The Federal Intelligence Service (, ; BND) is the foreign
intelligence agency
An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, Intelligence analysis, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy obj ...
of
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
, directly subordinate to the
Chancellor's Office. The
BND headquarters is located in central
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
. The BND has 300 locations in Germany and foreign countries. In 2016, it employed around 6,500 people; 10% of them are military personnel who are formally employed by the Office for Military Sciences. The BND is the largest agency of the
German Intelligence Community.
The BND was founded during the
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
in 1956 as the official foreign intelligence agency of
West Germany
West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...
, which had recently joined
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...
, and in close cooperation with the
CIA. It was the successor to the earlier
Gehlen Organization, often known simply as "The Organization" or "The Org", a West German intelligence organization affiliated with the CIA whose existence had not been officially acknowledged. The most central figure in the BND's history was general
Reinhard Gehlen, the leader of the Gehlen Organization and later the founding president of the BND, who was regarded as "one of the most legendary Cold War spymasters." From the early days of the Cold War the Gehlen Organization and later the BND had an intimate cooperation with the CIA, and often was the western intelligence community's only eyes and ears on the ground in the
Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, the Workers Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were a ...
. The BND is also regarded as one of the best informed intelligence services in regards to the
Middle East
The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq.
The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...
from the 1960s. The BND was quickly established as the western world's second largest intelligence agency, second only to the CIA. Both Russia and the Middle East remain important focuses of the BND's activities, in addition to
violent non-state actor
In international relations, violent non-state actors (VNSAs), also known as non-state armed actors or non-state armed groups (NSAGs), are individuals or groups that are wholly or partly independent of governments and which threaten or use viole ...
s.
The BND today acts as an
early warning system
An early warning system is a warning system that can be implemented as a chain of information communication systems and comprises sensors, event detection and decision subsystems for early identification of hazards. They work together to fore ...
to alert the German
government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...
to
threat
A threat is a communication of intent to inflict harm or loss on another person. Intimidation is a tactic used between conflicting parties to make the other timid or psychologically insecure for coercion or control. The act of intimidation f ...
s to German interests from abroad. It depends heavily on
wiretapping
Wiretapping, also known as wire tapping or telephone tapping, is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitoring connecti ...
and
electronic surveillance of
international communication
International communication (also referred to as the ''study of global communication'' or transnational communication) is the communication practice that occurs across international borders. The need for international communication was due to th ...
s. It collects and evaluates information on a variety of areas such as international non-state terrorism, weapons of mass destruction proliferation and illegal transfer of technology,
organized crime
Organized crime is a category of transnational organized crime, transnational, national, or local group of centralized enterprises run to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally thought of as a f ...
, weapons and drug trafficking, money laundering, illegal migration and
information warfare
Information warfare (IW) is the battlespace use and management of information and communication technology (ICT) in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent. It is different from ''cyberwarfare'' that attacks computers, software, and ...
. As Germany's only overseas intelligence service, the BND gathers both
military
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a d ...
and
civil intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...
. While the (KSA) of the also fulfills this mission, it is not an intelligence service. There is close cooperation between the BND and the KSA.
The domestic
secret service
A secret service is a government agency, intelligence agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For i ...
counterparts of the BND are the
Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution ( or BfV, often ''Bundesverfassungsschutz'') is Germany's federal domestic intelligence agency. Together with the Landesämter für Verfassungsschutz (LfV) at the state level, the fed ...
(', or BfV) and 16 counterparts at the state level ' (State Offices for the Protection of the Constitution); there is also a separate military intelligence organisation, the
Military Counterintelligence Service (', or MAD).
History

The predecessor of the BND was the German eastern military intelligence agency during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, the ' or FHO Section in the General Staff, led by Major General
Reinhard Gehlen. Its main purpose was to collect information on the Red Army. After the war Gehlen worked with the U.S. occupation forces in West Germany.
In 1946 he set up an intelligence agency informally known as the
Gehlen Organization or simply "The Org" He recruited some of his former co-workers at Gestapo Trier: Dietmar Lermen, Heinrich Hädderich, August Hill, Friedrich Walz, Albert Schmidt, and Friedrich Heinrich Busch. Many had been operatives of Admiral
Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Franz Canaris (1 January 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a admiral (Germany), German admiral and the chief of the ''Abwehr'' (the German military intelligence, military-intelligence service) from 1935 to 1944. Initially a supporter of Ad ...
