Intelligence Scoop: Former German Spy Chief Arrested for Treason

Germany’s former intelligence chief has been arrested for treason and spying for a foreign power. But who has he been accused of spying for? And how dangerous could this accusation be for the BND? Listen as David and Gordon dig into the breaking news that the former chief of German intelligence has been arrested on charges of treason and espionage. ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: therestisclassified.com/newsletter ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restisclassified Upgrade your online protection with an all-in-one security app! It’s risk free with NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee 🌍 ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Social Producer: Emma Jackson Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03David McCloskey?

  For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at the rest is classified.com.

• 0:25Gordon Corera?

  Germany's former foreign intelligence chief has been arrested for treason and for spying for a foreign power. But who has he been accused of spying for? And how dangerous could this be for Germany and its intelligence agency, the BND? Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm Gordon Corera.

• 0:43David McCloskey?

  And I'm David McClosky.

• 0:44Gordon Corera?

  And David, let's look at what we know so far about this amazing story, which is hitting the BND, Germans Foreign Intelligence Service, focusing on this individual, August Hanning.

• 0:54David McCloskey?

  Well, first off, Gordon, greetings from Edinburgh.

• 0:57Gordon Corera?

  Edinburgh.

• 0:59David McCloskey?

  Edinburgh. Viewers will see that I'm, I'm looking as vampiric as you often do, Gordon. I'm dotted by usual cave. All right. So August, August Hanning, he is not important. He's not the chief of the BND right now. He was the chief for 1998 to 2005. He took a job at the Interior Ministry afterward. And since about 2010, has opened up a private consultancy.

• 1:27Gordon Corera?

  And we should say, he's not a career spy, is he? He's a public official. He was a lawyer who was appointed to the head of the intelligence agency, did it for a few years, including those kind of nine 11 years, and then went into kind of other public service jobs and then into this consultancy role.

• 1:43David McCloskey?

  That's right. And we should say that the charges that have been levied against him, and we'll, we'll go much deeper into what this all entails. But the charges of espionage, treason, passing intelligence to a foreign intelligence service. I mean, these are, in the German context, unprecedented. I mean, this, this is an, it is impossible, I think, to overstate the seriousness with which the Germans are taking this case. It seems that he received as many as 2,000 classified documents between about 2010 and this year. So it is a massive, massive trove of information that he got access to.

• 2:28Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, it's interesting because the documents come from, it's alleged, his chief of staff. It's alleged. Let's be careful at the moment. He's just been arrested. But his former chief of staff. So there's a man called Manfred. And the Germans tend to use only the first names with, with these cases, who was his chief of staff when August Hanning was head of the BND, but then continues to be the chief of staff for subsequent heads of the BND and serves in roles until March of this year. And the claim is that in 2010, Manfred and August Hanning come into this relationship in which Manfred is going to pass documents from the BND,

• 3:11Gordon Corera?

  where he's still working, to August Hanning, who's obviously now out. And this starts in 2010 and goes on for at least 12 years. So it's an extraordinary allegation. We're going to look a bit more deeply into what it was behind all of this and who the documents might have gone to. But first, a quick note from our sponsors at HP.

• 3:37Gordon Corera?

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• 6:03David McCloskey?

  So Gordon, the documents. What do we know about what was in those documents?

• 6:07Gordon Corera?

  Well, we obviously don't know all the details because they're secret and classified documents. But so what it looks like is that Manfred, so the source, if you like, within the BND, was passing particularly a set of documents which were used to prepare for these, what are called intelligence situation meetings, which happen in Germany. So there's a regular meeting, I was reading about this. It's held every Tuesday, 10am on the fourth floor of the Federal Chancellery Building. It's known as Endi Lager. That was my best German accent. And this meeting brings together the heads of all of German security and intelligence agencies with government officials to discuss kind of security issues of the day. So it's a bit, I guess it's a bit like Britain's

• 6:51Gordon Corera?

