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The Federal Intelligence Service (German: ; , BND) is the foreign
intelligence agency An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives. Means of informa ...
of
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, directly subordinate to the Chancellor's Office. The BND headquarters is located in central
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
and is the world's largest intelligence headquarters. The BND has 300 locations in Germany and foreign countries. In 2016, it employed around 6,500 people; 10% of them are military personnel who are formally employed by the Office for Military Sciences. The BND is the largest agency of the
German Intelligence Community The German Intelligence Community is the collective of intelligence agencies in Germany. Germany has three federal intelligence services and 16 state intelligence services. Because they do not form a single entity and because their responsibilities ...
. The BND was founded during the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
in 1956 as the official foreign intelligence agency of
West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
, which had recently joined
NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...
, and in close cooperation with the
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
. It was the successor to the earlier Gehlen Organization, often known simply as "The Organization" or "The Org", a West German intelligence organization affiliated with the CIA whose existence had not been officially acknowledged. The most central figure in the BND's history was former Wehrmacht general
Reinhard Gehlen Reinhard Gehlen (3 April 1902 – 8 June 1979) was a German lieutenant-general and intelligence officer. He was chief of the Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East military intelligence service on the eastern front during World War II, spymaster of the ...
, the leader of the Gehlen Organization and later the founding president of the BND, who was regarded as "one of the most legendary Cold War spymasters." From the early days of the Cold War the Gehlen Organization and later the BND had an intimate cooperation with the CIA, and often was the western intelligence community's only eyes and ears on the ground in the
Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
. The BND is also regarded as one of the best informed intelligence services in regards to the
Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...
from the 1960s. The BND was quickly established as the western world's second largest intelligency agency, second only to the CIA. Both Russia and the Middle East remain important focuses of the BND's activities, in addition to
violent non-state actor In international relations, violent non-state actors (VNSAs), also known as non-state armed actors or non-state armed groups (NSAGs), are individuals or groups that are wholly or partly independent of governments and which threaten or use viole ...
s. The BND today acts as an
early warning system An early warning system is a warning system that can be implemented as a chain of information communication systems and comprises sensors, event detection and decision subsystems for early identification of hazards. They work together to forec ...
to alert the German
government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...
to
threat A threat is a communication of intent to inflict harm or loss on another person. Intimidation is a tactic used between conflicting parties to make the other timid or psychologically insecure for coercion or control. The act of intimidation for co ...
s to German interests from abroad. It depends heavily on
wiretapping Telephone tapping (also wire tapping or wiretapping in American English) is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitorin ...
and electronic surveillance of
international communication International communication (also referred to as the ''study of global communication'' or transnational communication) is the communication practice that occurs across international borders. The need for international communication was due to the ...
s. It collects and evaluates information on a variety of areas such as international non-state terrorism, weapons of mass destruction proliferation and illegal transfer of technology,
organized crime Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally th ...
, weapons and drug trafficking, money laundering, illegal migration and
information warfare Information warfare (IW) (as different from cyber warfare that attacks computers, software, and command control systems) is a concept involving the battlespace use and management of information and communication technology (ICT) in pursuit of a ...
. As Germany's only overseas intelligence service, the BND gathers both
military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...
and
civil Civil may refer to: *Civic virtue, or civility *Civil action, or lawsuit * Civil affairs *Civil and political rights *Civil disobedience *Civil engineering *Civil (journalism), a platform for independent journalism *Civilian, someone not a membe ...
intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can b ...
. While the '(KSA) of the also fulfills this mission, it is not an intelligence service. There is close cooperation between the BND and the KSA. The domestic
secret service A secret service is a government agency, intelligence 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 ...
counterparts of the BND are the
Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (german: Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz or BfV, often ''Bundesverfassungsschutz'') is Germany's federal domestic intelligence agency. Together with the Landesämter für Verfassungss ...
(', or BfV) and 16 counterparts at the state level ' (State Offices for the Protection of the Constitution); there is also a separate military intelligence organisation, the ' (MAD, ''Military Counterintelligence Service'').


