remained its head until 1968.
Operations
In the first years of oversight of the Pullach operation by the State Secretary in the federal chancellery of Konrad AdenauerKonrad Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer was a German statesman. He was the chancellor of the West Germany from 1949 to 1963. He is widely recognised as a person who led his country from the ruins of World War II to a powerful and prosperous nation that had forged close relations with old enemies France,...
, the BND hustled along in the mode of its forerunner, the Gehlen Organization. For the average West German citizen, concerned at the time mainly with improving his existence, espionage was a questionable business, better left for shady characters. In that light, the BND racked up its initial East-West cold war successes by concentrating on East Germany. The BND’s reach encompassed the highest political and military levels of that regime. They knew the carrying capacity of every bridge, the bed count of every hospital, the length of every airfield, the width and level of maintenance of the roads that had to be traversed by Soviet armor and infantry divisions in a potential attack on the West. Almost every sphere of eastern life was known to the BND.
Unsung analysts at Pullach with their contacts in the East, were figuratively flies on the wall in ministries and military conferences. When an East German army intelligence officer, a Lieutenant Colonel and BND agent, was suspected as spy by the Soviet KGB and was investigated and shadowed, the BND was positioned and able to inject forged reports to ascertain that the loose spy was actually the KGB investigator, who was then arrested by the Soviets and shipped off to Moscow. Not knowing how long the caper would stay uncovered, the real spy was told to be ready for recall and he made his move to the west at the appropriate time.
The East German regime, however, fought back. With still unhindered flight to the west a possibility, infiltration started on a grand scale and a reversal of sorts took hold. During the early 1960s as many as 90% of the BND's lower level informants in East Germany were double agents for the East German security service, later known as Stasi
Stasi
The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), commonly known as the Stasi (abbreviation , literally State Security), was the official state security service of East Germany. The MfS was headquartered...
.
Several informants in East Berlin reported in June and July 1961 of street closures, clearing of fields, accumulation of building materials and police and army deployments in specific parts of the eastern sector, as well as other measures that BND determined could lead to a division of the city. However, the agency was reluctant to report communist initiatives and had no knowledge of the scope and timing because of conflicting inputs. The erection of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 thus came as a surprise, and BND’s performance in the political field was thereafter often wrong and remained spotty and unimpressive.
"This negative view of BND was certainly not justified during ... [1967 and] 1968." BND’s military work "had been outstanding," and in certain sectors of the intelligence field the BND still showed brilliance: in Latin America and the Middle East it was regarded as the best informed secret service.
The BND offered a fair and reliable amount of intelligence on Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and Soviet bloc forces in Eastern Europe, regarding the elaboration of a NATO warning system against any Soviet operations against NATO territory, in close cooperation with the Bundeswehr
Bundeswehr
The Bundeswehr consists of the unified armed forces of Germany and their civil administration and procurement authorities...
(German Armed Forces). It also detected the deployment of Soviet missiles to Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
in 1962, and subsequently warned the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, resulting in the Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...
.
One high point of BND intelligence work was perhaps its early June 1967 forecast – almost to the hour – of the outbreak of the Six-Day War
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
in the Middle East.
According to declassified transcripts of a United States National Security Council meeting on 2 June 1967, Secretary of State Dean Rusk
Dean Rusk
David Dean Rusk was the United States Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Rusk is the second-longest serving U.S...
was interrupted by CIA Director Richard Helms
Richard Helms
Richard McGarrah Helms was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to the United States Congress over Central Intelligence Agency undercover activities. In 1977, he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended...
that he had reliable information – contrary to Rusk’s presentation – that the Israelis would attack on a certain day and time. Rusk shot back: "That is quite out of the question. Our ambassador in Tel Aviv assured me only yesterday that everything was normal." Helms replied: "I am sorry, but I adhere to my opinion. The Israelis will strike and their object will be to end the war in their favor with extreme rapidity." President Lyndon Johnson then asked Helms for the source of his information. Helms said: "Mr. President, I have it from an allied secret service. The report is absolutely reliable." Helms' information came from the BND.
