SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Now let's go to Germany, where the arrest last week of the country's former intelligence head, August Hanning, has left the country in shock. It is also troubling Western agencies like the CIA, which share classified information with Germany. NPR's Rob Schmitz reports.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: In the days following Hanning's arrest, reports on the foreign governments which he may have supplied stolen information to over the past two decades multiplied in the German media - Azerbaijan, China, Israel. In a post on X, Vienna-based political scientist Anton Shekhovtsov called Hanning a, quote, "intelligence grocery store." While Hanning's lawyer disputes the charges, the German government alleges that Hanning paid a former colleague for nearly 2,000 documents. Many of them were classified and had been used over the years to brief Germany's chancellor in routine intelligence memos.
MARGARET HENOCH: So if you've got an intelligence memo, a lot of it has passed from us. Of course, he would also have stuff from the French. He would have stuff from the Brits.
SCHMITZ: Margaret Henoch served in the CIA for 25 years.
HENOCH: I'm sure that they get intelligence from all over the world, and now they've compromised everybody.
SCHMITZ: Henoch was the chief of operations for the Europe division of the CIA while Hanning led the BND, Germany's intelligence service, in the late '90s and early 2000s. She worked with Hanning for a few years and remembers him as an uptight man and a man who wasn't afraid to ask for what he wanted. She remembers inviting Hanning and a few of his aides to an American steakhouse, but Hanning didn't order the steak. He asked Henoch to order him a lobster.
HENOCH: The lobster came to the table, you know, kind of looking like a cooked lobster always looks. And he looked at it for a second, and he didn't ask anybody what you do with it. He picked it up and held it like an ear of corn with two hands, and then sort of started to try to eat it like an ear of corn. And so, of course, I was the lead, so I had to get up and say, oh, sir, excuse me, that's not quite right. And stop him. And in the interim, I was coated in lobster shell.
SCHMITZ: Henoch's lobster story reflects a broader observation she held about the BND from her years in the CIA. Their methods often lack sophistication.
HENOCH: They didn't collect intelligence the way we understood intelligence to be collected.
SCHMITZ: The BND did not respond to an NPR request for comment. Henoch says one of the biggest lessons from the Hanning scandal is that Germany needs to beef up its counter intelligence briefings with its own agents so that there's a protocol of proper behavior during and after their service. German political scientist Thorsten Benner agrees.
THORSTEN BENNER: This instance of former officials engaging in fishy consulting behavior and selling themselves to the highest bidder although they receive a really, really generous pension, that's a pattern that's all too widespread in Germany.
SCHMITZ: Benner points out that Hanning's case is hardly an anomaly in Germany. Although he denies it, BND's former head of its Russia department is currently on trial for spying on behalf of Russia. After stepping down as German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder joined the board of the Russian energy company Rosneft. Benner says all of this needs to stop.
BENNER: And we should not allow them to engage in for-profit consulting, selling their experience, their knowledge, their contacts.
SCHMITZ: There are changes on the horizon for German intelligence, though. Even before this scandal, Martin Jäger, the current head of the BND who's been on the job for just a year, vowed to reform the agency. Again, Benner.
BENNER: There's a scenario in which the new head of the BND comes clean on this, gets ahead of the story, promises to kind of use an iron broom to actually make sure that the rules are being changed.
SCHMITZ: But it won't be easy to restore public trust, says Benner, when former German officials continue to betray their country's national interests. The latest example came just a day after Hanning was arrested. Gerhard Schröder, who was chancellor while Hanning was head of German Intelligence, was photographed clasping hands with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow, where he was celebrating Putin's 74th birthday.
Rob Schmitz, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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