History

The predecessor of the BND was the German eastern military intelligence agency during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the ' or FHO Section in the General Staff, led by Major General
Reinhard Gehlen Reinhard Gehlen (3 April 1902 – 8 June 1979) was a German lieutenant-general and intelligence officer. He was chief of the Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East military intelligence service on the eastern front during World War II, spymaster of the ...
. Its main purpose was to collect information on the Red Army. After the war Gehlen worked with the U.S. occupation forces in West Germany. In 1946 he set up an intelligence agency informally known as the Gehlen Organization or simply "The Org" He recruited some of his former co-workers at Gestapo Trier: Dietmar Lermen, Heinrich Hädderich,
August Hill August is the eighth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, and the fifth of seven months to have a length of 31 days. Its zodiac sign is Leo and was originally named ''Sextilis'' in Latin because it was the 6th month in ...
,
Friedrich Walz Friedrich may refer to: Names * Friedrich (surname), people with the surname ''Friedrich'' * Friedrich (given name), people with the given name ''Friedrich'' Other * Friedrich (board game), a board game about Frederick the Great and the Seven Year ...
, Albert Schmidt, Friedrich Heinrich Busch. Many had been operatives of Admiral
Wilhelm Canaris Wilhelm Franz Canaris (1 January 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a German admiral and the chief of the '' Abwehr'' (the German military-intelligence service) from 1935 to 1944. Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi r ...
' wartime (counter-intelligence) organization, but Gehlen also recruited people from the former ' (SD), SS and
Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...
, after their release by the
Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
. The latter recruits were controversial because the SS and its associated groups were notoriously the perpetrators of many
Nazi atrocities The governments of the German Empire and Nazi Germany (under Adolf Hitler) ordered, organized and condoned a substantial number of war crimes, first in the Herero and Namaqua genocide and then in the First and Second World Wars. The most notabl ...
during the war. The organization worked at first 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 was transferred to the
West German West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
government, with all staff. Reinhard Gehlen became President of the BND and remained its head until 1968.


Criticism

Several publications have criticized Gehlen and his organizations for hiring ex-Nazis. An article in
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
on 29 June 2018 made this statement about some of the BND employees:
"Operating until 1956, when it was superseded by the BND, the Gehlen Organisation was allowed to employ at least 100 former Gestapo or SS officers. ... Among them were
Adolf Eichmann Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ,"Eichmann"
''
Alois Brunner Alois Brunner (8 April 1912 – December 2001) was an Austrian (SS) SS-Hauptsturmführer who played a significant role in the implementation of the Holocaust through rounding up and deporting Jews in occupied Austria, Greece, Macedonia, France, ...
, who would go on to die of old age despite having sent more than 100,000 Jews to ghettos or internment camps, and ex-SS major Emil Augsburg. ... Many ex-Nazi functionaries including Silberbauer, the captor of
Anne Frank Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – )Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new light on Anne Fra ...
, transferred over from the Gehlen Organisation to the BND. ... Instead of expelling them, the BND even seems to have been willing to recruit more of them – at least for a few years".
The authors of the book ''A Nazi Past: Recasting German Identity in Postwar Europe'' state that Reichard Gehlen simply did not want to know the backgrounds of the men that the BND hired in the 1950s. The American National Security Archive states that "he employed numerous former Nazis and known war criminals". On the other hand, Gehlen himself was cleared by
James H. Critchfield James Hardesty Critchfield (January 30, 1917 – April 22, 2003) was an officer of the US Central Intelligence Agency who rose to become the chief of its Near East and South Asia division. He also served as the CIA's national intelligence offic ...
of the
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
who worked with the Gehlen Organization from 1949 to 1956. In 2001, he said that "almost everything negative that has been written about Gehlen, s anardent ex-Nazi, one of Hitler's war criminals ... is all far from the fact," as quoted in ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
''. Critchfield added that Gehlen hired former
Sicherheitsdienst ' (, ''Security Service''), full title ' (Security Service of the '' Reichsführer-SS''), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization ...
(Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS) men "reluctantly, under pressure from German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to deal with 'the avalanche of subversion hitting them from East Germany'" From 2011 to 2018, an independent commission of historians studied the history of the BND in the era of Reinhard Gehlen. The results are published in comprehensive studies. So far (as of April 2020) eleven volumes have been published.