' wartime (counter-intelligence) organization, but Gehlen also recruited people from the former ' (SD),
SS and
Gestapo
The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
, after their release by the
Allies. The latter recruits were controversial because the SS and its associated groups were notoriously the perpetrators of many
Nazi atrocities during the war.
The organization worked at first almost exclusively for the CIA, which contributed funding, equipment, cars, gasoline and other materials.
On 1 April 1956 the ''Bundesnachrichtendienst'' was created from the Gehlen Organization, and was transferred to the
West German
West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republic after its capital c ...
government, with all staff. Reinhard Gehlen became President of the BND and remained its head until 1968.
The BND and the Gestapo
Several publications have criticized Gehlen and his organizations for hiring ex-Nazis. An article in ''
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'' on 29 June 2018 made this statement about some of the BND employees:
"Operating until 1956, when it was superseded by the BND, the Gehlen Organisation was allowed to employ at least 100 former Gestapo or SS officers. ... Among them were Adolf Eichmann
Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ;"Eichmann"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; 19 March 1906 – 1 Ju ...
's deputy Alois Brunner
Alois Brunner (8 April 1912 – December 2001 or 2010) was an Austrian officer who held the rank of (captain) during World War II. Brunner played a significant role in the implementation of the Holocaust through rounding up and deporting Jews in ...
, who would go on to die of old age despite having sent more than 100,000 Jews to ghettos or internment camps, and ex-SS major Emil Augsburg. ... Many ex-Nazi functionaries including Silberbauer, the captor of Anne Frank
Annelies Marie Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – February or March 1945)Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new li ...
, transferred over from the Gehlen Organisation to the BND. ... Instead of expelling them, the BND even seems to have been willing to recruit more of them – at least for a few years".
The authors of the book ''A Nazi Past: Recasting German Identity in Postwar Europe'' state that Reinhard Gehlen simply did not want to know the backgrounds of the men that the BND hired in the 1950s. The American
National Security Archive
The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy, the N ...
states that "he employed numerous former Nazis and known war criminals".
James H. Critchfield of the
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
worked with the Gehlen Organization from 1949 to 1956, and defended Gehlen. In 2001, Critchfield wrote in ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'' that "almost everything negative that has been written about Gehlen
s an
S, or s, is the nineteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and other latin alphabets worldwide. Its name in English is ''ess'' (pronounced ), plural ''esses''.
...
ardent ex-Nazi, one of Hitler's war criminals ... is all far from the fact." Critchfield added that Gehlen hired former
Sicherheitsdienst
' (, "Security Service"), full title ' ("Security Service of the ''Reichsführer-SS''"), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the Schutzstaffel, SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence ...
(Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS) men "reluctantly, under pressure from German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to deal with 'the avalanche of subversion hitting them from East Germany.'"
From 2011 to 2018, an independent commission of historians studied the history of the BND in the era of Reinhard Gehlen. The results are published in comprehensive studies. So far (as of April 2020) eleven volumes have been published.
Operations
1960s
During the first years of oversight by the State Secretary in the federal chancellery of
Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman and politician who served as the first Chancellor of Germany, chancellor of West Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of th ...
of the operation in
Pullach
Pullach, officially Pullach i. Isartal (, ), is a municipality in the district of Munich (district), Munich in Bavaria in Germany. It lies on the Isar Valley Railway and is served by the S7 (Munich), S 7 line of the Munich S-Bahn, at the Großh ...
,
Munich District
Munich () is a ''Landkreis'' (district) in Bavaria, Germany. It borders (from the north and clockwise) the districts of Dachau, Freising, Erding, Ebersberg, Rosenheim, Miesbach, Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen, Starnberg, Fürstenfeldbruck, and alm ...
,
Bavaria
Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...
, the BND continued the ways of its forebear, the Gehlen Organization.
The BND racked up its initial east–west cold war successes by concentrating on
East Germany
East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...
. The BND's reach encompassed the highest political and military levels of the GDR regime. They knew the carrying capacity of every bridge, the bed count of every hospital, the length of every airfield, the width and level of maintenance of the roads that Soviet armor and infantry divisions would have to traverse in a potential attack on the West. Almost every sphere of eastern life was known to the BND.