  Joint Intelligence Committee. It's a kind of weekly update. Lasts two to three hours. And then the heads of the agencies just meet with the German chancellor, the head of government after that for another hour. But it looks like one of the things that was being passed were the situation updates, which were going to this big weekly meeting. Now, we don't know all of the details, but that would have related to all kinds of foreign policy and national security issues. It's hard to know how, how sensitive and how deep they got into sourcing. But I guess, David, that's pretty, pretty useful stuff, isn't it? Pretty wide ranging.

• 7:25David McCloskey?

  Yeah, especially for someone who's running a private consultancy that seems to have Azerbaijani clients and potentially Israeli clients and who, who knows who else. I mean, he's essentially getting, it's not quite equivalent. You mentioned the JIC, the Joint Intelligence Committee in the UK. He's getting something akin to the PDB. I mean, essentially, under the, you know,

• 7:47Gordon Corera?

  President's Daily Brief.

• 7:48David McCloskey?

  Right, exactly. A decade plus after he's left the service. You could imagine how that would create really significant competitive advantage for him as he's, as he's shopping around and trying to find consulting clients. I mean, it is interesting. I mean, some German press reports have said that the information he received also related to Ron's nuclear programme, the Russian military. And I think the, I mean, for me, the big question right now that the Germans are dealing with, that the Brits are dealing with, that the CIA is dealing with, that pretty much any foreign partner of the BND is dealing with, is what were those documents specifically?

• 8:31David McCloskey?

  And was there foreign liaison information in there? There's already been some indication that Five Eyes Intelligence has been passed to the, was passed to the Germans and that it ended up at this trove of documents that Hanning has. And so you have to start thinking about whether, were there CIA liaison reports that got passed that could, in theory, be used to identify a human source in a third-party country? Or were there NSA intercepts that were passed that could be used to compromise a signals intelligence platform, you know, again, in Russia elsewhere? So that damage assessment is a big piece of this right now. I think when, when we think about what, what are the, what's the CIA doing? What are the Brits doing?

• 9:16David McCloskey?

  And no one's sitting back and laughing at the Germans, even though it's embarrassing. I mean, it's a, it's a deeply troubling development for, for foreign partners of the BND as well.

• 9:26Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, that's right. I mean, it is so interesting because the charges are a kind of treason and spying style charges. But it's not, it doesn't look like this is someone who was working as an agent for a foreign state. And I think that's what's so interesting about this case is that it is actually someone working as a private intelligence contractor, as a consultant, who is asking for and tasking someone in the BND to get these documents to help his business work and to help him profit from it, rather than because, you know, he's been asked to do it by a specific intelligence agency. Now, when you get into the details, because according to the German prosecutors, so there's 2,000 documents which have been passed. And it says, in at least one case,

• 10:10Gordon Corera?

  Hanning allegedly used classified information to create an assessment for an employee of a foreign intelligence service. And whether it was transmitted and reached that foreign intelligence service, they've not been able to determine. It's interesting. So they are very clear in, in not saying he was then passing these on to another state directly. He's using the info to do his work. And he's in contact, perhaps drawing up information for a foreign state, which gets you to that kind of, the treason and the espionage charges, doesn't it?

• 10:42David McCloskey?

  Which in some cases, I, I think could make this more complicated, the damage assessment. Because it's not like he was working solely for the Russians with the other, I mean, you know, it's interesting. But when I saw this headline, I just assumed a German spy case, it must be the Russians. I mean,

• 11:01Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, same.

• 11:01David McCloskey?

  basically, every BND spy case in recent memory.

• 11:06David McCloskey?

  Was was a BND officer or a German official working for the Russians. I mean, when when Hanning was the chief of the BND, it was under the Gerhard Schroder chancellorship. And Schroder right now is basically a Russian asset who went to work for Gazprom after he left political life.

• 11:27Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 11:27David McCloskey?

