The detention of former BND President August Hanning, notably for the charge of attempted treason, is prompting significant worry abroad. Grzegorz Malecki, the former head of the Polish foreign intelligence service, told the “Welt am Sonntag” that the case is extremely unsettling and could increase allied distrust of the federal intelligence service. He cautioned that this situation has the potential to negatively impact information exchange with Germany.
Günter Heiß (CDU), a former intelligence coordinator during the Merkel era, told the newspaper that the approval for Hanning’s auxiliary employment activity must have been decided upon at a high leadership level. While he conceded that ancillary activities are fundamentally permissible for civil servants, he stated that as a responsible party within the BND, he would never have approved such a matter without knowing the full details.
Bernd Schmidbauer (CDU), a former state minister and intelligence coordinator under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, told the “Welt am Sonntag” that Hanning had earned significant merit regarding German security. Consequently, he described the case as “not only a tragedy for the German intelligence services, but also for the former top official.” Hanning was closely associated with Schmidbauer in the 1990s and oversaw the BND from 1998 to 2005.