Unsung analysts at Pullach, with their contacts in the East, figuratively functioned as flies on the wall in ministries and military conferences. When the Soviet KGB suspected an East German army intelligence officer, a lieutenant colonel and BND agent, of spying, the Soviets investigated and shadowed him. The BND was positioned and able to inject forged reports implying that the loose spy was actually the KGB investigator, who was then arrested by the Soviets and shipped off to Moscow. Not knowing how long the caper would stay under wraps, the real spy was told to be ready for recall; he made his move to the West at the appropriate time.
The East German regime, however, fought back. With still unhindered flight to the west a possibility, infiltration started on a grand scale and a reversal of sorts took hold. During the early 1960s as many as 90% of the BND's lower-level informants in East Germany worked as
double agent
In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...
s for the East German security service, later known as
Stasi
The Ministry for State Security (, ; abbreviated MfS), commonly known as the (, an abbreviation of ), was the Intelligence agency, state security service and secret police of East Germany from 1950 to 1990. It was one of the most repressive pol ...
. Several informants in East Berlin reported in June and July 1961 of street closures, clearing of fields, accumulation of building materials and police and army deployments in specific parts of the eastern sector, as well as other measures that BND determined could lead to a division of the city. However, the agency was reluctant to report communist initiatives and had no knowledge of the scope and timing because of conflicting inputs. The erection of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 thus came as a surprise, and the BND's performance in the political field was thereafter often wrong and remained spotty and unimpressive.
[Höhne & Zolling, p. 266]
There was a great success for the Federal Intelligence Service during the
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis () in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of Nuclear weapons d ...
. In 1962, the BND was the first Western
intelligence service
An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives.
Means of info ...
to have information about the stationing of
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
medium-range missiles on the
caribbean island and passed it on to the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
. Between 1959 and 1961,
Reinhard Gehlen called on
Washington several times in vain to "insert the dangerous
communist
Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...
bastion, which at the same time represents an excellent starting point for the communist infiltration of
Latin America
Latin America is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geogr ...
, into the
SAsphere of power by rapid access." Gehlen's influence on the US government should not be underestimated, because the BND was able to regularly provide the
CIA with detailed information about Soviet arms deliveries through its very good sources in Cuba. There are indications that the secret service was also informed about military actions against Cuba. Ten days before the
Bay of Pigs invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called or after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by the United States of America and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front ...
,
Gehlen reported to
Bonn
Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...
: "Within a relatively short period of time, large-scale military operations to defeat
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and President of Cuba, president ...
will begin." In 1962, the BND also found out from its sources, the Cuban exiles living in Miami, that Cuba was also trying to get hold of weapons through German dealers. According to a BND report, Cuba was also able to recruit four former
Waffen-SS
The (; ) was the military branch, combat branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscr ...
officers as instructors for the Cuban armed forces. However, the identity of the men was blacked out in the report.
"This negative view of BND was certainly not justified during ...
967 and1968." The BND's military work "had been outstanding",
and in certain sectors of the intelligence field the BND still showed brilliance: in Latin America and in the Middle East it was regarded as the best-informed secret service.
[Höhne & Zolling, p. 244]
The BND offered a fair and reliable amount of intelligence on
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
and
Soviet-bloc forces in Eastern Europe, regarding the elaboration of a
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...
warning system against any Soviet operations against NATO territory, in close cooperation with the
Bundeswehr
The (, ''Federal Defence'') are the armed forces of the Germany, Federal Republic of Germany. The is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part consists of the four armed forces: Germ ...
(German Armed Forces).
One high point of BND intelligence work culminated in its early June 1967 forecast – almost to the hour – of the outbreak of the
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states, primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan from 5 to 10June ...
in the Middle East on 5 June 1967.
