BERLIN (AP) \u2014 Germany\u2019s federal prosecutor\u2019s office said a former foreign intelligence chief was arrested Tuesday on espionage allegations.<\/p>\n
August Hanning, 80, served as president of the Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, from December 1998 to November 2005.<\/p>\n
He is \u201cstrongly suspected of treasonous espionage, spying out state secrets, attempted treason, and espionage,\u201d the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Hanning was arrested in Bad Toelz-Wolfratshausen in southern Germany. A former aide of his, identified only as Manfred D., was also arrested Tuesday in Steinfurt in western Germany.<\/p>\n
He is charged with aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous espionage.<\/p>\n
The statement did not reveal who the two men were suspected of spying for.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor’s office said Manfred D. worked as Hanning’s chief of staff. After Hanning’s tenure at the BND, he went on to serve as chief of staff for several subsequent presidents of the BND from March 2012 until March 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn his role, he had access to confidential information,\u201d the prosecutor’s office said.<\/p>\n
Both suspects are believed to have agreed, in the spring of 2010, to have Manfred D. continuously transmit valuable intelligence from the BND to Hanning \u201cin exchange for remuneration.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current findings suggest that, over the years, Manfred D. provided Hanning with approximately 2,000 documents, many of which contained classified information to be used exclusively by the federal intelligence service for internal purposes, particularly for executive intelligence briefings,\u201d the statement alleges.<\/p>\n
Hanning used the information in his private consulting work, the statement added.<\/p>\n
The office said \u201con one occasion, Hanning used classified intelligence provided by Manfred D. to draft an analysis for an officer of a foreign intelligence service.\u201d<\/p>\n
The office did not say which country the foreign agent worked for and added that \u201cit has yet to be determined if the material reached the intended recipient.\u201d<\/p>\n
The premises of both men were searched Tuesday.<\/p>\n
This version corrects the story to describe the suspect as the former head of foreign, not domestic, intelligence.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN (AP) \u2014 Germany\u2019s federal prosecutor\u2019s office said a former foreign intelligence chief was arrested Tuesday on espionage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,123846,38,123845,51,1856,301],"class_list":["post-300738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-espionage","tag-general-news","tag-germany-arrest-espionage-allegation-former-intelligence-chief","tag-indictments","tag-law-enforcement","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}