By Ayhan Simsek
BERLIN
Recent scandals surrounding Germany’s intelligence service BND have shown that “parliamentary oversight has completely failed,” Germany’s former Human Rights Commissioner Markus Loening told The Anadolu Agency.
Germany’s foreign intelligence agency BND is under pressure, following an internal investigation that revealed that, since 2005, the agency has helped the United States' National Security Agency, or NSA, monitor telephone and internet communications of various European politicians and companies, despite national laws banning such practices.
“We have seen different scandals in the course of the last 15, 20 years always involving the BND. But nothing like this has happened,” the former liberal lawmaker and Human Rights Commissioner of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s previous conservative-liberal coalition government between 2010 and 2014, said on Wednesday.
“This recent scandal shows us that democratic control doesn’t work,” added Markus Loening.
Senior fellow at the Berlin-based think tank Association for New Responsibility (snv), Loening said that the democratic oversight of the intelligence services, which has traditionally been done by a parliamentary control committee, had proven to be inefficient.
‘A broken system’
“After the latest scandal, I wouldn’t really point to individuals; I would say that the system is a broken system. I think that the parliamentary oversight has completely failed,” Loening said.
Parliament’s control committee has held dozens of closed meetings with senior executives of BND since late 2013, after whistleblower Edward Snowden's leaks on the NSA revealed that Chancellor Merkel had been among those targeted by the American agency’s surveillance.
Neither the government, nor the BND officials informed the parliament, about the details of an ongoing secret cooperation with the NSA.
German weekly Der Spiegel reported on April 24 that the NSA had monitored French politicians and companies, including aerospace company EADS, with the help of the BND, through the satellite tracking station at Bad Aibling in the southern Bavarian Lander.
Germany’s main opposition party accused German Chancellor Merkel’s government on Wednesday for hiding information from the parliament.
Jan Korte, deputy leader of the parliamentary group of The Left Party, said that in the past, the government had repeatedly told parliament that it had no information on the alleged espionage by the NSA.
“Apparently the parliament has been deliberately deceived for years,” Korte told German press agency DPA.
“Lying to the parliament should have consequences,” he said.
German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Wednesday that Chancellor Angela Merkel has instructed the BND to conduct a comprehensive investigation on the situation.
“We always informed the parliament (…), with our best available information at the time. I strongly reject the claims that the government had told lies,” he said.
Call for reform
Loening underlined that the Parliamentary Control Panel (PKGr), which oversees the activities of Germany’s intelligence services, was understaffed and lacked experts to carry out an effective control.
“Probably different people responsible for the services did not do their job well, but also they couldn’t count on a good, well-working system. If there had been good parliamentary oversight, then the intelligence services would have felt much more pressure to avoid any wrongdoing,” he said.
Loening stressed that reforms were needed to strengthen parliamentary oversight and democratic control of the intelligence services in Germany.
“Currently there are nine lawmakers at the PKGr that are not allowed to talk about what they hear in (the panel), not even to their leadership. They have only a handful of people that are supposed to help them,” he said.
“And also they do not have the powers they need; they always have to go to Chancellery first and say this is what we want to look into…They should be able to directly go, knock on the door and say open that file, I want to look into that.”
A special commissioner
Loening proposed assigning a permanent special commissioner to control the work of German intelligence agencies.
“The idea of having a permanent, special representative of parliament for the control of intelligence services can be very helpful,” he said.
Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, BND, as well as the domestic intelligence agency BfV, have been under growing pressure following a number of scandals in recent years that have raised questions about the democratic control of these services.
BfV’s failure to prevent the murders perpetrated by the National Socialist Underground group, or NSU, sparked a debate on German security and intelligence organizations, criticized for underestimating the far-right threat.
Since the late 1990’s, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, or BfV, recruited various informants from the far right scene who were believed to have had contacts with three right-wing extremists who reportedly founded the NSU
NSU members are accused of killing eight small-business owners of Turkish origin, a Greek immigrant and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007. They apparently did so without arousing the suspicion of the German police or intelligence services.