According to declassified transcripts of a
United States National Security Council
The United States National Security Council (NSC) is the national security council used by the president of the United States for consideration of national security, military, and Foreign relations of the United States, foreign policy matter ...
meeting on 2 June 1967, CIA Director
Richard Helms interrupted Secretary of State
Dean Rusk
David Dean Rusk (February 9, 1909December 20, 1994) was the United States secretary of state from 1961 to 1969 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the second-longest serving secretary of state after Cordell Hull from the ...
with "reliable information" – contrary to Rusk's presentation – that the Israelis would attack on a certain day and time. Rusk shot back: "That is quite out of the question. Our ambassador in Tel Aviv assured me only yesterday that everything was normal." Helms replied: "I am sorry, but I adhere to my opinion. The Israelis will strike and their object will be to end the war in their favor with extreme rapidity." President Lyndon Johnson then asked Helms for the source of his information. Helms said: "Mr. President, I have it from an allied secret service. The report is absolutely reliable." Helms' information came from the BND.
A further laudable success involved the BND's activity during the
Czech crisis in 1968; by then, the agency was led by the second president, Gerhard Wessel. With Pullach cryptography fully functioning, the BND predicted an invasion of Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia. CIA analysts on the other hand did not support the notion of "fraternal assistance" by the satellite states of Moscow; and US ambassador to the Soviet Union,
Llewellyn Thompson, quite irritated, called the secret BND report he was given "a German fabrication".
At 23:11 on 20 August 1968, BND radar operators first observed abnormal activity over Czech airspace. An agent on the ground in Prague called a BND out-station in Bavaria: "The Russians are coming." Warsaw Pact forces had moved as forecast.
However, the slowly sinking efficiency of BND in the last years of Reinhard Gehlen became evident. By 1961, it was clear that the BND employed some men who were Soviet "moles"; they had come from the earlier Gehlen Organization. One mole, Heinz Felfe, was convicted of treason in 1963. Others were not uncovered during Gehlen's term in office.
Gehlen's refusal to correct reports with questionable content strained the organization's credibility, and dazzling achievements became an infrequent commodity. A veteran agent remarked at the time that the BND pond then contained some sardines, though a few years earlier the pond had been alive with sharks.
The fact that the BND could score certain successes despite East German communist Stasi interference, internal malpractice, inefficiencies and infighting, was primarily due to select members of the staff who took it upon themselves to step up and overcome then existing maladies. Abdication of responsibility by Reinhard Gehlen was the malignancy; cronyism remained pervasive, even nepotism (at one time Gehlen had 16 members of his extended family on the BND payroll).
[Höhne & Zolling, p. 245] Only slowly did the younger generation then advance to substitute new ideas for some of the bad habits caused mainly by Gehlen's semi-retired attitude and frequent holiday absences.
Gehlen was forced out in April 1968 due to "political scandal within the ranks", according to one source. His successor,
Bundeswehr
The (, ''Federal Defence'') are the armed forces of the Germany, Federal Republic of Germany. The is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part consists of the four armed forces: Germ ...
Brigadier General Gerhard Wessel, immediately called for a program of modernization and streamlining. With political changes in the West German government and a reflection that BND was at a low level of efficiency, the service began to rebuild. Years later, Wessel's obituary in the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'', reported that he "is credited with modernizing the BND by hiring academic analysts and electronics specialists".
Reinhard Gehlen's memoirs, ''The Service, The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen'' (English title), were published in 1977, (World Publishers, New York). A Review of the book published by the CIA makes this comment about Gehlen's achievements and management style:
"Gehlen's descriptions of most of his so-called successes in the political intelligence field are, in my opinion, either wishful thinking or self-delusion. ... Gehlen was never a good clandestine operator, nor was he a particularly good administrator. And therein lay his failures. The Gehlen Organization/BND always had a good record in the collection of military and economic intelligence on East Germany and the Soviet forces there. But this information, for the most part, came from observation and not from clandestine penetration".
1970s
The agency's second president, Gerhard Wessel, retired in 1978. According to his obituary in the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'' in August 2002, the "former intelligence officer in Adolf Hitler's anti-Soviet spy operations" ... "is credited with modernizing the BND by hiring academic analysts and electronics specialists".
''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' News Service obituary lauded the BND's many successes under Wessel but noted that there had been "a number of incidents of East Germans infiltrating the West German government, particularly intelligence agencies, on Gen. Wessel's watch".
Munich Olympic bombings
The
kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes at the
1972 Olympics in Munich was a watershed event for the BND, following early warnings from other countries, because it led the agency to build counter-terrorism capabilities.
