Concerning the recent arrest of former German counterintelligence (BND) head August Hanning earlier this month, we wrote in the current issue of the EIR Strategic Alert service: “The Hanning case may well signal the beginning of a purge of the old BND apparatus from the Kohl/Schroeder/Merkel era, for the purposes of the Merz government’s drive to give the BND and the BfV extensive police, surveillance and covert action powers, ostensibly to better deal with Russia’s ‘hybrid warfare’ against Germany. … August Hanning indeed is a veteran of the era in which German foreign policy was based on good relations with Russia. Not only was he an undersecretary of State in the Schröder government, which built the Nord Stream, but after the sabotage of that pipeline, he was an outspoken critic of the government response to it. After the German State prosecution indicted Ukrainian citizens for the terror act, he insisted that they could not have done it without backing from the Ukrainian and Polish governments, and demanded compensation from the latter.
“Last but not least, August Hanning has been in the crosshairs of the U.S. neocon faction since, back in 2002, he tried to prevent the G.W. Bush government from using phony evidence to accuse Saddam Hussein of developing chemical weapons. When CIA head George Tenet signalled that he wanted to use a BND informant named “curveball” to support the accusation, Hanning told him that the BND considered that source to be unreliable. Eventually, “Curveball” did confess that he had invented his story.”
On Oct. 13 the Münchener Merkur interview with British-trained journalist and author Birgit Jennen confirmed the EIR evaluation, that a purge operation is underway. “I would describe the network surrounding Hanning and several other security officials as the ‘Pullach network’—a web of personal contacts that dates back to the time when the BND was headquartered in Pullach. The connection between Hanning and the arrested BND employee Manfred D., which has now come to light, also leads back to this circle,” Jennen said.
The BND headquarters moved to Berlin in 2019. Thus the term “Pullach Network” refers to the Kohl-Schroeder-Merkel era described by the EIR Alert: 1982-2021.
Ms. Jennen avoids calling Hanning a Russian agent, but “even without concrete evidence of espionage on behalf of Russia,” she wrote, the risk of information leakage should not be underestimated—given the wide range of contacts Hanning maintained over the years. Even after leaving public service, he remained active in business sectors with ties to Russia and was involved in East-West dialogue.
