Ex-Spy Chief Runs One-Man Intelligence Agency From Garden Shed, Recruits Successor as Paperboy
August Hanning, 80, allegedly turned his allotment into a fully staffed BND annex, with a daily courier route and a filing system that required a wheelbarrow.
August Hanning, the former head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, has been arrested after allegedly running a fully operational intelligence agency out of a garden shed in western Germany, complete with a daily courier route, a bicycle-mounted dead-drop and a retired chief of staff who delivered classified material by wheelbarrow.
Prosecutors say the arrangement began in 2010 and ran for twelve years, during which Manfred D., Hanning's former chief of staff, reportedly pushed a handcart of internal BND documents to the shed every Tuesday and Friday, rain or shine. Neighbours described a steady stream of unmarked vans and a man in a postal uniform who never once rang the bell.
The shed, according to investigators, was fitted with a wood-burning stove, a shortwave radio and a wall map of Europe with pins that moved weekly. Hanning allegedly prepared analyses for a foreign intelligence employee and paid Manfred D. in cash, sometimes in coins counted out on a workbench.
German authorities have not named the foreign services involved. The investigation reportedly grew out of an unrelated 2024 abduction case. Hanning and Manfred D. are expected before a judge at the Federal Court of Justice.
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