After the arrest of former BND President August Hanning, politicians from the SPD and the Greens called for a ban on follow-up jobs for former high-ranking secret service employees. “The Hanning case shows how sensitive private-sector consulting jobs are for former top secret keepers,” said the Vice President of the Bundestag, Omid Nouripour, to the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. Nouripour demanded that the federal government should examine follow-up jobs for high-ranking intelligence officials and prohibit them from lobbying in the security sector after they leave office.
Hanning was arrested on Tuesday in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Federal Prosecutor's Office accuses him of acting as a secret service agent, treasonous spying, spying on state secrets and attempted treason. He is scheduled to be brought before an investigating judge at the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe this Wednesday. He is supposed to announce the arrest warrant against Hanning and decide whether to pre-trial detention. Hanning's former office manager at the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), Manfred D., had already been taken into custody the day before for aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous spying.
According to the information, the two probably agreed in 2010 that the ex-office manager should continually provide Hanning, who had left office five years earlier, with valuable BND intelligence for a fee. Hanning is said to have used this information profitably in his consulting work. According to the status of the investigation, D. is said to have provided his former boss with almost 2,000 documents by June 2022.
Hanning headed the Federal Intelligence Service from 1998 to 2005, after which he was State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Hanning then switched to the private sector and worked as a security consultant.
The SPD and the Union also demand consequences
The head of the Parliamentary Control Committee for the Intelligence Services, Marc Henrichmann (CDU), said in the ZDF-heute journal: "We don't know that in full either." He called for a comprehensive clarification of the espionage allegations. “It’s now time to turn everything upside down,” said the CDU politician. When asked whether the rules that were tightened years ago were sufficient for officials after leaving office, he answered "probably no."
His committee colleague Konstantin von Notz from the Greens also criticized the sideline activities of former secret service employees. »The parliamentary control committee PKGr explicitly warned in May 2023 about the problematic secondary activities of top secret keepers. The fact that these obvious security problems have not been remedied is a serious mistake," he wrote on Platform X.
SPD domestic politician Sonja Eichwede said: “The case clearly shows that we need to further tighten the parental leave rules for former intelligence service executives. We already extended the waiting period in the last legislative period.” But there is an urgent need for a lifelong waiting period for former leading employees.
The parliamentary group leaders of the SPD and CDU/CSU parliamentary groups, Matthias Miersch and Thorsten Frei, expressed their horror and demanded clarification. Frei spoke of “disturbing news”. With regard to the deliberations in parliament about the reform of the secret service, he added that they were being attacked from everywhere. The reform is urgently needed. Miersch spoke of an “alarming process.” He called for a debate about waiting periods for departing secret service employees.
The SPD member of the Bundestag and intelligence controller Daniel Baldy also called for stricter rules for former top executives in the intelligence services. Anyone who worked as BND president or in another security-sensitive position would not be allowed to work in a private consulting firm afterwards.
