Is Germany becoming a nest of Russian spies?

 

Is Germany becoming a nest of Russian spies?

German intelligence says Russian spies are very active within German politics, economics, science and technology, and military to steer huge disinformation campaigns and to influence domestic election outcomes. It is an all-out attempt to destabilize the German Parliament and federal government in order to “weaken its position” with respect to EU sanctions against Russia.

     It is a large HUMINT (human intelligence) operation that targets German citizens and officials both inside Germany and during their visits to Russia, hoping to develop individuals as clandestine sources of the Russian intelligence services. The prognostication by the BfV is that this Kremlin mission will not diminish in the years to come.

     BTW, the BfV (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) is part of the Ministry of the Interior and is charged with protecting the country from antidemocratic forces, particularly neo-Nazism. The agency employs some 2,500 people at its headquarters in Cologne.

     Just recently, a 57-year-old British citizen in Berlin was caught passing classified documents to Russian spies who paid him cash for the info. He’s one of many Russian agents uncovered in Germany in only a year’s time who were recruited by the Kremlin. In June, a Russian employee at a Germany university was caught spying for Moscow, and a few months before that, a German man was arrested for passing the floor plans of buildings used by the parliament, the Bundestag, to Russian agents.

 

Russian sleeper cells infiltrate Caribbean islands in the MISSION OF VENGEANCE spy thriller.

 

     At the time of this latest German espionage arrest in Germany, I happened to be watching the spy thriller SALT, starring Angelina Jolie. In the movie, a Russian defector named Oleg Vasilyevich Orlov walked into Salt's office at the CIA. During her interrogation of him, he revealed that Russia has permeated the U.S. and claimed that a "Day X" was approaching, where highly trained Russian sleeper agents known as "KAs" are lurking inside the U.S., and plan to destroy our government.

     I fantasized whether a “KAs” may be set up in Germany. A decade ago, a married couple was arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia, the first such case on German soil since the cold war. They worked undercover for the Russian secret service for more than 20 years before a commando unit from the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) raided their home in Marburg. They had plenty of false documentation.

     The couple was suspected to have begun spying for the KGB since 1988, before the Berlin Wall fell. Since reunification they maintained their sleeper cell status and answered to the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service, a successor spy agency to the KGB.

     Their fake identity papers claimed that one of them was born in Argentina and the other in Peru, but both had Austrian passports. Inquiries with the Peruvian and Argentinian authorities revealed the couple had lied about their birthplaces, and that although the husband claimed to speak only English, Spanish and German, he spoke with a Russian accent.

     The wife was listening to coded messages on a shortwave radio linked up to a computer when the German commandos stormed in and arrested them.

     I finished watching the movie SALT with Angelina Jolie, and I didn’t take the plot with a grain of salt. It seemed so tangible.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), enjoys writing about the U.S. Intelligence Community, and relishes traveling to the Florida Keys and Key West, the Bahamas and Caribbean. He combines both passions in his Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster series. Check out his latest spy thriller: MISSION OF VENGEANCE.