Second German government employee under investigation over spying for US

German authorities are investigating the second case of a government employee suspected of spying on confidential government affairs for US secret services within a week.

Public prosecutors confirmed that the home and office of a defence ministry employee in the greater Berlin area had been searched yesterday morning .

They told the Guardian that a search had been conducted "under suspicion of secret agent activity" and that evidence – including computers and several data storage devices – had been seized for analysis.

The federal prosecutor’s office confirmed that no arrest had yet been made.

According to Die Welt newspaper, the staffer being investigated is a soldier who had caught the attention of the German military counter-intelligence service after establishing regular contact with people thought to be working for a secret US agency.

The news came just days after a member of the German intelligence agency BND confessed to having passed more than 200 confidential files to a contact at the CIA.

The new case is not thought to be directly related to that of the BND staffer.

However, one government insider familiar with the case told Suddeutsche Zeitung that the new case being investigated was "more serious" than that of the BND spy, in which the sold documents are thought to have been of limited value.

Last week’s spying scandal gave a detailed picture of how US security agencies manage to recruit foreign agents.

The staffer, employed at the German intelligence agency’s department for foreign deployments, had managed to establish contact with the CIA after emailing the US embassy in Germany. At a meeting in a Salzburg hotel, the CIA then equipped the BND employee with a specially encrypted laptop, which allowed the agent to keep in touch with the US secret service on a weekly basis.

Every time he opened a programme disguised as a weather app, a direct connection was established with a contact in America.

The BND employee received around €25,000 for 218 confidential documents, though sources within the intelligence service told German newspapers the 31-year-old had been motivated less by financial interests than by a craving for recognition.

After the CIA had apparently lost interest in him, he had offered his services to the Russian general consulate in Munich, inadvertently catching the attention of the German counter-espionage agency. – (Guardian service)