Springtime for Schroeder and Germany

Springtime for Schroeder and Germany
Deutschland is happy and gay! (...)
It ain't no myst'ry
If it's politics or hist'ry
The thing you gotta know is
Ev'rything is show biz. (Source; slightly adapted)

"I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy." (From "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde / Hat tip David Frum)

NYT, March 2, 2006:

Berlin File Says Germany's Spies Aided U.S. in Iraq

Starting in early 2003 and lasting through the American military invasion of Iraq, a German intelligence officer stationed in the office of Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the American commander of the invasion, passed on to the United States information being gathered in Baghdad by two German intelligence officers operating there, a classified German review has found.

The German liaison officer made 25 reports to the Americans, answering 18 of 33 specific requests for information made by the United States during the first few months of the Iraq war in what was a systematic exchange between American intelligence officials and the Germans, according to the German report.

The decision to install the officer was planned and approved at the highest levels of the German government, including by Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the chief of staff for Gerhard Schröder, then the chancellor, and by the foreign minister at the time, Joschka Fischer. Mr. Steinmeier is now the foreign minister.

This exchange of intelligence information is described in a classified report prepared by a committee of the German Parliament that held closed-door hearings on the role of German intelligence during the Iraq war over the past few weeks.

The German government was a vocal critic of the Bush administration's decision to use military force to topple Saddam Hussein and has long insisted that it provided only limited help to the United States-led coalition. But in recent months, news reports of greater German involvement prompted the parliamentary review, which indicates that German-American cooperation during the war was continuing, systematic and regular. (...)

The report found that the operation was closed down when the American invasion came to an end, at which point all three of the German intelligence officials — the two in Baghdad and the liaison officer with General Franks in Qatar — were given the American Meritorious Service Medals recognizing the "critical information to United States Central Command to support combat operations in Iraq." (...)

We interrupt for a suggestion: American Meritorious Service Medals for Mssrs. Gerhard Schroeder and Joschka Fischer!

Much of the information concerned the location of sites where bombing should be avoided, including embassies and the place where it was thought that a missing American pilot was being held. But in eight of the reports, the German intelligence officer provided information on Iraqi police and military units in Baghdad. According to the report, German officials provided the geographic coordinates of some units, but the report asserts that they did not direct airstrikes against Iraqi leaders or forces.

The German report is consistent with many details in a 2005 classified American report by the Joint Forces Command, dated in the middle of last year, which spoke of the German intelligence liaison

officer working in coordination with American intelligence in Qatar. But the report does not state that German intelligence provided a copy of a plan devised by Mr. Hussein for the military defense of Baghdad, as was reported on Monday by The New York Times.

In an article largely based on the 2005 Joint Forces command document, The Times reported that German intelligence had provided a sketch of this plan. That part of the report was forcefully denied by German government spokesmen and the German foreign intelligence service, which says that it never knew of any Baghdad defense plan.

"We know from our research that this report, this defense plan and this drawing were never given to any American installation," a spokesman for the German intelligence agency, Stefan Borchert, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "We were unaware of this plan, so how could we have given it to somebody?"

But others contend that the parliamentary report was largely based on incomplete and partially censored information provided by the German Intelligence Agency.

"The files regarding the request for information by U.S. authorities were initially withheld from the committee altogether, and then the incomplete documents were only provided for inspection after the contents had been blackened out for the most part," one member of the parliamentary commission, Hans-Christian Ströbele, wrote in a dissenting comment on the report that is posted on his Web site. "Only the deputy chairman of the committee was permitted unrestricted inspection of these documents."

The report makes it clear that the intelligence-sharing arrangement was approved in late 2002 by both Mr. Steinmeier, Mr. Schröder's aide, and Mr. Fischer. Details, including the placement of a German intelligence officer in General Franks's headquarters, were discussed in Berlin in late 2002 and early 2003, months before the war began. In January 2003, American officials from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency were brought into the planning. (...)

Germany had already decided that if war broke out, it would close its embassy, which led to an interesting sidelight: the Germans also arranged that, once the war broke out and the German Embassy was closed, the two German intelligence agents in Baghdad would take refuge in the French Embassy.

They did exactly that after the beginning of the invasion on March 20, 2003, moving into offices of the French intelligence agency and thereby giving the French, who also vociferously opposed the American war in Iraq, an indirect role in supporting the German-American intelligence exchange. (emphasis added)

For an earlier posting on the subject, check this.

Comments

[clarsonimus]

They're "in denial" - It's schizo. Germany and the US can't agree on anything, but even when they do agree, or might, or even could, they just can’t. Or simply won’t. Not unless the Germans can deny having done so afterwards, that is.

[Olaf Petersen]

Russia is a gas I heard the other day
In the open seas where the pipelines lay
Life is fun and I wish you were here
sincerly yours, Schröder millionair!

Source, slightly adapted: The Sex Pistols

[Carl Spackler]

Olaf,

Where is my millions?
Where is my millions?
Where is my millions?

Way out in the water
see it swimmin'

from the Pixies 'Where Is My Mind'

[Pamela]

They did exactly that after the beginning of the invasion on March 20, 2003, moving into offices of the French intelligence agency and thereby giving the French, who also vociferously opposed the American war in Iraq, an indirect role in supporting the German-American intelligence exchange. (emphasis added)

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but personally I feel infiltrated.

[Matt]

I actually don't see anything especially hypocritical about Schroeder and Fischer opposing the war while covertly providing the US with some intelligence. Countries do that sort of thing.

Actually, I think that the whole German policy of opposition to the war was cynical and hypocritical--and Schroeder's recent behavior only confirms this. After the big "no blood for oil" campaign, we now hear that the unemployed chancelor has decided to go work for the Russians (on a natural gas project--ha!). Come on, Germans, let's have some giant protests, some burning in effigy, some obscene caricatures. Where is your outrage?

[Olaf Petersen]

@ Matt: Get used to the fact that a country of moonlighters has other priorities than to be outraged about their king pins. Didn't you ever ask yourself why Germans only attend demonstrations from monday to thursday, never friday, saturday and sunday? Didn't you ever wonder why, even in darkest recessions, our DIY-centers keep booming? Didn't you know that most of these centers offer 2% savings if you pay cash? Maybe we are just too busy minding our own business - comprende?
;)