German agent arrested for spying for US
Baku, July 4 (AZERTAC). Police in Germany have arrested a man on suspicion of spying for the United States.
The arrested man is a German citizen and a member of the country’s own BND intelligence service. German media warned that if the case against him is proved, “it will be the biggest scandal involving a German—American double agent since the war”.
“The matter is serious, that is very clear,” a German government spokesman told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.
The incident is the latest in a series of spying scandals that have strained relations between the two allies, after it emerged last year that the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s GCHQ were monitoring communications in Germany.
The revelation that the NSA was eavesdropping on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone calls caused public outrage in Germany.
It is believed the arrested man is suspected of spying on a German parliamentary enquiry into the NSA affair.
The German authorities confirmed only that a 31-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of spying for a foreign intelligence service on Wednesday, and that Mrs Merkel had been informed.
A government spokesman refused to confirm whether Mrs Merkel had raised the subject of the arrest in a long phone conversation with President Barack Obama on Thursday.
The man was originally arrested on suspicions that he had sought to make contact with Russian intelligence, only to confess he was in fact spying for the Americans, according to Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
Spiegel magazine reported he had confessed to passing information to an American contact in exchange for money, and that he was particularly looking for information about the NSA enquiry.
Bild reported that the arrested man was a double agent for the Americans for two years and passed them 218 secret documents in exchange for €25,000 and that they included at least 3 documents related to the Bundestag NSA enquiry. The man met his contact in Austria and passed him the documents on a USB stick, said Bild.
Earlier reports he worked in the mail room are now being discounted
Investigators have apparently not ruled out the possibility he may be working for another foreign intelligence service, and deliberately passing them false information to damage US-German relations.
The arrested man’s exact position in the BND is unclear. Spiegel suggested he worked in the mail room, but Die Welt newspaper reported he had worked in close contact with the head of the intelligence service, Gerhard Schindler.
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