  Right? So I immediately my head went to, oh, this is this is the Russians. And it's actually more bizarre, as you say, because it's these, you know, he's he's got these consulting clients and contacts. The one foreign intelligence agency or the one foreign government that has been named in the press reporting is Azerbaijan, which which would not have been my first guess. If you had, if you had asked me, who was the German spy chief spy for? I would not have said the Azerbaijanis. But I don't think it's just them. I mean, we'll see in the coming days and weeks, but it's not like the Azerbaijanis are tasking him and he's working for them exclusively. I think it's very possible he wrote up consulting reports for them and got paid.

• 12:11David McCloskey?

  But I bet he was doing that with a lot of other companies, probably high net worth individuals and probably other foreign governments too.

• 12:17Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, and it's interesting that kind of sources are suggesting in Germany that this wasn't a Russian or Chinese intelligence agency that he was in contact with and talking to. So they're obviously trying to kind of push people away from the idea that this was a kind of, you know, a big Russian or Chinese kind of mole case. And that rather it's something much more in this private space. I mean, it is interesting because last summer, he was announced as part of the board of a German Azerbaijan forum alongside other other diplomats to improve relations. So he's definitely doing his work, improving relations if if the allegations are true, which I should say Azerbaijan have denied as well as August Hanning, that he might have had contacts in that region. But, you know, when you start to look into what he's done since leaving office,

• 13:02Gordon Corera?

  it's really interesting and really murky and really complicated. Because like I was seeing that in 2013, he testified in London on behalf of the Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, which, you know, raised eyebrows. His consulting firm or one of the ones he works with had been involved in selling private jets to the UAE in the Middle East, which were going to be used for surveillance purposes. You know, he's traveled to Moscow at times. So he's had kind of a lot of involvement with a lot of different countries. And I think that's one of the problems is that there's this kind of wide variety of countries that he's been involved in in his consulting work, which I can imagine that they're going to have trouble with. And just one other really interesting detail.

• 13:46Gordon Corera?

  He served on the supervisory board of a Latvian bank, which then goes bust around 2019. It had some links to Russian businessmen and the like. In the insolvency process, the administrators go after the people who benefited and who were on the board. And they go after August Hanning specifically to try and seize two thirds of his German civil service pension. And so he's also having bits of his pension seized and and involved in all these kind of weird contacts. And I was seeing that, you know, when he turns up at events like the Munich Security Conference recently, current serving German officials try and avoid him because they're like, this guy, this guy's got some kind of some odd links.

• 14:25Gordon Corera?

  So I think the fact that he had lots of murky consulting links was actually pretty well known in Germany and in in that world.

• 14:33David McCloskey?

  Should we talk about the murky consulting link that seems to have brought him down? Because this story is wild. And it's, I mean, it starts like any good spy story should with a Hamburg steakhouse heiress, doesn't it, Gordon? I it's, you know, like, I mean,

• 14:50Gordon Corera?

  You couldn't make it up. You couldn't put it in one of your novels.

• 14:53David McCloskey?

  I will now I might because it's it's perfect. So to me, it's this is almost more insane than the espionage and the fact that, and we should, by the way, we should just say, because we didn't say this upfront, I feel like we might have buried the lead here. This case is the equivalent of Leon Panetta in the US having someone who is a senior serving official inside the CIA, providing him with classified information on a regular basis. And Leon Panetta essentially selling that information to to private firms at other countries. And you can make the same comparison with MI6.

• 15:32Gordon Corera?

  With MI6, I know.

• 15:33David McCloskey?

  It is absolutely insane. But so back to the back to the Hamburg steakhouse.

• 15:39Gordon Corera?

  Steakhouse.

• 15:39David McCloskey?

  Let's get to the real thing. This is how it broke, right? This his involvement.

• 15:43Gordon Corera?

  This is how they got to him. This is what I find so mad about this story is it's not like they got to him through some kind of deep NSA tip off or something to do with the CIA. It's because of a steakhouse heiress investigation. So it this this steakhouse heiress called Christina Block. And Block House, I've been reading about this. Block House is a big restaurant chain in Germany. And it's family friendly steakhouses where you can get a classic, a classic Block burger and a filet mignon. So it's kind of upmarket, but steaks, burgers and the like. Anyway, so she is the heiress to the Block family fortune.