A further laudable success was BND’s activity during the Czech crisis
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
in 1968. With Pullach cryptography fully functioning, the BND predicted an invasion of Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia. CIA analysts on the other hand did not support the notion of "fraternal assistance" by the satellite states of Moscow; and US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Llewellyn Thompson
Llewellyn Thompson
Llewellyn E. "Tommy" Thompson Jr. , was a United States diplomat. He served in Sri Lanka, Austria, and for a lengthy period in the Soviet Union where his tenure saw some of the most significant events of the Cold War....
, quite irritated, called the secret BND report he was given "a German fabrication." At 23:11 on 20 August 1968, BND radar operators first observed abnormal activity over Czech airspace. An agent on the ground in Prague called a BND out-station in Bavaria: "The Russians are coming." Warsaw Pact forces were in motion as forecast.
However, the slowly sinking efficiency of BND in the last years of Reinhard Gehlen became evident. His refusal to correct reports with questionable content strained the organization’s credibility, and dazzling achievements became an infrequent commodity. A veteran agent remarked at the time, that the BND pond now contained some sardines, whereas a few years ago the pond was alive with sharks.
The fact that the BND could score certain successes despite East German communist Stasi interference, internal malpractice, inefficiencies and infighting, was primarily due to select members of the staff who took it upon themselves to step up and overcome then existing maladies. Abdication of responsibility by Reinhard Gehlen was the malignancy; cronyism was still pervasive, even nepotism (at one time Gehlen had 16 members of his extended family on the BND payroll). Only slowly did the younger generation then advance to substitute new ideas for some of the bad habits caused mainly by Gehlen's semi-retired attitude and frequent holiday absences.
After Gehlen’s departure, his successor Bundeswehr
Bundeswehr
The Bundeswehr consists of the unified armed forces of Germany and their civil administration and procurement authorities...
Brigadier General Gerhard Wessel immediately called for a program of modernization and streamlining. With political changes in the West German government and a reflection that BND was at a low level of efficiency, the service began to rebuild.
In 1986, the BND deciphered the report of the Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
n Embassy in East Berlin regarding the "successful" implementation of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing
1986 Berlin discotheque bombing
The 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing was a terrorist attack on the La Belle discothèque in West Berlin, Germany, an entertainment venue that was commonly frequented by United States soldiers...
.
In 2005, a public scandal erupted (dubbed the Journalistenskandal, Journalists scandal) over revelations that the BND had in the mid 1990s placed under surveillance a number of German journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
s, in an attempt to discover the source of information leaks from the BND.
Yet another scandal came to light in early 2006, when it was alleged that the BND supplied targeting information to American forces to facilitate the invasion of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
in 2003. The BND claimed that it only supplied information on so-called non-targets, targets which must not be attacked.
Following the 2006 Lebanon War. the BND mediated secret negotiations between Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
and Hezbollah, eventually leading up to the 2008 Israel-Hezbollah prisoner swap
2008 Israel-Hezbollah prisoner swap
The 2008 Israel–Hezbollah prisoner exchange took place on July 16, 2008 when Hezbollah transferred the coffins of two Israeli soldiers in exchange for 5 Lebanese militants held by Israel as well as the bodies of 199 mainly Lebanese and Palestinian militants captured in Lebanon or Israel in the...
.
Another scandal is one where the BND (partially) admitted to using journalists to spy on fellow journalists. This supposedly was done to protect the security and authenticity (i.e. the truth) of the BND's investigations. It was quickly decided to set up a parliamentary investigation committee ("Parlamentarischer Untersuchungsausschuss") to investigate the allegations. The affair quickly became controversial, and if the allegations are substantiated, it would be tantamount to a violation of freedom of speech
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
which is protected under the German constitution.
In the beginning of 2008, it was revealed that the BND had managed to recruit excellent sources within Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein
The Principality of Liechtenstein is a doubly landlocked alpine country in Central Europe, bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and by Austria to the east. Its area is just over , and it has an estimated population of 35,000. Its capital is Vaduz. The biggest town is Schaan...
banks and had been conducting espionage operations in the principality since the beginning of 2000s. The BND mediated the German Finance Ministry's $7.3 million acquisition of a CD from a former employee of the LGT Group - a Liechtenstein bank owned by the country's ruling family. While the Finance Ministry defends the deal, saying it would result in several hundred millions of dollars in back tax payments, the sale remains controversial, as a government agency has paid for possibly stolen data.http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Analysis_Spy_agency_hunts_tax_evaders_999.html See 2008 Liechtenstein tax affair
2008 Liechtenstein tax affair
The 2008 Liechtenstein tax affair is a series of tax investigations in numerous countries whose governments suspect that some of their citizens may have evaded tax obligations by using banks and trusts in Liechtenstein; the affair broke open with the biggest complex of investigations ever initiated...