Acquisition of Crypto AG
In 1970 the CIA and the BND bought the Swiss informations and communication security firm
Crypto AG
Crypto AG was a Swiss company specialising in communications and information security founded by Boris Hagelin in 1952. The company was secretly purchased in 1970 by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and West German Federal Intelligence Se ...
, for $5.75 million. Already in 1967 the BND tried, together with the French intelligence service, to buy the company from its founder Robert Hagelin. This deal though fell through due to Hagelin, who was already cooperating with the CIA, refusing. The CIA at the time did not cooperate with the French. In 1969, after negotiations with the US, the BND approached Hagelin anew and bought the company together with the US intelligence service. Crypto AG produced and sold radio, Ethernet, STM, GSM, phone and fax encryption systems worldwide. Its clients included Iran, Libya, military juntas in Latin America, nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, and even the Vatican. The BND and the CIA rigged the company's devices so they could easily decipher the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages.
1980s
Libyan bombings in Germany
In 1986, the BND deciphered the report of the
Libya
Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya border, the east, Sudan to Libya–Sudan border, the southeast, Chad to Chad–L ...
n Embassy in East Berlin regarding the "successful" implementation of the
1986 Berlin discotheque bombing.
Infiltration into Stasi HQ
According to an interview with Stasi defector Col. Rainer Wiegand, BND agents were assigned to use the anti-Stasi protests in East Germany in order to covertly obtain files from Building No. 2, which houses the counterespionage directorate. Wiegand assisted by providing the blueprints of the building and indicated which offices the agents should prioritize.
Operation Summer Rain
Operation Summer Rain was a highly classified joint mission involving the
Federal Intelligence Service and
special units of the
German Armed Forces during the
Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s. The primary objective of the operation was to gather intelligence on the weapons systems utilized by Soviet forces.
1990s
Spying on journalists
In 2005, a public scandal erupted (dubbed the ''Journalistenskandal'', journalists scandal) over revelations that the BND had placed a number of German
journalist
A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism.
Roles
Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...
s under surveillance since the-mid 1990s, in an attempt to discover the source of information leaks from the BND regarding the activities of the service in connection with the war in Iraq and the "war against terror". The Bundestag constituted an investigative committee ("Parlamentarischer Untersuchungsausschuss") to investigate the allegations. The committee tasked the former Federal Appellate Court (Bundesgerichtshof) judge Dr. as special investigator, who published a report confirming illegal BND operations involving and targeting journalists between 1993 and 2005.
As a consequence, the Chancellery issued an executive order banning BND operational measures against journalists with the aim to protect the service.
The committee published a final report in 2009, which mostly confirmed the allegations, identifying the intent to protect the BND from disclosure of classified information and finding a lack of oversight within the senior leadership of the service but did not identify any responsible members from within the government.
Tiitinen list
In 1990, BND gave the
Finnish Security Intelligence Service the so-called
Tiitinen list—which supposedly contains names of Finns who were believed to have links to
Stasi
The Ministry for State Security (, ; abbreviated MfS), commonly known as the (, an abbreviation of ), was the Intelligence agency, state security service and secret police of East Germany from 1950 to 1990. It was one of the most repressive pol ...
. The list was classified and locked in a safe after the Director of the Finnish Security Intelligence Service, Seppo Tiitinen, and the President of Finland,
Mauno Koivisto
Mauno Henrik Koivisto (, 25 November 1923 – 12 May 2017) was a Finnish politician who served as the ninth president of Finland from 1982 to 1994. He also served as the country's prime minister twice, from 1968 to 1970 and again from 1979 to 19 ...
, determined that it was based on vague hints instead of hard evidence.
Unlicensed armament exports
In the wake of the
German reunification
German reunification () was the process of re-establishing Germany as a single sovereign state, which began on 9 November 1989 and culminated on 3 October 1990 with the dissolution of the East Germany, German Democratic Republic and the int ...
in 1991, Israel requested access to GDR weapon systems. In March 1991 a parliamentary commission decided to not give the requested weapons to Israel. Six month later, under the supervision of BND-director Volker Foertsch, the service, in conjunction with elements within the
Federal Ministry of Defence, still without political clearance to do so, arranged several transfers of the requested GDR weapon systems (an
SA-6 system, a
ZSU-23/4 and other equipment) to Israel. The transfers were shipped using the ports and airports of Hamburg,
Wilhelmshaven
Wilhelmshaven (, ''Wilhelm's Harbour''; Northern Low Saxon: ''Willemshaven'') is a coastal town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the western side of the Jade Bight, a bay of the North Sea, and has a population of 76,089. Wilhelmsha ...
