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Change Your Life! |
New meaning to the phrase 'Double-Agent' |
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August 31, 2000
BERLIN (AP) - It's not easy for a secret agent to make a living in a post-Cold War world, so why not try recycling? That's what one agent, codenamed "Albert," allegedly did, selling the German spy agency, known as the BND, information during the 1990s that came out of its own files. Now the BND has gone to court demanding its money back. BND spokeswoman Lydia Rauscher said the 52-year-old spy is being sued for the return of payments totaling 280,000 marks (dlrs 140,000), which the BND made in exchange for information. Albert worked for the BND from 1989 until his dismissal in 1998, providing financial information from Moscow and the Baltic states. Much of it, though, apparently came from more than 1,000 secret reports in the BND's archives, which he manipulated and sold back to them. Once the BND caught on, it fired Albert and filed criminal charges against Albert's handler at the BND's headquarters in Pullach, in southern Germany. The handler was sentenced to four years in prison, but the question of how Albert got access to the internal reports was not completely cleared up. |