Operations


1960s

During the first years of oversight by the State Secretary in the federal chancellery of
Konrad Adenauer Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman who served as the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of the Christian Dem ...
of the operation in
Pullach Pullach, officially Pullach i. Isartal, is a municipality in the district of Munich in Bavaria in Germany. It lies on the Isar Valley Railway and is served by the S 7 line of the Munich S-Bahn, at the Großhesselohe Isartalbahnhof, Pullach and ...
, Munich District,
Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
, the BND continued the ways of its forebear, the Gehlen Organization. The BND racked up its initial east–west cold war successes by concentrating on
East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
. The BND's reach encompassed the highest political and military levels of the GDR 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 Soviet armor and infantry divisions would have to traverse 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, figuratively functioned as flies on the wall in ministries and military conferences. When the Soviet KGB suspected an East German army intelligence officer, a lieutenant colonel and BND agent, of spying, the Soviets investigated and shadowed him. The BND was positioned and able to inject forged reports implying 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 under wraps, the real spy was told to be ready for recall; 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 worked as
double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...
s 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 the BND's performance in the political field was thereafter often wrong and remained spotty and unimpressive.Höhne & Zolling, p. 266 There was a great success for the Federal Intelligence Service during the
Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (of 1962) ( es, Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis () in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 35-day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United S ...
. In 1962, the BND was the first Western
intelligence service An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives. Means of informatio ...
to have information about the stationing of
Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
medium-range missiles on the
caribbean island The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
and passed it on to the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. Between 1959 and 1961,
Reinhard Gehlen Reinhard Gehlen (3 April 1902 – 8 June 1979) was a German lieutenant-general and intelligence officer. He was chief of the Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East military intelligence service on the eastern front during World War II, spymaster of the ...
called on
Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
several times in vain to "insert the dangerous communist bastion, which at the same time represents an excellent starting point for the communist infiltration of
Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...
, into the SAsphere of power by rapid access." Gehlen's influence on the US government should not be underestimated, because the BND was able to regularly provide the
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
with detailed information about Soviet arms deliveries through its very good sources in Cuba. There are indications that the secret service was also informed about military actions against Cuba. Ten days before the
Bay of Pigs invasion The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called ''Invasión de Playa Girón'' or ''Batalla de Playa Girón'' after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961 by Cuban exiles, covertly fin ...
, Gehlen reported to
Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...
: "Within a relatively short period of time, large-scale military operations to defeat
Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 200 ...
will begin." In 1962, the BND also found out from its sources, the Cuban exiles living in Miami, that Cuba was also trying to get hold of weapons through German dealers. According to a BND report, Cuba was also able to recruit four former
Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
officers as instructors for the Cuban armed forces. However, the identity of the men was blacked out in the report. "This negative view of BND was certainly not justified during … 967 and1968." The BND's military work "had been outstanding", and in certain sectors of the intelligence field the BND still showed brilliance: in Latin America and in the Middle East it was regarded as the best-informed secret service.Höhne & Zolling, p. 244 The BND offered a fair and reliable amount of intelligence on
Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
and
Soviet-bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
forces in Eastern Europe, regarding the elaboration of a
NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...
warning system against any Soviet operations against NATO territory, in close cooperation with the
Bundeswehr The ''Bundeswehr'' (, meaning literally: ''Federal Defence'') is the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. The ''Bundeswehr'' is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part con ...
(German Armed Forces). One high point of BND intelligence work culminated in its early June 1967 forecast – almost to the hour – of the outbreak of the
Six-Day War The Six-Day War (, ; ar, النكسة, , or ) or June War, also known as the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states (primarily Egypt, Syria, and Jordan) from 5 to 10 Ju ...
in the Middle East on 5 June 1967. According to declassified transcripts of a
United States National Security Council The United States National Security Council (NSC) is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for consideration of national security, military, and foreign policy matters. Based in the White House, it is part of the Exe ...
meeting on 2 June 1967, CIA Director
Richard Helms Richard McGarrah Helms (March 30, 1913 – October 23, 2002) was an American government official and diplomat who served as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from 1966 to 1973. Helms began intelligence work with the Office of Strategic Ser ...
interrupted Secretary of State
Dean Rusk David Dean Rusk (February 9, 1909December 20, 1994) was the United States Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the second-longest serving Secretary of State after Cordell Hull from the F ...
with "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 involved the BND's activity during the Czech crisis in 1968; by then, the agency was led by the second president, Gerhard Wessel. 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 E. "Tommy" Thompson Jr. (August 24, 1904 – February 6, 1972) was an American 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 ...
, 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 had moved as forecast. However, the slowly sinking efficiency of BND in the last years of Reinhard Gehlen became evident. By 1961, it was clear that the BND employed some men who were Soviet "moles"; they had come from the earlier Gehlen Organization. One mole, Heinz Felfe, was convicted of treason in 1963. Others were not uncovered during Gehlen's term in office. Gehlen's 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 then contained some sardines, though a few years earlier the pond had been 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 remained pervasive, even nepotism (at one time Gehlen had 16 members of his extended family on the BND payroll).Höhne & Zolling, p. 245 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. Gehlen was forced out in April 1968 due to "political scandal within the ranks", according to one source. His successor,
Bundeswehr The ''Bundeswehr'' (, meaning literally: ''Federal Defence'') is the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. The ''Bundeswehr'' is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part con ...
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. Years later, Wessel's obituary in the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'', reported that he "is credited with modernizing the BND by hiring academic analysts and electronics specialists". Reinhard Gehlen's memoirs, ''The Service, The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen'' (English title), were published in 1977, (World Publishers, New York). A Review of the book published by the CIA makes this comment about Gehlen's achievements and management style:
"Gehlen's descriptions of most of his so-called successes in the political intelligence field are, in my opinion, either wishful thinking or self-delusion. ... Gehlen was never a good clandestine operator, nor was he a particularly good administrator. And therein lay his failures. The Gehlen Organization/BND always had a good record in the collection of military and economic intelligence on East Germany and the Soviet forces there. But this information, for the most part, came from observation and not from clandestine penetration".


