On disappointments – Der Spiegel:

‘It sounded as if Scholz was doing his best to protect the BND. But insiders within the intelligence community were startled by the chancellor's words. The statement that the BND "of course" knew nothing could also be interpreted as cynicism – or that the chancellor has reduced his expectations of the agency to zero. It is, of course, part of the job of an intelligence service to catch developments like what happened just over a week ago as early as possible.

The chancellor's suggestion that they would now have to discuss things was also carefully noted. Because it would mean that the BND's performance would be coming under the microscope - a place it hasn't been recently. Ultimately, agency head Bruno Kahl may even find himself in the hot seat.’

(…)

‘And Germany's BND? Initial attempts to shield the agency ultimately failed. Last Tuesday, BND headquarters issued an order to thoroughly review its own knowledge and all information provided by the intelligence services of friendly countries in advance. And security policy experts in the parties in Germany's government coalition began discussing whether the president of the BND would be able to keep his job.’

(…)

‘Indeed, the Wager Group uprising wasn't the first time recently that the BND had been accused of cluelessness.
By the time the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021, for example, BND analysts had been warning for several years of the country's approaching collapse, and even predicted the Taliban's seizure of power eight months before Kabul fell. But when it actually came to pass, the BND was caught flat-footed. Two years later, that failure is still a focus of a parliamentary investigative committee in the German Bundestag.’

(…)

‘In fact, and this is part of the assessment, there are major differences between American intelligence services and the BND. The CIA has many more employees than the German foreign intelligence service, the worldwide interception of signals intelligence is conducted by another agency, the NSA. The BND tries to cover everything in one agency: the monitoring of communications, managing human sources and conducting research into publicly accessible sources of information. Employees also produce extensive analyses. At many other intelligence services, those efforts are considered a waste of time; whereas at the BND, they are considered to be the agency's paramount work.
For some time now, the strengths of German intelligence have been primarily in technical reconnaissance and liaison – the art of asking friendly intelligence agencies to share their insights.’

(…)

‘To be fair, even in normal times, officials in the Foreign Ministry don't think very highly of the BND. But officials inside the Defense Ministry also seemed displeased about the situation. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius of the Social Democrats first learned of the attempted Wagner coup on the morning of Saturday, June 24. From news agencies.’

Read the article here.

This is pure comedy.

‘The chancellor has reduced his expectations of the agency to zero.’

‘‘To be fair, even in normal times, officials in the Foreign Ministry don't think very highly of the BND.’

Your own secret service as a significant other that turned out to be a bleak disappointment.

And then this: ‘Employees also produce extensive analyses. At many other intelligence services, those efforts are considered a waste of time; whereas at the BND, they are considered to be the agency's paramount work.’

This is beautiful. The war is lost but the secret service is still analyzing the possibilities of how to turn the tides.

Moving.