The security authorities repeatedly arrest spies and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution warns that Germany is increasingly being spied on by foreign secret services. From foreign powers and people who are happy to help them.
They thought it was over. The wall was gone, the Cold War was over – and with it the wild days of espionage in the systemic battle between East and West. At least that was what the Kohl government and the German security authorities thought in the early and mid-1990s. A good 30 years later, on Tuesday mornings in a barren conference room in the Chancellery, cases are surprisingly similar to those in the past. Here, in the tap-proof situation center, the heads of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) inform the federal government once a week about who is currently threatening the country from within and without. Representatives of the intelligence services are increasingly reporting on spies in this strictly confidential group.