1970s

The agency's second president, Gerhard Wessel, retired in 1978. According to his obituary in the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' in August 2002, the "former intelligence officer in Adolf Hitler's anti-Soviet spy operations" ... "is credited with modernizing the BND by hiring academic analysts and electronics specialists". ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' News Service obituary lauded the BND's many successes under Wessel but noted that there had been "a number of incidents of East Germans infiltrating the West German government, particularly intelligence agencies, on Gen. Wessel's watch".


Munich Olympic bombings

The kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich was a watershed event for the BND, following early warnings from other countries, because it led the agency to build counter-terrorism capabilities.


Acquisition of Crypto AG

In 1970 the CIA and the BND bought the Swiss informations and communication security firm
Crypto AG Crypto AG was a Swiss company specialising in communications and information security founded by Boris Hagelin in 1952. The company was secretly purchased for US $5.75 million and jointly owned by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) a ...
, for $5.75 million. Already in 1967 the BND tried, together with the French intelligence service, to buy the company from its founder Robert Hagelin. This deal though fell through due to Hagelin, who was already cooperating with the CIA, refusing. The CIA at the time did not cooperate with the French. In 1969, after negotiations with the US, the BND approached Hagelin anew and bought the company together with the US intelligence service. Crypto AG produced and sold radio, Ethernet, STM, GSM, phone and fax encryption systems worldwide. Its clients included Iran, Libya, military juntas in Latin America, nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, and even the Vatican. The BND and the CIA rigged the company's devices so they could easily decipher the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages.


