The Spy Scandal of the Century is Happening Right Now

We are watching the biggest spy scandal of the century unfold in front of us right now and it's happening in Germany. This isn't the episode I had planned for this week, but on Tuesday morning the 6th of October, news came through that Germany had arrested a former head of its foreign intelligence service. This

is just too big a story for me not to cover. The man arrested is August Hanning, who ran Germany's BND from 1998 to 2005. Also arrested was his former chief of staff, Manfred Duncrator. And the more I've read and watched about this case over the last few days, the stranger it's got. It involves the theft of

around 2,000 secret documents, two other foreign intelligence services, a custody battle, and attempted kidnapping of two kids from Denmark, and an amateur football coach in Bavaria. It's also a story that's very much still unfolding. So, this is just what we know so far. Let's start with who this man actually is.

August Hanning isn't a mid-ranking officer or a disgruntled analyst. For 7 years, he was the head of German foreign intelligence. After that, he spent four years as a state secretary at the interior ministry, one of the most senior civil service jobs in the country. Then from around 2010, he left government behind and went into the

private sector running a security consultancy business. So this is major. It's the equivalent of a former director of the CIA or chief of MI6 being bust for treason and spying. That's the scale of what's happening in Germany this week. And the thing is, it doesn't just affect Germany. All of its allies have a

lot to lose here. On Tuesday morning, the 6th of October, officers from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office, the BKA, arrested Hanning, who's now 80 years old, at his home in a small town about 20 km northwest of Monster. On the same morning, officers arrested his former chief of staff named Manfred Duncrator, who lives south of Munich.