• 16:22Gordon Corera?

  And she, Christina Block, has been in this bitter custody battle with her ex husband, Stephen Hedsel. And she has been trying to get the children and they've been battling over it. And so the claim is that at New Year's Eve 2023, she contracts a group to ambush her ex husband. I mean, this is how mad this is. And their two youngest children, who were then 10 and 13, in southern Denmark, close to the German border. And at New Year's Eve, they're watching a fireworks display. The the abductors knock the ex husband down, drag the two kids away into a forest and into a car.

• 17:05Gordon Corera?

  The children supposedly have their mouths taped and are tied up and told, be quiet because otherwise we'll kill you. I mean, that's pretty wild. But then Danish police with sniffer dogs are dispatched on the tail of the kidnappers due to the an alarm that the boy's father had. The children get taken to a farmhouse over the border in in Germany. And they're held there until Block eventually herself comes to pick them up in in January 2024 and takes them back to Hamburg. And then the the kids are eventually handed over to the police because they must realize what's going on. And are then taken back to Denmark a few days later. So, I mean, that's the kind of weird heiress custody battle.

• 17:47Gordon Corera?

  But the point is, the claim is that that how did Christina Block find people to abduct her children? Through August Hanning? I mean, through a former BND chief who puts her in touch with an Israeli private intelligence firm to do the abductions. I mean, that is wild, isn't it?

• 18:09David McCloskey?

  Yeah, and and he's paid over 100,000 euros for his trouble. So again, we're back to this kind of mercenary theme that runs through his his motivation.

• 18:19Gordon Corera?

  We should say, as we always do, that August Hanning has firstly denied the allegations that he's involved in spying and that he's involved in the abduction and that case is going on.

• 18:30David McCloskey?

  He does admit that he was hired by Christina Block though, right? He's not, he's not denying that. He's saying that he was hired to come up with strategies to help retrieve the children and that he felt sorry for her because she was so emotionally strained as a result of the custody battle. But he does deny, he does deny hiring Israeli kidnappers to bring the children back to to Germany, should say.

• 18:55Gordon Corera?

  So the, I mean, it is wild. And so it looks like the police are investigating the kidnapping case. And then Hamburg police are investigating, well, how did the kidnapping take place? And then they come across August Hanning has having, you know, helped put Christina Block in terms of putting her in touch with the Israelis. Then they start investigating him. And then it looks like that's how they find the files. And the the fact that he's got 2000 documents stashed at home and that he's in contact with a with someone who's been in the BND. So that's how the whole thing unravels. Not some kind of crazy mole hunt, but a steakhouse heiress and an abduction. I mean, it's wild, isn't it?

• 19:37David McCloskey?

  It it is absolutely wild. And I think that it also comes at a particularly sensitive time and important time for the German security services and the BND, which which I think is also very interesting. Because we have just had in August, legislation go through the German cabinet. I mean, essentially to turn the BND from a defensive service into a service that can actually try to repel Russian cyber attacks, sabotage, that could hold on to data longer than it had in the past, that could collect surveillance information overseas in a way that it hadn't been able to before.

• 20:21David McCloskey?

  And this is coming at a time where, I mean, it's it's politically contested. And now we have a former head of the BND who's who's been arrested on on treason charges.

• 20:31Gordon Corera?

  Okay, so there with the BND going through a tricky time, let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll explore those new powers and what's really going on with the BND in more detail. See you after the break.

• 21:19David McCloskey?

  Well, welcome back. There's kind of two angles here, right? There's what does this mean for the BND and these massive security reforms that are trying to make their way through the the German parliament? And what does it mean also? We talked about this a little bit before the break, but I think it's worth drawing it out. What does it mean for the BND's allies? What does it mean for intelligence agencies that share with the BND like CIA and SIS?

• 21:45Gordon Corera?