1980s


Libyan bombings in Germany

In 1986, the BND deciphered the report of the
Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya bo ...
n Embassy in East Berlin regarding the "successful" implementation of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing.


Infiltration into Stasi HQ

According to an interview with Stasi defector Col. Rainer Wiegand, BND agents were assigned to use the anti-Stasi protests in East Germany in order to covertly obtain files from Building No. 2, which houses the counterespionage directorate. Wiegand assisted by providing the blueprints of the building and indicated which offices the agents should prioritize.


1990s


Spying on journalists

In 2005, a public scandal erupted (dubbed the ''Journalistenskandal'', journalists scandal) over revelations that the BND had placed a number of German
journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
s under surveillance since the-mid 1990s, in an attempt to discover the source of information leaks from the BND regarding the activities of the service in connection with the war in Iraq and the "war against terror". The Bundestag constituted an investigative committee ("Parlamentarischer Untersuchungsausschuss") to investigate the allegations. The committee tasked the former Federal Appellate Court (Bundesgerichtshof) judge Dr. as special investigator, who published a report confirming illegal BND operations involving and targeting journalists between 1993 and 2005. As a consequence, the Chancellery issued an executive order banning BND operational measures against journalists with the aim to protect the service. The committee published a final report in 2009, which mostly confirmed the allegations, identifying the intent to protect the BND from disclosure of classified information and finding a lack of oversight within the senior leadership of the service but did not identify any responsible members from within the government.


Tiitinen list

In 1990, BND gave the Finnish Security Intelligence Service the so-called Tiitinen list—which supposedly contains names of Finns who were believed to have links to Stasi. The list was classified and locked in a safe after the Director of the Finnish Security Intelligence Service, Seppo Tiitinen, and the President of Finland,
Mauno Koivisto Mauno Henrik Koivisto (; 25 November 1923 – 12 May 2017) was a Finnish politician who served as the ninth president of Finland from 1982 to 1994. He also served as the country's prime minister twice, from 1968 to 1970 and again from 1979 to 1 ...
, determined that it was based on vague hints instead of hard evidence.


2000s


Promoting the invasion of Iraq

On 5 February 2003, Colin Powell made the case for a military attack on Iraq in front of the UN Security Council. Powell supported his case with information received from the BND, instead of Mr.
Hans Blix Hans Martin Blix (; born 28 June 1928) is a Swedish diplomat and politician for the Liberal People's Party. He was Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs (1978–1979) and later became the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. As suc ...
and the
IAEA The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. It was established in 195 ...
. The BND had collected intelligence from an informant known as Rafid al-Janabi alias CURVEBALL, who claimed Iraq would be in possession of
Weapons of Mass Destruction A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to numerous individuals or cause great damage to artificial structures (e.g., buildings), natu ...
, apart from torturing and killing over 1,000 dissidents each year, for over 20 years. Rafid was employed before and after the 2003 incident which ultimately led to the
invasion of Iraq The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 ...
. The payments of 3,000 Euros monthly were made by a cover firm called Thiele und Friedrichs (Munich). As a result of the premature cancellation, al-Janabi filed a lawsuit at the Munich labour court and won the case. Several former senior BND officials publicly stated that the agency had repeatedly warned the CIA not to take Curveball's information as fact. Hanning, the BND president at the time, even formulated his concerns about that in a letter to then CIA Director George Tenet. The CIA however ignored those warnings and presented the information as facts.


Israel vs. Lebanon

Following the 2006 Lebanon War, the BND mediated secret negotiations between
Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
and Hezbollah, eventually leading up to the
2008 Israel–Hezbollah prisoner exchange The 2008 Israel–Hezbollah prisoner exchange took place on 16 July 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 militants captured in Lebanon ...
.


