Germany: Cross-Party Outrage at German NSA Double Agent Allegations
Politicians of every stripe in Germany expressed outrage on Saturday to allegations that a member of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the BND, had operated as a double agent. The 31-year-old man was arrested on Wednesday.
The agent was reportedly suspected of selling information to the United States National Security Agency (NSA) directly concerning the German parliamentary comittee investigating NSA activity, according to a joint report from public regional broadcasters WDR and NDR, combined with the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
“This case must now be explained without any gaps,” said the interior affairs spokesman for Chancellor Merkel’s Christian Democrat alliance, Bavarian politician Stephan Mayer, in Saturday’s edition of mass-circulation newspaper Bild. “If it should prove to be true that the BND employee worked for years as a double agent directed by the US embassy, that would be an enormous breach of trust in the Transatlantic relationship.”
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