.
In November 2008, three German BND agents were arrested in Kosovo
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...
for allegedly throwing a bomb at the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
International Civilian Office, which oversees Kosovo's governance. Later the previously unheard of "Army of the Republic of Kosovo" (ARK) had accepted responsibility for the bomb attack. Laboratory tests had shown no evidence of the BND agents’ involvement. However, the Germans were released only 10 days after they were arrested. It was suspected that the arrest was a revenge by Kosovo authorities for the BND report about organized crime in Kosovo which accuses Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi
Hashim Thaci
Hashim Thaçi is the Prime Minister of Republic of Kosovo, the leader of the Democratic Party of Kosovo , and former political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army .-Early life and education:...
, as well as the former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj
Ramush Haradinaj
Ramush Haradinaj is a former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army and former prime minister of Kosovo. He leads the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo and is among former KLA officers charged of war crimes during the 1999 Kosovo War by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia...
of far-reaching involvement in organized crime.
Structure
Since 2009 the Bundesnachrichtendienst is divided into the following directorates:- Gesamtlage / Führungs- und Informationszentrum (GL) (Situation Centre)
- Unterstützende Fachdienste (UF) (Specialized Supporting Services)
- Einsatzgebiete / Auslandsbeziehungen (EA) (Areas of Operation / Foreign Liaison)
- Technische Aufklärung (TA) (Signal IntelligenceSIGINTSignals intelligence is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether between people , whether involving electronic signals not directly used in communication , or combinations of the two...
) - Regionale Auswertung und Beschaffung A (LA) und Regionale Auswertung und Beschaffung B (LB) (Regional Analysis and Procurement, A/B countries)
- Internationaler Terrorismus und Internationale Organisierte Kriminalität (TE) (TerrorismTerrorismTerrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
and International Organised Crime) - Proliferation, ABC-Waffen, Wehrtechnik (TW) (Proliferation, NBC Weapons)
- Eigensicherung (SI) (Security)
- Technische Unterstützung (TU) (Technical Support)
- Technische Entwicklung (TK) (Technical Development)
- Zentralabteilung (ZY) (Central Services)
- Gesamtumzug (UM) (Relocation [to Berlin])
Presidents of the BND
The head of the Bundesnachrichtendienst is its PresidentPresident
A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...
. The following persons have held this office since 1956:
{
Reinhard Gehlen
Reinhard Gehlen was a General in the German Army during World War II, who served as chief of intelligence-gathering on the Eastern Front. After the war, he was recruited by the United States military to set up a spy ring directed against the Soviet Union , and eventually became head of the West...
(1902–1979)
Gerhard Wessel
Gerhard Wessel was President of the Federal Intelligence Bureau from May 1968 to December 1978.Wessel was born in Neumünster and died in Pullach....
(1913–2002)
Klaus Kinkel
Klaus Kinkel is a German civil servant, lawyer, and politician of the liberal Free Democratic Party . He served as Federal Minister of Justice , Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany in the government of Helmut Kohl. He was also chairman of the liberal Free Democratic Party from 1993...
(b. 1936)
August Hanning
August Hanning is a former president of the Bundesnachrichtendienst who served from 1998 to December 2005.-References:...
(b. 1946)
Ernst Uhrlau
Ernst Uhrlau is the President of the German Bundesnachrichtendienst . After attending Gymnasium Eppendorf, he graduated from University of Hamburg with specialization in political science....
(b. 1946)
The President of the BND is a federal Beamter
Beamter
The German word Beamter means civil servant, and is pronounced , with a glottal stop between the 'e' and the 'a'...
paid according to BBesO order B, B6 (can be viewed here)
Deputy
The President of the BND has two deputies: one Vice-President and - since December 2003 - one Vice-President for military affairs. Prior to that time there was only one Vice-President. The following persons have held this office since 1957:{