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- What’s your opinion about last spy scandal in Hamburg when Alexandre Kuzmin representative of Russian consulate had to go home? It is true, that chief of BfV personnaly visited chief of SVR Sergei Lebedev for asking him to take away Kuzmin? What do you think why this scandal can’t spoil relations between Russian and German secret services?

- During the cold war Mr. Kuzmin would have been expelled as a persona non grata without more ado. The reported fact that the chief of the BfV Mr. Fromm travelled to Russia to ask for the withdrawel of Kuzmin shows a special relationship between German and Russian intelligence services. But the relations are not as good as those with Germany’s old Nato-partners because if an officer of the CIA or British MI6 undertakes unfriendly activities in Germany there would be a secret bid to take him away.

From an intelligence point of view the “scandal” isn’t a scandal - only business as usual including the German-American attempts to recruit Kuzmin as a mole in GRU. That’s why the relations can not be spoiled by a few isolated cases especially if there is a political umbrella of strategic partnership.

- These relations seem to be very close. We see so many spy scandals in Germany related to Russian intelligence (In october 2003 Germans found two GRU moles, September 2004 – Parliament Comission was looking Russian mole in BND after book of Norbert Juretzko etc). But there is an impression these scandals don’t influence relations between special services. For example in 2000 BND director visited Chechnya, and it was very unusual, as I understand. In 2003 German counterintelligence has warned about opportunity of acts of terrorism of the Chechen terrorists in the Europe (and it was very profitable for Russia). What’s a nature of these relations?

- Indeed, the relations between the BND and its Russian partners – code-named SEQUOIA - are very good and getting better and better since in 1991 the exchange of legal representatives in the embassies was arranged. At first there were some irritations on the Russian side because Mr. Kretschmann, former chief of station in the Netherlands until 1982, in London from 1986 on and the first legal representative of the BND in Moscow wasn’t able to speak the Russian language. He was sacked in 1992 after failing to foresee the coup despite the fact that he as a member of the liberal party in Germany had the support of foreign minister Hans Dietrich Genscher.

Don’t mix up the mole cases. In the case when Volker Förtsch (until 1998 head of the security division of the BND and before for many years working against the Soviet Union) was said to be a mole I do not trust Norbert Juretzko – a former BND captain convicted for fraud. In my opinion an old boys network (former KGB-general Yurij Dosdrov and others) tried to take revenge for VIKTOR – the KGB colonel who spied for the BND with the case officer Mr. Förtsch from the early 70’s to 1985 – and to disrupt the BND.

On the other hand SWR and perhaps more GRU are spying in Germany especially in the field of economic espionage with about 130 intelligence officers. But the BND is doing the same in Russia and the former republics of the Soviet Union. Remember the case when Christopher Lez – a teacher from the George-Marshall-Center in Bavaria – in September 2000 was arrested in Moscow, delivered to Minsk and there sentenced to 7 years in prison for being the German head of a spy network all over Eastern Europe. So no side can blame the other for doing the espionage job. Despite strategic cooperation the “Game of the Foxes” – as Ladislav Farago called the intelligence war in the 40’s – still goes on and also all the rabbits between Portugal and Poland, between Sweden and Romania try to play the same old game.

At the top level of the German and Russian intelligence services we found in the same time strong cooperation and support including the German warnings about Chechen terrorism you mentioned. And more. According to the Paris based INTELLIGENCE chancellor Gerhard Schröder handed a BND report to Vladimir Putin, when the latter visited Berlin on February 10, 2003. This report contained the results of an investigation from the company IWR, which in behalf of the BND has been looking for the money of the former East German communist party, which disappeared shortly before Germany’s reunification. During this investigation IWR stumbled across the name of the Russian firm Avisma und the Menatep bank, main shareholder in Yukos. The report also detected money-laundering operations by Platon Lebedev and Alexej Golubovich, two cronies of Khodorkovski, and gave Russian officials the opportunity to put Lebedev under arrest in July and jail his boss in September. In this way the downfall of Putin’s main domestic enemy has been a success of German foreign intelligence.

- You had very active and oppositional position in Kosovo conflict and Balcan wars, have you got any problems with German services?

- I had problems for some years when in 1993 my book “Schnüffler ohne Nase” appeared and in 1995 the next book on the former foreign minister and BND director Klaus Kinkel called “Der Schattenkrieger” (The Shadow Warrior) with a main point on the Balcan wars and their secret past history. But all the legal affairs with the BND and former BND officers have been without any success for them. For some years now the problems of phone tapping and slander are away and its possible to discuss affairs with former high ranking BND officers.