As a CIA agent in West Germany during the Cold War, Joseph Wippl monitored Soviet spies and their network of influential sympathisers.
It was a dangerous time. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Moscow’s intelligence agencies were active throughout Europe and few people could imagine the Berlin Wall ever being demolished.
Wippl was overjoyed when Germany reunited in 1990, saying that historic moment “changed everything”. He later became America’s highest-ranking spy in the country, serving as the CIA’s chief of station in Berlin between 2001 and 2003.
Now, the veteran worries the country is once again facing huge security threats that could also harm the rest of Europe – with the far-right AfD party winning elections and arguing for rapprochement with Vladimir Putin‘s regime.
“The Russians will certainly have agents in the AfD,” says Wippl, 82. He adds that many of its supporters “will be favourably inclined to Russian positions and propaganda, no doubt.”
Russia is accused of conducting a “hybrid warfare” campaign of sabotage and assassination plots in Germany and across the continent – including an attempted drone attack at Leipzig airport last month – in retaliation for Nato supporting Ukraine.
But AfD’s co-chair, Alice Weidel, has demanded that chancellor Friedrich Merz should “finally start pushing for peace talks” between Moscow and Kyiv.
The party wants Germany to resume imports of Russian gas, to cut voters’ energy bills, and its leaders are reportedly planning to meet Putin’s top economic envoy next year.
Joseph Wippl served with the CIA in the West German capital of Bonn (Photos: Getty/Boston University)How AfD could disrupt intelligence sharing
AfD won the most seats in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania on Sunday, two weeks after a similar success in Saxony-Anhalt.
So far, it has been unable to form administrations in either state because rivals refuse to form coalitions with the party. But Wippl says: “I’d be very wary of what would happen if AfD takes power in a state.”
Unlike most other countries, Germany’s intelligence agencies are split between federal and regional levels. Although it has national equivalents of the UK’s MI5 and MI6 – named the BfV and BND – Germany also has another service called the LfV, which reports to the 16 states individually.
Wippl fears this is “a real can of worms”, because a regional unit of the LfV could be compromised if the AfD begins interfering with its operations or leaking information.
“Will they be able to participate with the other state intelligence agencies as well as with the federal BfV? That’s going to be a real problem,” he says. “Will they share intelligence with them?”
Germany’s Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has previously argued that the AfD should be barred from learning secret details about military bases and training areas.
“We are obliged to do so, because it concerns the security of our country,” he said.
AfD’s co-chair Alice Weidel wants Germany to restore relations with Russia (Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty)AfD politicians in the state of Thuringia were accused of submitting parliamentary questions on sensitive issues to aid Russian spies last year, which the party dismissed as a “bizarre conspiracy theory”.
Ironically, the LfV’s office in Saxony-Anhalt has officially labelled the AfD as a dangerous group. The agency’s state president, Dirk-Martin Christian, said in 2023: “There is no longer any doubt about the right-wing extremist orientation of the AfD Saxony.”
The national BfV agency followed suit last year, warning the AfD’s policies are “not compatible with the free democratic order”. It cited the “xenophobic, anti-minority, Islamophobic and anti-Muslim statements made by leading party officials.”
AfD responded by saying the party had been “publicly discredited and criminalised,” which was a “heavy blow” to democracy and “clearly politically motivated”.
Wippl, who is now a professor of international relations at Boston University, agrees with the “extremist” classifications. However, he thinks Germany is “a long way” from using national constitution powers to ban the AfD altogether.
AfD supporters have called for Germany to stop supplying Ukraine with weapons to defend against Russian invasion (Photo: Nicholas Muller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty)Why Putin’s hybrid war could backfire
There is growing alarm across Europe about Russia’s so-called “grey zone” attacks, which fall short of open warfare and are often carried out using foreign proxies to provide the Kremlin with a cloak of plausible deniability.
Wippl warns Russia’s forces are “incredibly active” with covert plots in Germany and across Europe. But he warns these “crazy” actions will have “the reverse effect of what the Russians intend, they’ll be viewed as a threat… The Russians are making a big mistake.”
He is also impressed at German ministers “really beefing up their security services”.
Wippl is relieved that Germany does not have a parliamentary election until March 2029. He hopes that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may be over by then, or least paused.
“I really don’t see Russia winning it,” he says. However, he admits nothing is certain. “You wonder who’s going to break first. Will they reach a ceasefire deal that lasts for 10 years and they’ll go at it again? That’s the question: who’s going to buckle first?”
German chancellor Friedrich Merz of the CDU party has come under pressure from AfD’s electoral success (Photo: Christian Marquardt/NurPhoto via Getty)Worries about rise of the far right
After joining the CIA in 1972, Wippl served in Bonn while it was the capital of West Germany. He still travels back to Germany regularly and spent a month there this summer.
He acknowledges there are important economic factors behind AfD’s rise, when “the price of everything is increasing” and with many East Germans in particular feeling “left behind”.
That has combined with anger at rising immigration, after hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees arrived at the height of their country’s civil war, while Angela Merkel was chancellor.
Wippl says attitudes in Germany match the “populist wave” of discontent that fuelled Donald Trump’s US two election victories, as well as UK support for Brexit in 2016 and for Nigel Farage’s Reform party today. France’s far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, could also win her country’s presidential election next year according to polls this summer.
However, he is baffled at how some voters compare their lives and the global political situation now to the rise of fascism in the 1930s, when millions of people in Europe and the US lost their jobs during the Great Depression.
“Last winter I was talking to some Germans and they were saying ‘This is like 1933 again.’ My first reaction was: ‘Excuse me, but in 1933 Germany was on its back. It definitely isn’t on its back right now.”
But he adds: “People have expectations of government that I just don’t think can be realised.”
Does he worry that AfD could win the German federal elections in 2029?
“The only way they could grasp national power would be if there were a semi-collapse of the economies,” he replies. “But that would hit everyone – the UK, France, Holland – and then things could happen very rapidly and nastily.”
@robhastings.bsky.social
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