Officers of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) arrested August Hanning, 80, on Tuesday 6 October, at his home in Nordwalde near Münster according to the news agency dpa. Hanning headed Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from 1998 to 2005. His former chief of staff, Manfred D., was arrested at the same time. The prosecutor names the Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen district in Bavaria and the Steinfurt district in North Rhine-Westphalia as the two arrest locations without saying which man was held where; dpa places Manfred D. in Bavaria, while CNN reads the statement the other way round. Germany's Federal Prosecutor General in Karlsruhe says Hanning is "strongly suspected" of treasonous espionage, spying out state secrets, attempted treason and working as an agent for a foreign intelligence service. Manfred D. is accused of aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous espionage.
The prosecutor's statement says current findings suggest Manfred D. gave Hanning approximately 2,000 documents over the years. Many contained classified material meant exclusively for internal BND use, particularly executive intelligence briefings. The statement also says Hanning used that material to draft an analysis for an officer of a foreign intelligence service. It does not say which service. This article addresses that one question: who received what Hanning is alleged to have passed on?
What the prosecutor describes
Prosecutors allege the two men agreed in 2010, five years after Hanning left the BND, that Manfred D. would pass on valuable BND intelligence in exchange for payment. Manfred D. served as chief of staff to successive BND presidents from 2012 until March 2026, so the alleged access could have spanned that whole period. The documents reportedly included material for the weekly "ND-Lage", the intelligence situation briefing at the Chancellery. The Tagesschau news programme reports they covered Iran's nuclear programme and the Russian military, and included information from allied foreign services. The most recent documents found date from June 2022.
The prosecutor makes two allegations about foreign contact. First, Hanning "used classified intelligence provided by Manfred D." to draft an analysis for an officer of a foreign intelligence service. Second, he was "in close contact with a representative of another foreign intelligence service, to whom he passed on political information, partially based on material provided by Manfred D., for several years."
The word "another" suggests the prosecutor may have more than one service in mind, though it names none. Hanning is also alleged to have used the material in his private consulting work.
Observers are reading: a source-by-source reading of the Russia and China reporting, and what each reading implies for the investigation.
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What the court hearings may clarify
The two men are due before an investigating judge at the Federal Court of Justice on Tuesday 6 and Wednesday 7 October. The prosecutor has not said which man appears on which day. The judges will decide on pre-trial detention. It is unclear whether either hearing will add public detail on the recipient.
DW's chief political editor, Michaela Küfner, described the case as Germany's "biggest espionage scandal of the century unfolding in real time." That is her assessment, made while the facts are still being established. Everything above remains an allegation. No statement from either man on the espionage allegations was available at the time of writing, and classified damage assessments are not public. The identity of the recipient may shape how serious the case is judged to be. The signals to watch are whether prosecutors name a state, and whether later court filings or reporting clarify the Russia and China reporting.
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