Fighting tax evasion

In the beginning of 2008, it was revealed that the BND had managed to recruit excellent sources within
Liechtenstein Liechtenstein (), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein (german: link=no, Fürstentum Liechtenstein), is a German-speaking microstate located in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland. Liechtenstein is a semi-constitutional monarchy ...
banks and had been conducting espionage operations in the principality since the beginning of the 2000s. The BND mediated the German Finance Ministry's $7.3 million acquisition of a CD from a former employee of the
LGT Group LGT Group is the largest family-owned private banking and asset management group in the world. LGT, originally known as The Liechtenstein Global Trust, is owned by the princely House of Liechtenstein through the Prince of Liechtenstein Foundation ...
– 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 Stolen may refer to: * ''Stolen'' (2009 Australian film), a 2009 Australian film * ''Stolen'' (2009 American film), a 2009 American film * ''Stolen: The Baby Kahu Story'' (2010 film), a film based on the real life kidnapping of baby Kahu Durie ...
.


Kosovo

In November 2008, three German BND agents were arrested in
Kosovo Kosovo ( sq, Kosova or ; sr-Cyrl, Косово ), officially the Republic of Kosovo ( sq, Republika e Kosovës, links=no; sr, Република Косово, Republika Kosovo, links=no), is a partially recognised state in Southeast Euro ...
for allegedly throwing a bomb at the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
International Civilian Office, which oversees Kosovo's governance. Later the "Army of the Republic of Kosovo" 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 Thaçi (; born 24 April 1968) is a Kosovar Albanian politician who was the president of Kosovo from April 2016 until his resignation on 5 November 2020 to face a war crimes tribunal. He was the first prime minister of Kosovo and the For ...
, as well as the former Prime Minister
Ramush Haradinaj Ramush Haradinaj (; born 3 July 1968) is a Kosovo Albanian politician, leader of the AAK party, and the third prime minister of Kosovo. He is a former officer and leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and previously served as Prime Minister ...
of far-reaching involvement in organized crime.


Austria

According to reporting in ''
Der Standard ''Der Standard'' is an Austrian daily newspaper published in Vienna. History and profile ''Der Standard'' was founded by Oscar Bronner as a financial newspaper and published its first edition on 19 October 1988. German media company Axel Sprin ...
'' and ''
profil Profil may refer to: *La Mouette Profil, a French hang glider design *Profil (band), a French musical group *''Profil (literary magazine)'', a Norwegian literary magazine *''profil (magazine)'', an Austrian news magazine * ''Profil (Russian magaz ...
'', the BND engaged in espionage in Austria between 1999 and 2006, spying on targets including the
International Atomic Energy Agency The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. It was established in 1957 ...
, the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC, ) is a cartel of countries. Founded on 14 September 1960 in Baghdad by the first five members (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela), it has, since 1965, been headquart ...
, the
Austria Press Agency The Austria Press Agency (german: Austria Presse Agentur, APA) is the national news agency and the leading information provider in Austria. It is owned by Austrian newspapers and the national broadcaster ORF. Journalists Fatalities See als ...
, embassies, and Austrian banks and government ministries. The government of Austria has called on Germany to clarify the allegations.


2010s

In 2014, an employee of BND was arrested for handing over secret documents to the United States. He was suspected of handing over documents about the committee investigating the
NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...
spying in Germany. The German government responded to this espionage by expelling the top
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
official in Berlin. In December 2016,
WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and ...
published 2,420 documents from the BND and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The published materials had been submitted in 2015 as part of a German parliamentary inquiry into the surveillance activities of the BND and its cooperation with the US
National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...
. The BND has been reported to store 220 million sets of
metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
every day. That is, they record with whom, when, where and for how long someone communicates. This data is supposedly collected across the world, but the exact locations remains unclear to this date. The Bundestag committee investigating the NSA spying scandal has uncovered that the German intelligence agency intercepts communications traveling via both satellites and
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
cables. It seems certain that the metadata only come from "foreign dialed traffic," that is, from telephone conversations and text messages that are held and sent via mobile phones and satellites. Of these 220 million data amassed every day, one percent is archived for 10 years "for long-term analysis." Apparently though, this long-term storage doesn't hold any Internet communications, data from social networks, or emails.


