Ex-German spy chief arrested: A history of spooks working for enemy powers

There have been many cases of top spies giving classified information to enemy nations. Here are some of the highlights. Save Share Germany’s former spy chief, August Hanning, has beenarrestedon suspicion of passing state secrets to a foreign intelligence service. Hanning, 80, headed up the Federal Intelligence Service, known by its German acronym BND, from 1998 to 2005. A federal prosecutor’s statement said it strongly suspected him of “treasonous espionage, obtaining state secrets, attempted treason” through contact with foreign intelligence services since 2010, while working as a private consultant. He is accused of obtaining around 2,000 sensitive documents from a former bureau chief who has also been arrested. But he isn’t the only high-ranking intelligence officer to have been discovered to have worked for foreign governments over the years. Here are some of the highlights. Kim Philby was a British intelligence officer who secretly spent decades working for the Soviet Union during World War II and the early Cold War years. He was recruited by Soviet Intelligence while studying at Cambridge University in the 1930s. He was the most prominent member of the “Cambridge Five” – a spy ring that gave away British secrets to the Soviet Union. During the war, he joined MI6, where he rose to head its counter-Soviet division, and was later posted to Washington, DC. This gave him access to sensitive information through his close links to the CIA and FBI. His tip-offs to his Soviet handlers are believed to have scuppered many Western operations and revealed the identities of agents. This included information operations to overthrow Albania’s communist leader Enver Hoxha as part of Western efforts to stop the spread of communism. Philby came under suspicion in 1951 and was forced out of MI6 when Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, two other members of the Cambridge Five, defected to the Soviet Union. Philby was suspected of having warned them that British intelligence officers were close to uncovering their identities as double agents for the Soviet Union, before being formally cleared of the allegations in 1955. Then, in 1963, aware that the net was closing in on him because of his own involvement with Soviet intelligence, he fled to Russia, where he lived with his wife since 1971, Rufina Pukhova, until his death in 1988....