German spy chief arrested for treason helped sell Iraq War. Then he spent his retirement selling secrets, and some of them were Washington’s

Thomas Karat: This is where the American stake sits, and German officials are not trying to soften it. A leak on this scale is treated inside the trade as an absolute catastrophe. A partner that shared its product with the BND now has to assume the product may have left the building, and the ordinary answer is to cut the supply. The United States is the largest of those partners. American intelligence reaches the BND, and flows back out of it, on the understanding that Berlin can hold it, and a former chief hoarding partner-service reports on a drive at home is that understanding coming apart. Inside the BND and allied services, the fear that secrets were leaking through Hanning had circulated for years without proof. The proof arrived by accident…