In German. Worth knowing about even if you do not read the language — the argument is unusually relevant to anyone operating between the UK, the US and Germany.
Gerhard Schindler ran Germany's foreign intelligence service from the end of 2011 until June 2016, and left the post abruptly. He then wrote a memoir of those years.
The Chancellery stopped it.
What was published instead, in October 2020, is this — not the account of what happened, but an argument about what the service has become. It is subtitled Eine Streitschrift: a polemic. And the constraint that produced it is the most revealing thing about it.
What the book actually covers
Schindler's central charge is contained in a single formulation: that layer upon layer of administrative regulation has turned an intelligence service into an administrative authority. Not reformed, not constrained — converted into something structurally different, whose instinct is procedural compliance rather than operational judgement.
He argues that this happened as the political answer to a question Germany has never properly debated in public: how much freedom, and how much security, does the country actually want? Rather than deciding, successive governments issued rules. The rules accumulated. The capability adapted downward to fit them.
From there he sets out what he thinks should change — the structure of counter-terrorism coordination, the federal division of responsibility, and the competences the service would need to address the threats he describes: conflict, terrorism, cyber attack, and a security environment deteriorating faster than the institutions responding to it.
The German critical reception was broadly receptive to the reform arguments while noting the obvious tension: Schindler defends the service and simultaneously demands its overhaul. One reviewer wished for more perspective beyond German borders, observing that the American security architecture offers comparisons Schindler does not draw.
Why it matters for your risk posture
Read it for the institutional reality of German security. Organisations operating in Germany frequently hold expectations formed by Anglo-American practice — about what intelligence and security bodies do, how they relate to private business, and what is realistically available in a crisis. Schindler is explaining, from the inside, why those expectations frequently do not survive contact with the German framework.
Read it for the compliance-over-capability argument, which generalises well beyond intelligence. Any function that accumulates procedural rules faster than it revisits its purpose will eventually optimise for defensibility rather than effectiveness. Schindler is describing that pathology in a national service. Most large organisations have a smaller version of it somewhere.
And read it as a document about disclosure constraints. The book exists in this form because a former service head could not publish what he actually witnessed. That tells you something concrete about the German framework governing what former officials may say — worth understanding before commissioning work in that jurisdiction.
Key takeaways
- Procedural accumulation degrades capability quietly. Schindler's charge is that nobody decided to weaken the service; rules simply accumulated until the function changed shape.
- The unresolved policy question produces bureaucracy. Where a society will not debate the freedom-versus-security trade-off openly, rules substitute for a decision.
- German institutional practice is genuinely different. Assumptions carried over from US or UK experience will mislead you about what is available and what is permitted.
- The constraint is part of the evidence. A former intelligence chief prevented from publishing his account is itself a finding about the system he is describing.
About the author
Gerhard Schindler is a fully qualified lawyer who spent his career in German federal security. He worked for the Bundesgrenzschutz, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Bundesverfassungsschutz — the domestic intelligence service — before becoming Ministerialdirektor responsible for public security at the Interior Ministry.
He was appointed President of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany's foreign intelligence service, taking office at the turn of 2011 to 2012, and served until June 2016, when he left the post — a departure that came during a period of sustained political and parliamentary scrutiny of the service.
Wer hat Angst vorm BND? Warum wir mehr Mut beim Kampf gegen die Bedrohungen unseres Landes brauchen. Eine Streitschrift was published by Ullstein on 12 October 2020, running to 256 pages.
Beyond the Book
Gerhard Schindler — President of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, 2011/12–2016
- He continued to argue the case in public. After leaving office Schindler contributed to German media and conference debate on intelligence, security architecture and threat policy — this book being the fullest statement of that argument.
- The book that does not exist. His actual memoir of the BND years was blocked by the Federal Chancellery. Anyone genuinely interested in this subject should know the fuller account was written and suppressed.
- The German-language security debate is a separate literature. For a firm advising across the UK, the US and Germany, the German-language institutional discussion is not a translation of the Anglo-American one — it proceeds from different constitutional assumptions and reaches different conclusions.
- Read alongside: the Gaycken Cyberwar volumes, covered here, for the technical and industrial side of the same German security picture — and The American Black Chamber by Herbert Yardley, for the mirror case: an intelligence official who published what his government did not want published, and the legislation that followed.
Get your copy
Get your copy
Order Wer hat Angst vorm BND? on Amazon: find it here.