Thread by @HistoryNed

A brief tour through the scandalous history of the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). It has had 12 directors since its founding in 1950 – seven have had to resign before they could finish their term. #Maaßen

The first head of Verfassungsschutz defected to East Germany in 1954. The next year he defected back and claimed he was kidnapped. He was imprisoned on charges of treason

Hubert Schrübbers, second President of the BfV had to resign in 1972 when it was exposed that he had been in the Nazi SA and worked as a jurist in the legal persecution of the Third Reich.

The third President of the BfV, Günther Nollau, resigned in 1975 after the revelation that a close aide to Chancellor Willy Brandt was a Stasi spy (the guy in the sunglasses).

The fourth resigned for health reasons after causing a negligent car accident in which his partner was killed.

Heribert Hellenbroich, 5th head, resigned in 1985 after the head of BfV counterintelligence (Tiedge) turned out to be a KGB spy who defected to the USSR.

Ludwig-Holger Pfahls (6th) finished his term in 1987, but in 1999 fled charges of fraud and tax evasion and was only arrested in Paris in 2005

Eckart Werthebach (8th) resigned in 1995 under suspicion of leaking state secrets

Heinz Fromm – the 11th President – resigned in 2012 after a scandal around destruction of documents by the BfV related to the National Socialist Underground (NSU) killings.

Now Hans-Georg Maaßen the current head of the BfV is under fire, accused of inappropriately sharing secret material with the far-right AfD.

This is just a list of scandals involving the Presidents of Verfassungsschutz. Numerous times, the organizations has been found to have employees covering for ex-Nazis, violating civil rights and preventing democratic oversight of its activities.

I realize it's not scientifically valid evidence, but German wikipedia has a whole page just cataloguing intelligence scandals since 1949 - 32 listed since 1954 de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der…