http://www.desdeelexilio.com/2006/01/15/esc%c2%b4uandalo-bnd-la-prensa-alemana-no-da-tregua/
Al contrario de lo que ocurre en España con el caso de löa fragata “Alvaro de Bazán”, donde nadie sabe nada, nadie quiere saber nada y se tiene la impresión de que el miedo es más fuerte que la vocación informativa, en Alemania la prensa no ceja en su empeño de sacar a la luz todos los aspectos de la participación del BND (Bundes Nachrichten Dienst) en la guerra de Irak.
Mientras ayer en el parlamento los políticos hacían un intento por autoprotegerse, alegando que los chicos del BND no había hecho nada reprobable en Irak, medios como Die Zeit o Der Spiegel, siguen sacando nuevos datos a la luz. Parece que USA no sólo recibía información sobre objetivos civiles. También informaban sobre movimientos de tropas.
Berlin’s Spies Reportedly Helped US
By Charles Hawley in Berlin
German intelligence agents reportedly helped US forces target Saddam Hussein in an April 2003 Baghdad bombing raid that killed at least 12 people, contravening former chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s insistence that Germany was not involved in the war in Iraq.
The message from ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder immediately prior to the United States invasion of Iraq was hard to misunderstand. Germany, he said on Aug. 5, 2002, “will not make itself available for any adventures under my leadership.” Indeed, his anti-war stance resonated so strongly with German voters that it even helped get him re-elected in September 2002.
In January 2003, he emphasized that Germany — then one of the rotating members of the United Nations Security Council — would also not vote in favor of a resolution to go to war with Iraq.
But according to new revelations about the activities of Germany’s intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the country was not nearly so removed from the US-led war efforts as Schröder liked to claim. German intelligence agents, according to reports in both the Süddeutsche Zeitung and in German public television, were active in Iraq during the entire war and even helped the United States choose bombing targets. BND spooks may even have delivered targeting assistance for the early April 2003 bombing in the wealthy Mansour district of Baghdad — a strike which was meant to vaporize Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein along with several top members of his regime. The attack left between 12 and 19 people dead — but not Saddam.
“Despite the troubles in the relationship between Berlin and Washington, the political decision was made to continue the close relationship of the intelligence services,” an unidentified source from the BND told the public television station ARD.
German help “very important” to the US
That close relationship apparently involved German intelligence agents remaining in Baghdad during the entire Iraq war at the same time Schröder, his Social Democratic Party, and his junior coalition partner the Greens — led by then-foreign minister Joschka Fischer — were officially maintaining strong opposition to the war in Iraq. Germany evacuated its own embassy on March 17, 2003 — just three days before the start of the invasion — but at least two BND employees remained in Baghdad, lodged in a safe house. The BND agents allegedly helped the Americans by identifying “non-targets” — such buildings as embassies, schools and hospitals that should not be bombed. Schröder’s chancellery allegedly knew all about the cooperat