,
Manching
Manching () is a municipality in the district of Pfaffenhofen, in Bavaria, Germany. It is situated on the river Paar, 7 km southeast of Ingolstadt. In the late Iron Age, there was a Celtic settlement, the Oppidum of Manching, on the locati ...
and
Alhorn. In late 1991, a shipment labeled "agricultural machinery" was unexpectedly inspected by the
Wasserschutzpolizei
The (, WSP - literally translated "Water Protection Police" in German language, German) is the river police that patrols the waterways, lakes and harbours of Germany around the clock. The WSP are part of the (State Police). The Federal Po ...
and weapons were discovered. A state’s attorney started an investigation and parliamentary designated BND-overseer
Willy Wimmer concluded, that control over the BND has been lost. An exasperated Chancellor
Helmut Kohl
Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (; 3 April 1930 – 16 June 2017) was a German politician who served as chancellor of Germany and governed the ''Federal Republic'' from 1982 to 1998. He was leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1973 to ...
called the service "idiots". A few weeks later BND president
Konrad Porzner and minister of defence
Gerhard Stoltenberg rated the transfers as not to be problematic, since the equipment was only handed over for trials and was supposed to be returned afterwards.
2000s
Promoting the invasion of Iraq
On 5 February 2003,
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell ( ; – ) was an Americans, American diplomat, and army officer who was the 65th United States secretary of state from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African-American to hold the office. He was the 15th National Security ...
made the case for a military attack on Iraq in front of the UN Security Council. Powell supported his case with information received from the BND, instead of Mr.
Hans Blix
Hans Martin Blix (; born 28 June 1928) is a Swedish diplomat and politician for the Liberal People's Party. He was Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs (1978–1979) and later became the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Blix wa ...
and the
IAEA
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. It was established in 1957 ...
. The BND had collected intelligence from an informant known as
Rafid al-Janabi alias CURVEBALL, who claimed Iraq would be in possession of
Weapons of Mass Destruction
A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a Biological agent, biological, chemical weapon, chemical, Radiological weapon, radiological, nuclear weapon, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill or significantly harm many people or cause great dam ...
, apart from torturing and killing over 1,000 dissidents each year, for over 20 years. Rafid was employed before and after the 2003 incident which ultimately led to the
invasion of Iraq. The payments of 3,000 Euros monthly were made by a cover firm called Thiele und Friedrichs (Munich).
As a result of the premature cancellation, al-Janabi filed a lawsuit at the Munich labour court and won the case.
Several former senior BND officials publicly stated that the agency had repeatedly warned the CIA not to take Curveball's information as fact. Hanning, the BND president at the time, even formulated his concerns about that in a letter to then CIA Director
George Tenet
George John Tenet (born January 5, 1953) is an American intelligence official and academic who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, as well as a Distinguished Professor in the Pr ...
. The CIA however ignored those warnings and presented the information as facts.
Israel vs. Lebanon
Following the
2006 Lebanon War
The 2006 Lebanon War was a 34-day armed conflict in Lebanon, fought between Hezbollah and Israel. The war started on 12 July 2006, and continued until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect in the morning on 14 August 2006, thoug ...
, the BND mediated secret negotiations between
Israel
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
and
Hezbollah
Hezbollah ( ; , , ) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. I ...
, eventually leading up to the
2008 Israel–Hezbollah prisoner exchange.
Fighting tax evasion
In the beginning of 2008, it was revealed that the BND had managed to recruit excellent sources within
Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein (, ; ; ), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein ( ), is a Landlocked country#Doubly landlocked, doubly landlocked Swiss Standard German, German-speaking microstate in the Central European Alps, between Austria in the east ...
banks and had been conducting espionage operations in the principality since the beginning of the 2000s. The BND mediated the German Finance Ministry's $7.3 million acquisition of a
CD from a former employee of the
LGT Group
LGT Group is the largest royal family-owned private banking and asset management group in the world. LGT, originally known as The Liechtenstein Global Trust, is owned by the princely House of Liechtenstein through the Prince of Liechtenstein Fo ...
