BERLIN, July 4 — German authorities are pursuing an espionage probe against a man identified by media as a German intelligence officer who may have passed secrets to the US.
Federal prosecutors said yesterday that a 31-year-old German was arrested on July 2 on suspicion of spying for an unidentified foreign power. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, called the case “a serious matter,” declining to elaborate on the prosecutors’ statement.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, citing government officials it didn’t identify, reported today that the man in custody is suspected of informing US agents about an inquiry by German lawmakers into the National Security Agency.
The emergence of a double agent on top of two German probes into NSA surveillance and espionage threatens to compound a US-German rift following allegations that the NSA spied on citizens and hacked Merkel’s mobile phone.
“Espionage is something we don’t take lightly,” Seibert said at a news briefing in Berlin today, adding that the German parliament’s intelligence oversight committee has been informed. “This is a serious matter, that’s obvious.”
The German officer was approached several times by US intelligence and at least once passed along information on the NSA committee, Sueddeutsche said. He was initially suspected of making contact with Russian spies and told investigators about involvement with American agents, according to the report. Public broadcasters NDR and WDR also reported the story.
Covert meetings
The man, a support technician for Germany’s BND foreign intelligence agency, met US agents at least three times in Austria between 2012 and 2014 and gave them hundreds of secret documents for which he was paid €25,000 (RM108,000), the Bild newspaper reported, citing security officials it didn’t identify. The documents were seized on a thumb drive containing 218 stolen files and a laptop at the suspect’s home, Bild said.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office didn’t respond to two requests for comment.
The NSA inquiry in Germany’s lower house of parliament, or Bundestag, heard witness testimony yesterday for the first time since convening in March. Federal prosecutors are pursuing a separate probe into possible hacking of Merkel’s phone.
“The suspicion of concrete espionage activity against the parliamentary investigative committee is grave and must be pursued as a serious crime,” Konstantin von Notz, the Green Party lawmaker on the committee, said in a statement.
Roderich Kiesewetter, who sits on the committee for Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said he was “astounded” that the information had been leaked.
“This public spectacle hurts the work of the investigation,” he said in a phone interview. — Bloomberg