New headquarters

The new BND headquarters in Berlin, near the former Berlin Wall, was completed in 2017. At the official opening in February 2019,
Angela Merkel Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German former politician and scientist who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), she previously served as Leader of the Opp ...
, Chancellor of Germany, made this statement: "In an often very confusing world, now, more urgently than ever, Germany needs a strong and efficient foreign intelligence service". At the time, some 4,000 employees were expected to work from this location, moving here from the former headquarters in
Pullach Pullach, officially Pullach i. Isartal, is a municipality in the district of Munich in Bavaria in Germany. It lies on the Isar Valley Railway and is served by the S 7 line of the Munich S-Bahn, at the Großhesselohe Isartalbahnhof, Pullach and ...
, a suburb of
Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
. The agency's total number of employees, in Germany and other countries, was approximately 6,500.


Structure

The Bundesnachrichtendienst is divided into the following departments: # ''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)'' (
Terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
and International Organised Crime) # ''Proliferation, ABC-Waffen, Wehrtechnik (TW)'' (Proliferation, NBC Weapons) # ''Technische Aufklärung (TA)'' ( Signal Intelligence) # ''Gesamtlage und unterstützende Fachdienste (GU)'' (Situation Centre) # ''Innerer Dienst (ID)'' (Internal Services) # ''Informationstechnik (IT)'' (Information Technology) # ''Zentralabteilung (ZY)'' (Central Services) # ''Eigensicherung (SI)'' (Security) # ''Umzug (UM)'' (Relocation
o Berlin O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), plu ...


Presidents of the BND

The head of the Bundesnachrichtendienst is its
President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
. The following persons have held this office since 1956: The president of the BND is a federal
Beamter The German civil servants called ' (men, singular ', more commonly ') or ' (women, singular ') have a privileged legal status compared to other German public employees (called '), who are generally subject to the same laws and regulations as emp ...
paid according to BBesO order B, B9, which is in payment the equivalent of a lieutenant general.


Deputy

The President of the BND has three deputies: one Vice President, one Vice President for Military Affairs (Since December 2003), and one Vice President for Central Functions and Modernization (Possibly Since 2013). Prior to December 2003, there was only one Vice President. The following persons have held this office since 1957:


See also

*
Agency 114 Agency 114 (german: Dienststelle 114)James H. Critchfield: ''Partners at the Creation. The Men behind Postwar Germany's Defense and Intelligence Establishments.'' Annapolis: Naval Institute Press 2003, p. 35. Timothy Naftali: ''Reinhard Gehlen and t ...
* Abwehr *
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany The Federal Constitutional Court (german: link=no, Bundesverfassungsgericht ; abbreviated: ) is the supreme constitutional court for the Federal Republic of Germany, established by the constitution or Basic Law () of Germany. Since its in ...
*
List of intelligence agencies of Germany List of intelligence agencies of Germany: Currently active *Federal Intelligence Service (BND) (in german: Bundesnachrichtendienst): foreign and military intelligence * Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) (german: Militärischer Abschirmdie ...
*
Operation Eikonal Operation Eikonal is a collaboration between the National Security Agency (NSA) and ''Bundesnachrichtendienst'' (BND) for the sharing of telephony and internet data captured in Germany. It is based on an agreement that dates to 2002, and is part of ...


References


Bibliography

* Ronny Heidenreich, et al.: Geheimdienstkrieg in Deutschland. Die Konfrontation von DDR-Staatssicherheit und Organisation Gehlen 1953. Berlin 2016 *


External links

* * * {{Coord, 48.064, 11.535, type:city, format=dms, display=title 1956 establishments in West Germany German intelligence agencies Government agencies established in 1956 German federal agencies