– a Liechtenstein bank owned by the country's ruling family. While the Finance Ministry defends the deal, saying it would result in several hundred millions of dollars in back tax payments, the sale remains controversial, as a government agency has paid for possibly
stolen data.
Kosovo
In November 2008, three German BND agents were arrested in
Kosovo
Kosovo, officially the Republic of Kosovo, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe with International recognition of Kosovo, partial diplomatic recognition. It is bordered by Albania to the southwest, Montenegro to the west, Serbia to the ...
for allegedly throwing a bomb at the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
International Civilian Office, which oversees Kosovo's governance. Later the "Army of the Republic of Kosovo" had accepted responsibility for the bomb attack. Laboratory tests had shown no evidence of the BND agents' involvement. However, the Germans were released only 10 days after they were arrested. It was suspected that the arrest was a revenge by Kosovo authorities for the BND report about organized crime in Kosovo which accuses Kosovo Prime Minister
Hashim Thaçi, as well as the former Prime Minister
Ramush Haradinaj of far-reaching involvement in organized crime.
Austria
According to reporting in ''
Der Standard
''Der Standard'' () is an Austrian daily newspaper published in Vienna. It is considered a newspaper of record for Austria.
History and profile
''Der Standard'' was founded by Oscar Bronner as a financial newspaper and published its first editio ...
'' and ''
profil'', the BND engaged in espionage in Austria between 1999 and 2006, spying on targets including the
International Atomic Energy Agency
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology, nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. It was ...
, the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC ) is an organization enabling the co-operation of leading oil-producing and oil-dependent countries in order to collectively influence the global oil market and maximize Profit (eco ...
, the
Austria Press Agency, embassies, and Austrian banks and government ministries.
The government of Austria has called on Germany to clarify the allegations.
2010s
In 2014, an employee of BND was arrested for handing over secret documents to the United States.
He was suspected of handing over documents about the committee investigating the
NSA spying in Germany.
The German government responded to this espionage by expelling the top
CIA official in Berlin.
In December 2016,
WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks () is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded in 2006 by ...
published 2,420 documents from the BND and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The published materials had been submitted in 2015 as part of a German parliamentary inquiry into the surveillance activities of the BND and its cooperation with the US
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
.
The BND has been reported to store 220 million sets of
metadata
Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive ...
every day. That is, they record with whom, when, where and for how long someone communicates. This data is supposedly collected across the world, but the exact locations remains unclear to this date. The
Bundestag committee investigating the NSA spying scandal has uncovered that the German intelligence agency intercepts communications traveling via both
satellites
A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scientif ...
and
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
cables. It seems certain that the metadata only come from "foreign dialed traffic", that is, from telephone conversations and text messages that are held and sent via mobile phones and satellites. Of these 220 million data amassed every day, one percent is archived for 10 years "for long-term analysis". Apparently though, this long-term storage doesn't hold any Internet communications, data from social networks, or emails.
In December 2022, a high-ranking employee of the BND was arrested on alleged treason. Carsten L. is said to have disclosed information from his professional activity to the Russian domestic secret service
FSB. The
Public Prosecutor General accuses him of treason ("Landesverrat") because it is said to have been state secrets.
New headquarters
The new BND headquarters in Berlin, near the former
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall (, ) was a guarded concrete Separation barrier, barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the East Germany, German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany). Construction of the B ...
, was completed in 2017. At the official opening in February 2019,
Angela Merkel
Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German retired politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She is the only woman to have held the office. She was Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005 and Leade ...
, then
Chancellor of Germany
The chancellor of Germany, officially the federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the head of the federal Cabinet of Germany, government of Germany. The chancellor is the chief executive of the Federal Government of Germany, ...
, made this statement: "In an often very confusing world, now, more urgently than ever, Germany needs a strong and efficient foreign intelligence service". At the time, some 4,000 employees were expected to work from this location, moving here from the former headquarters in
Pullach
Pullach, officially Pullach i. Isartal (, ), is a municipality in the district of Munich (district), Munich in Bavaria in Germany. It lies on the Isar Valley Railway and is served by the S7 (Munich), S 7 line of the Munich S-Bahn, at the Großh ...