  It is really sensitive because it's come at a really interesting moment for the BND. Because if you look back historically, it's not been, you know, seen as one of the more aggressive top tier services, you know? It doesn't do a lot of kind of collection.

• 21:59David McCloskey?

  It's interesting. We talk about them as a foreign intelligence service. They are, but in that report labeling them the fifth best European spy agency, there was a great quote for one of the one of the intelligence officers who had actually participated at the survey, who referred to the BND as essentially a think tank, like a glorified research group. And it's really kind of a repository for information that's passed to the Germans. It's a bit less of a spy agency in the way you think about CIA and MI6.

• 22:32Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, and it's interesting because, I mean, in the early days, it was quite, you know, the very early days at the start of the Cold War was quite badly penetrated by the Soviets in particular. There's a very big agent there. I mean, recently, in 2022, there was a high ranking German intelligence officer and he'd been director of technical reconnaissance, who gets arrested and charged with treason for the Russians for passing secrets to Russia and passing very, very classified material. They had a bad time in the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The then BND chief Bruno Karl was in Ukraine as the invasion happens in February 2022 because they didn't believe it was going to happen. And then he has to be evacuated by special forces on the ground because the airspace is closed,

• 23:16Gordon Corera?

  which again was a kind of slightly embarrassing case. So they've had a kind of tough time. But you're you're right, you were saying earlier that that there has been this sense that they're trying to change. And just on Monday, so the day before the arrests, the current head of the BND, Martin Jaeger, was was talking to the German parliament and talking about the risks of escalation with Russia. He cited the Leipzig drone attack, which we talked about a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, and said, you know, the world is getting more dangerous. We need to be more aggressive. He said, we will be a different, a new BND. We're going to get new powers and that entails greater responsibility.

• 23:58Gordon Corera?

  So so there's been this push to give the more aggressive powers to kind of deal with Russian sabotage in particular and kind of hit back at that. And that's something that they've been just right now in the process of taking on, haven't they?

• 24:12David McCloskey?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that the this might be over the last year or two, the BND's budget has gone up by a bit over 25% already. You have this legislation, which, I mean, is going to do things. It's going to sound kind of crazy to listeners of this pod who are familiar with us talking about the CIA and MI6 and the Russians and Mossad. But I mean, things like allowing the BND to hold data for extended periods of time so they can go back and search it, allowing them to actually respond to Russian cyber attacks and sabotage by trying to, you know, sort of do hackbacks and things like that. They haven't been allowed to do that yet. I mean, even things like the so the Leipzig attack or attempted attack that we talked about,

• 24:57David McCloskey?

  where you have these sort of disposable agents that are oftentimes being paid with crypto. The BND and Germany's internal security services don't have the authorities right now to disrupt those payments, to stop them from happening. So we're not talking about the Germans being unleashed to do all kinds of crazy covert action in Ukraine and elsewhere. We're talking about sort of basic, you know, security agency authorities that exist across most of the West. The Germans don't have them. And I think what's really interesting about this case is is it going to to sort of create fuel for oftentimes people on the on the far right in Germany and far left, who are suspicious of the BND and its authorities?

• 25:42David McCloskey?

  Or is it going to help the chancellor by showing? And there's precedent for this in Europe too, by showing that the BND really needs to be reformed and it needs to be effective because Hanning, you know, you could sort of trot him out and say, this is this is what happens when we don't have an effective intelligence services. Not only does it produce somewhat like this, but we miss it for we do not see this for 16 years. And, you know, I think it's it's an open question at this point, but my my my sense, I just it's it's a, you know, sort of a guess, is that it will actually it will create more of an impulse to give the BND more authority and make it a serious service.

• 26:27David McCloskey?

  What do you what do you think?

• 26:29Gordon Corera?

