THE BRIEFING:
- August Hanning, who led Germany's BND foreign intelligence service from 1998 to 2005, was arrested on October 6 at his home in Nordwalde on charges of espionage, obtaining state secrets, and attempted high treason.
- Investigators allege he paid a former BND employee to funnel roughly 2,000 classified documents to him over more than a decade, some of which he allegedly used to prepare materials for a foreign intelligence service.
- The case has no modern parallel in German history: no former head of the BND has ever before faced treason charges, and the investigation implicates multiple foreign intelligence contacts whose identities remain undisclosed.