, a suburb of
Munich
Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...
. The agency's total number of employees, in Germany and other countries, was approximately 6,500.
Structure
The Bundesnachrichtendienst is divided into the following departments:
# ''Regionale Auswertung und Beschaffung A (LA) und Regionale Auswertung und Beschaffung B (LB)'' (Regional Analysis and Procurement, A/B countries)
# ''Internationaler Terrorismus und Internationale Organisierte Kriminalität (TE)'' (
Terrorism
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ...
and
International Organised Crime)
# ''Proliferation, ABC-Waffen, Wehrtechnik (TW)'' (Proliferation, NBC Weapons)
# ''Technische Aufklärung (TA)'' (
Signal Intelligence)
# ''Gesamtlage und unterstützende Fachdienste (GU)'' (Situation Centre)
# ''Informationstechnik (IT)'' (Information Technology)
# ''Zentralabteilung (ZY)'' (Central Services)
# ''Eigensicherung (SI)'' (Security)
# ''Umzug (UM)'' (Relocation
o Berlin
Signals intelligence

BND is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence purposes with content of German interest. The department ''Technische Aufklärung'' (''TA'') is the most significant unit within BND and has the highest number of employees. The department is located at the former BND HQ in
Pullach
Pullach, officially Pullach i. Isartal (, ), is a municipality in the district of Munich (district), Munich in Bavaria in Germany. It lies on the Isar Valley Railway and is served by the S7 (Munich), S 7 line of the Munich S-Bahn, at the Großh ...
, Bavaria. One of the major
SIGINT
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is the act and field of intelligence-gathering by interception of ''signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly u ...
stations after WW2 was
Bad Aibling Station, which was operated for decades in cooperation with the
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
(NSA). Furthermore, Station Gablingen, Station Husum,
Station Rheinhausen,
Station Schöningen, Station
Starnberg-Söcking and
Station Stockdorf.
BND is not operating own satellites but using reconnaissance satellites of
Bundeswehr
The (, ''Federal Defence'') are the armed forces of the Germany, Federal Republic of Germany. The is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part consists of the four armed forces: Germ ...
(SARAH-system), of foreign partners or commercial providers. The first own BND-satellite project started in 2016. The systems are built by
OHB and should have been in service since 2022. After research by German public media the start was delayed and BND will probably not be able to launch satellites into space until 2025.
Internet interception
BND is intercepting the data traffic of
DE-CIX in Frankfurt, the largest European hub for internet traffic.
Details are available today on how the BND and NSA worked together between 2004 and 2008. In Frankfurt, Internet data was captured by filters and sent via a
Deutsche Telekom line to the BND headquarters in Pullach and from there to the Bad Aibling station, where the NSA and BND have a joint headquarters.
Presidents of the BND
The head of the Bundesnachrichtendienst is its
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
* President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment Film and television
*'' Præsident ...
. The following persons have held this office since 1956:
The president of the BND is a federal
Beamter
The German civil servants called ' (men, singular ', more commonly ') (women, singular ') have a privileged legal status compared to other German public employees (called '), who are generally subject to the same laws and regulations as employ ...
paid according to BBesO order B, B9,
which is in payment the equivalent of a lieutenant general.
Deputy
The President of the BND has three deputies: one Vice President, one Vice President for Military Affairs (Since December 2003), and one Vice President for Central Functions and Modernization (Possibly Since 2013). Prior to December 2003, there was only one Vice President. The following persons have held this office since 1957:
See also
*
Agency 114
*
Abwehr
The (German language, German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', though the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context) ) was the German military intelligence , military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ...
*
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
The Federal Constitutional Court ( ; abbreviated: ) is the supreme court, supreme constitutional court for the Germany, Federal Republic of Germany, established by the constitution or Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Basic Law ...
*
List of intelligence agencies of Germany
*
Operation Eikonal
References
Bibliography
* Ronny Heidenreich, et al.: Geheimdienstkrieg in Deutschland. Die Konfrontation von DDR-Staatssicherheit und Organisation Gehlen 1953. Berlin 2016
*
External links
*
*
*
{{Coord, 48.064, 11.535, type:city, format=dms, display=title
1956 establishments in West Germany
German intelligence agencies
Government agencies established in 1956
German federal agencies