  No, I think I think that's possible. I think there's a realization because it is a spy service, which of course in Germany has you've got the history of, you know, the Nazi period in the Gestapo and in East Germany, the Stasi as kind of oppressive spy services. So there is a very strong culture of restraint and privacy in the German system. But we've seen it in the military now. They are, you know, pushing to rearm. And I think you're seeing it in the intelligence world. They're pushing to rearm because of the situation they're in and because of the Russian threat, the Russian sabotage threat. And I don't think that this will change that dynamic fundamentally, but it may, you're right, give this sense of we do need to change, you know? We need to have a more a more powerful, effective kind of intelligence service,

• 27:13Gordon Corera?

  which is more modern and more kind of aggressive to some extent to be able to deal with these kind of threats. So I think that's right. So should we look at one other area, which is, you know, what's the fallout likely to be for allies? I mean, how do you think it's going to kind of play out? I mean, I think the Brits will certainly be looking at this and saying, you know, what of our reporting could have been shared and where might it have ended up? And it's one thing if it ends up with August Hanning in his shed, you know, with a stack of 2000 documents. It's another thing if it ends up, well, you know, in Azerbaijan or somewhere else. But I guess it depends on how sensitive that reporting might be. I mean, if it's just the kind of briefing documents, high level, then perhaps it's not so bad. But it's still, I mean, it's not going to help the BND, is it?

• 27:56Gordon Corera?

  Because so much of this, I mean, you know, this is about trust and sharing when it comes to secrets.

• 28:02David McCloskey?

  It is. I do think, I mean, obviously it doesn't help the BND. This is reputationally quite awful. At the same time, I do think their response, you know, of bringing this out into the open, pressing charges, pressing very serious charges, espionage and treason, I mean, unprecedented, shows it's not only a backward looking view of how serious this is, but I think it's a forward looking signal to Germans, but also to foreign partners, that the BND can be trusted or is hoping to be trusted, to be a serious service that's worthy of its of its partners' trust. And I think the seriousness of the charges, I mean, I would I would applaud the the Germans for doing this.

• 28:47David McCloskey?

  Because I think if, you know, you think German spy case, there's a precedent here for these kind of things being sort of shoved aside and not dealt with seriously. The Germans have chosen to to go exactly the opposite direction, which I think is is really laudable. But I mean, when you dig down into what's happening right now at the MI6 or CIA stationed in Berlin with these liaison relationships, I mean, my sense is that it's it's a race to try to get access to everything that Hanning had. Liaise with the Germans to figure out where it went as they're debriefing Hanning and questioning him. And then looking in that pile and saying, well, which of this stuff is mine? Is it CIA liaison reporting?

• 29:31David McCloskey?

  Is it NSA? Is it Five Eyes? You know, intercepts came from the Five Eyes that were cleared for passage to the Germans, as as often happens. And then looking at that, you know, is there any way for a hostile service? And that could be the Azerbaijanis or it could be the Turks or it could be the Russians or anybody else that this may have gotten to. Is there any way for them to identify human sources from this information that are currently in place or to compromise signals intelligence or other technical platforms as a result of having those intercepts? And those that damage assessment is absolutely key.

• 30:12David McCloskey?

  And it actually, I mean, sort of paradoxically, it means that in the coming weeks, there needs to be more cooperation with the BND, not less.

• 30:21Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, I mean, there have been some cases in the past, I think, where trust has collapsed within Europe. Particularly, I remember there was a point where everyone, including the Brits, basically stopped sharing with the Austrians because they were worried that the Austrians were leaky to the Russians, partly because of the politics in in Austria at the time. But Germany is such a big country and, you know, is strategically so important. You've got to work with the BND. You've got to talk to them, you know, there's so much going on. I can't imagine that liaison or that relationship really stopping fundamentally. You know, I it's just it's too important. And this is this looks too much like one guy who was a bad egg. Potentially, allegedly, who should have been called.

• 31:03David McCloskey?

  Yeah, I think that's right. And also, the legislative context right now around these security reforms, I mean, these are reforms that every Western intelligence partner of the Germans wants to see passed. You know, it's through the cabinet, they want to see it go through the parliament. You don't want to be pulling back from the BND right now at a moment when you want to actively help them as they progress from, frankly, an agency that couldn't do much against the Russian threat to one that could, over the coming years, become a real partner, you know, to combat that kind of Russian hybrid warfare we talked about a few weeks ago. The Germans are really critical to that. And

• 31:46David McCloskey?

  if you back away from the BND or mistreat them publicly or cut off anything, you know, as sort of some kind of signal, it's gonna, I think it's gonna be very counterproductive. I don't, I don't see that happening.

