Outgoing German spy chief reopens coalition rift after attacking ‘naive’ left
German interior minister Horst Seehofer faced calls on Monday to dismiss the outgoing head of domestic intelligence from a new advisory role, after the spy condemned what he called “naive and leftist” government policies and said he might enter politics. The remarks, made at a closed meeting of European intelligence chiefs and published by the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung on Monday, threatened to re-open a rift that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s fractious coalition had only just patched up. Seehofer once before rescued chief spy Hans-Georg Maassen from dismissal when he questioned the authenticity of videos showing far-right extremists chasing immigrants in the eastern city of Chemnitz. This time Maassen, whose agency monitors extremist threats to Germany’s constitutional order, compared the videos to Russian propaganda and presented himself as the victim of a witch-hunt by “radical-left forces” in the Social Democratic Party (SPD), junior partner in Merkel’s coalition.
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