British intelligence may have been leaked to Russia by a German double agent

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An expert on spy services in Berlin said British intelligence may have been leaked to Russia by an alleged German double agent.

British intelligence chiefs are reportedly furious over the affair, which saw a senior figure within Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) arrested shortly before Christmas.

In one of the most high-profile double agent scandals in decades, Karsten L., a division chief within the signals intelligence wing of the German BND, was arrested on charges of high treason in December.

Germany believes he was responsible for passing highly sensitive battlefield information from the Ukraine War to the Russians.

Erich Schmidt-Enbaum, a leading expert on the German spy service, said the case would likely have “profound ramifications” for future cooperation between Germany’s BND and other Western spy agencies.

Mr. Schmidt-Enbaum, author of several books on the BND, added that his seniority meant he had access to the top-secret intelligence of his associates, “particularly that of the NSA”.

He claimed that the British were “very angry” and were now considering whether to continue providing the BND with their most sensitive information.

Reportedly, the Karsten L hoax came to light after the BND received a tip-off from a foreign intelligence agency that found a BND document during a Russian data sweep.

The motives remain unclear

As the investigation continued, German authorities imposed a strict ban on any publication of information that could alert the Russians to other German spying activities.

Key details of the case, such as how long Mr. L was able to offer secrets to the Russians, are still unknown. His motives also remain unclear.

Rumors circulating in Berlin suggest that he could be the victim of a kompromat by Russian spies, a classic espionage trap in which hidden details of a spy’s private life are used to blackmail them.

One angle that could have deeper ramifications is a report that a political pamphlet from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was found in a locker belonging to Carsten L on the soccer field where he trained in his hometown in Bavaria.

The AfD demanded that Germany remain neutral in the war between Russia and Ukraine. It called on Germany to stop all arms deliveries to Kyiv and open the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

A source familiar with the investigation told The Telegraph that the spy agency is investigating whether Carsten L has links to right-wing extremism within Germany.

Schmidt-Eenbaum said that while nearly all Western intelligence agencies have been hacked at one time or another, Germany’s BND is the “frontrunner”.

The date of the leak

The BND leak has its origins in the 1950s, when Heinz Velwe, the first head of the counterintelligence department, worked for the KGB.

Internal security has always been the agency’s central weakness, Schmidt-Enbohm said. Once spies are recruited, he added, there is little oversight over their activities.

A parliamentary source in Berlin said the BND also lacks a strong counterintelligence team responsible for rooting out Russian agents.

The brazen daylight execution of a Chechen dissident in a Berlin park in 2019, believed to have been carried out by Russia’s secret service, the GRU, is seen as a particularly striking example of how Russia believes it can act unhindered on German soil.

The source said that while Scandinavian countries, which border Russia, kept top-tier counter-espionage units after the Cold War, Germany dropped the ball.

The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) shut down its entire counterintelligence unit in the 1990s. It reopened in 2017.

But the source said the unit still has only a few dozen personnel, despite having to deal with threats from multiple state actors, including Russia, China and Vietnam.

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