Thousands of German spies posted around
the world could be at risk after it emerged that a double agent unmasked
last summer stole a list of their real identities and may have sold it.
The
double agent, who has been identified only as Markus R under strict
German privacy laws, obtained a top secret list of the real names,
aliases and locations of 3,500 German intelligence officers posted
abroad, according to a report in Bild newspaper.
But
German intelligence sources sought to downplay the incident, briefing
that the list in question was out of date and contained far fewer than
3,500 names, the DPA news agency reported.
The
arrest of Markus R last summer caused a major diplomatic rift between
Germany and the US, after it emerged he had acted as a double agent for
the CIA.
He had also approached
Russian intelligence and offered to sell them secret information, and
there are fears he may have passed the list of German spies’ names to a
hostile foreign agency.
MI6, Markus R worked in the registry section of its overseas operations
department, where he had access to top secret documents including the
identities of operatives posted abroad.
The stolen list, which is
said to date from 2011, is believed to contain the real identities and
aliases of BND officers posted under cover as diplomats to various
embassies around the world, and of those working secretly in countries
where the German military has missions abroad, including Afghanistan.
It
is not clear whether Markus R passed it to any foreign intelligence
agencies. It was found on a hard drive seized during a search of his
home after his arrest last summer, which has only recently been properly
evaluated.
Markus R’s unmasking was one of two spying scandals
that badly shook US-German relations last summer, and saw Angela
Merkel’s government ask the CIA station chief in Berlin to leave the
country.
Markus R has reportedly confessed to passing the CIA more
than 200 secret documents over a period of two years, in return for
payments of €25,000 (£16,500).
He appears to have been motivated
by money rather than ideology, and it is the possibility that he may
have sold German spies’ real identities to a hostile foreign
intelligence agency that will be of most concern now.
He was
discovered after an email he sent the Russian Embassy in Berlin offering
to sell secrets in exchange for cash was intercepted, and German
investigators were stunned when he confessed he had been spying for the
Americans.
They had even asked the CIA for help unmasking their
own mole, convinced the man they were hunting was a Russian double
agent, and had been surprised when there was no reply from the
Americans.
The arrest came with US-German ties already strained by
the revelation that the National Security Agency had spied on Mrs
Merkel’s phone calls, and it was followed days later by the questioning
of a second possible double agent, an official in Germany’s Defence
Ministry who was suspected of at the time of passing secret information
to the Americans.
Mrs Merkel’s government ordered surveillance of
American and British intelligence gathering on German soil for the first
time since 1945, and asked the CIA station chief to leave the country, a
rare step between allies.
US-German relations have improved
since then, but it was reported earlier this week that prosecutors now
believe the case of Markus R is more serious than previously thought.
Prosecutors
now believe he was recruited by the CIA a year and a half earlier than
he has admitted, in 2010, and was paid €75,000 for passing secrets over a
period of four years, according to Spiegel magazine.
Source telegraph
