Last week, some story came out with BND labels all over it.....that the Turkish government has various spies within Germany. Naturally, this upset the Linke and Green political parties to some degree. They want the government to provide the big picture and explain what the heck is going on.
Historically.....even going back to the 1800s....Germans have continually believed they were being spied upon....even when there were few if any spies within the country. At some point in the first year of the World War One.....just about anyone with an accent got beat up severely and accused of being a spy....even if they were Germans from another part of the country with a funny accent.
When I arrived in 1983....part of the security orientation for Air Force people was that there were all kinds of Stassi (East German) and KGB (Soviet) spies around.....even in Kaiserslautern.
Every few months, some West German would be arrested and accused as a spy of some sorts.
After the Wall came down, there were tons of files to indicate all kinds of characters were providing data to the East German and Soviet governments.
Today? You would think that there were almost no spies in Germany.....but if you start talking about economic or technology-related spies.....then folks kinda admit that there are hundreds of spies around the country.
These Turkish spies? What is said is that they spy mostly on the Kurdish community of Germany, and report back to Turkey. Numbers? No one ever goes into details.....my guess is that we are talking about a hundred such characters in Germany who report to Turkey.
Is this valuable information on the Kurds in Germany? I doubt it. Some idiot in the Turkish government thinks its necessary and is willing to front money to make it happen. There's probably five or six 'chiefs' sitting in Turkey who get the daily report and try to make a "mountain out of a mole-hole" which then gets passed up the chain to someone else who tries to make a "glacier out of snow-free mountain". By the end, Erdogan is standing there and all perturbed over what was said by two retired Kurds at some Mainz coffee shop which got all twisted around by various idiots in the middle.
But here's the other side of this episode. Toss in the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Americans, the Brits, the Google guys, the Facebook guys, the GM folks, the Pabst Blue Ribbon spies, and the Canadian TV management spies.....and there's probably something like 6,000 spies at work in Germany on a daily basis. Some work for Fiat.....some work for NSA....some work for Delta Airlines.....and some probably even work for New York Times.
Last year, while sitting around Wiesbaden one afternoon.....I sat and observed a Chinese couple (you can spot a Chinese tourist from 500 feet by the character of their clothing....they dress like the 1980s). The couple had stopped in a highly landscaped area (Wiesbaden has dozens of impressive areas). They were standing there and pointing things out.....then whipped out a camera. My guess is that they were landscapers in China....on a tour to pick up new ideas and designs.....thus spying on Germans and their landscaping efforts. Not full-scale spies....but still spying in some fashion.
On any given day, there's probably 6,000 spies of some type busy in Germany and spying on someone or something.....my humble guess. There are probably even 500 Germans who are spying on other Germans.
My German Frau is probably even suspecting that I'm spying on Germany, and reporting back on beer tastes and kase kochen (cheese cake) recipes.
But here's the thing. There must be something to spy on of value.....to have that many idiots just walking around and writing some secret report each day of some value.....which earns them a check. These Germans must have tons of secret stuff that people want to know about. In that case, they ought to feel awful proud of the achievements accomplished and people wanting to spy on them. Well....I'm saying that to make them feel good about the spying business.
Anyway....over and out// (secret report 2016-08-32, Agent Ripley).
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