• 31:57Gordon Corera?

  No, I think the one thing I do see happening is a lot more questions being asked when former intelligence chiefs or officials go into the private sector and do consulting.

• 32:05David McCloskey?

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 32:06Gordon Corera?

  I mean, in Germany, I think that's the case. We've had some cases in the US where people have been called up in, you know, have they then got too close into foreign states? But this is, you know, this is extraordinary because you've got a former chief, a former head, and you've got his source allegedly being still in the agency and, you know, supplying all that material. You know, it's a really, you know, interesting kind of complicated case, but raises kind of profound questions about, you know, money, consulting and relationships between people who are out and people who are still in, which I think, you know, that I think may be one of the lessons, which I think other services as well as the BND will be looking at and going, do we have to look quite carefully at this to make sure there isn't something untoward going on?

• 32:47David McCloskey?

  I agree, but also, you know, at the same time, I have, here's my advice for intel chiefs who retire and then set up their own consulting practices. Don't recruit a former aide and pay them money for classified documents to be hauled out of your service, you know? So it's kind of like, he did something, this, in many ways, I agree with you and all the kind of grayness that can exist at these private consulting shops. And certainly, when you come out of a service and you've been at a senior level, you have a lot of stuff in your head, you have information, you have access to networks that exist because of

• 33:28David McCloskey?

  what you did inside the spy agency. But in this case, it's, it's just, he's so clearly crossed the line into something that looks like, I mean, it just straight up, he was running a source inside the BND. It just happened to be his former aide.

• 33:44Gordon Corera?

  I guess as we finish, that's your bit of advice. My bit of advice is be careful putting steakhouse heiresses in touch with Israeli private intelligence contractors to adopt children. I mean, I think that's possibly, you know, one bit of free advice out there for people.

• 34:01David McCloskey?

  There's a lot of, I mean, this, there's a lot of wisdom that's come out of this episode, I think unexpectedly. So basically, some simple but powerful rules to live a good life.

• 34:10Gordon Corera?

  Good advice to any former spies out there listening. So there we are. I think that's where we should leave it. Before, you know, before we give any more advice, you know, we kind of don't want to get too far down that and become consultants ourselves, offering advice on how to do it. But we've got episode four of Kim Philby coming out on Monday, so do listen out for that as the wild story of someone who really was a mole for the Russians and doing the bad stuff from inside British intelligence. It's not just the Germans who have bad eggs. We have them too in Britain, and Kim Philby was one of them. That's coming out on Monday. Do join the Declassified Club if you want to binge those episodes. And also, of course, you get access to some amazing bonus episodes. And there's a great episode, isn't there, with Paul Greengrass, the film director?

• 34:52David McCloskey?

  Indeed.

• 34:52Gordon Corera?

  Which is terrific, where he's talking about his experience of investigating mole hunts as a journalist, amongst other things. And also, you can subscribe to our newsletter at therestisclassified.com/newsletter. And that's also where you can join the club. So there we go. Thanks to the Germans for giving us a bit of news this week.

• 35:10David McCloskey?

  Indeed.

• 35:10Gordon Corera?

  And we'll see you next time.

• 35:12David McCloskey?

  We'll see you next time.

• 35:20Speaker 04

  Here we are getting a statement from Number Ten. On that flight, with 350 passengers on board.

• 35:29Speaker 05

  The Great Game: Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.

• 35:36Speaker 06

  We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 35:44Speaker 04

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 35:47Speaker 05

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself: you want to play, or not?

• 35:54Speaker 02

  You're the Prime Minister! And you've done... NOTHING!

• 36:01Speaker 02

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 36:03Speaker 05

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