Secret Services (2): Austrian Agent with Agenda

September 4, 10 am: Day one, the parliamentary inquiry in Vienna begins. It is the preliminary climax of the scandal surrounding the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (BVT), and at the same time, the temporarily last major chapter of the BVT case. Experience shows that the media interest noticeably decreases after just a few witness interrogations. In between, a "comprehensive reform" will be presented, and then usually the lid will be put on the case. From the point of view of committed parliamentary oversight, this may seem unfair, but - looking at past parliamentary inquiries - it will inevitably happen. ADDENDUM on the start of the BVT investigation.

What happened before: Second National Council President Doris Bures will ring the bell to open the first session; she will probably say "Dear Member of Parliament, your speaking time is over" a thousand times in the coming months. Bures already gained relevant experience during the Hypo Inquiry Committee. The Presiding Judge, who is new and a great-nephew of Johann Strauss, must instruct the first witness about their rights and obligations before starting the initial questioning. Next, the respective faction leaders are required to take their turns working through their lists of questions. Usually each has their own list. Although agreements among Members of Parliament would be helpful for the investigation, they are rare in political business. An outlaw like Peter Pilz just does what he wants. Exceptions could be the SPÖ representative Jan Krainer and the NEOS representative Stephanie Krisper.

The Pub 7

The scene: Pub 7 in the Vienna Hofburg will set the stage for a power struggle openly waged for more than a year. It revolves around the access of (political) forces to a rare resource: insider information. Such information is highly coveted because it usually serves as the basis for all sorts of intrigues. Intelligence services have an abundant supply of strictly confidential information by virtue of their offices. Not surprisingly, they are among the most powerful institutions in the state structure and are seen as a constant object of desire from various sides. Especially in Austria.

Vienna appears to be a historically established marketplace for such desires. However, in recent months, this stability has been shaken. One political side has been exerting too much pressure. Critics have recently eagerly pointed to an alleged massive decline in foreign secret information being sent to Austria. Even the retired president of the German foreign intelligence service BND spoke out in prime time on ORF and in Bild-Zeitung, attesting to a massive reluctance of German authorities. He failed to provide concrete evidence, but the raid on the BVT alone would be reason enough. The motive for his sudden appearance remains unclear. Nevertheless, he is involved in the private business of secret information. More on that later.

The Belt of Influence

Vienna is not just a hotspot for agents. Here, powerful individuals and billionaires with special interests may occasionally have a vice chancellor for breakfast when there's something important to discuss. Sometimes, the proverbial red carpet is rolled out for the sons-in-law of Eastern despots. It's all about big money. Everyone wants a piece of the pie. Not only political parties and their associated organizations, but also banks, Viennese football clubs, lawyers, tax advisors, lobbyists, IT security consultants, and intelligence traders are involved. Some get a large slice of the pie, while others are left with just the crumbs. Also legally. A lucrative belt of well-connected information hubs has formed around the BVT. Following the rule: The thicker the wire into the service, the more exclusive the information usually is. It comes in handy when recommending the right people to the right places.

The Private Agents

Some individuals who are no longer in positions of intelligence power find it difficult to part with the business, so they try to get involved in the private sector. Others have always preferred to work on their own account. Occasionally, even former foreign employees bring their services to the attention of the BVT for specific tasks. The most famous was Helmut Kohl's man for the rough cases, a welcome contractor for the BVT. Even the former Stasi agent Christina Wilkening has made the BVT a strategic target during her regular visits to Vienna. She has become a private intelligence trader and later she is convicted in Germany for bribing an LKA officer. A BVT employee was paid handsomely by Wilkening for his special services. She is also said to have been in contact with other Austrian services. The prosecutor has been investigating for years.

The Eternal Director

In spring 2017, the winds noticeably changed. Everyone could feel that there was movement in the political landscape. The grand coalition of the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) was hopelessly divided, experiencing yet another spring, but lacking strength. Everyone, except for the then ÖVP leader, Reinhold Mitterlehner, was waiting for Sebastian Kurz, who had been working on his turquoise project in the background for months and preparing for his candidacy as chancellor. The exact outcome was still open at that time, but one thing was clear: nothing would remain the same.

One man recognized his last chance. A professional man. Gert-René Polli had served in the military intelligence service for a long time, and at the peak of his career, he was entrusted by then Chancellor Schüssel with establishing a new authority. In 2002, it was done, the police unit with an intelligence character. Neither fish nor fowl. He was awarded the directorship as a reward. After one term, it was over; the pressure from the Anglo-American partner was supposedly decisive. An investigation against him, allegedly for too close cooperation with the Iranian regime, was later dropped.

What remained was his seclusion as a civil servant and his transition to the private sector. Descending into the shadow world of private agents. Polli had been working in the area of Corporate Intelligence, a specialized form of business consultancy, for the past ten years. Since September 1, 2018, he has been back in the Ministry of the Interior as a consultant. He was guaranteed exciting clientele in the private sector, even a bishop availed of his discreet services. Later on, he also got into political consulting. Especially the FPÖ, initially as a client, became part of a special goal: the restructuring of the intelligence services.

The Secret Meetings

Today, Gert-René Polli denies any contact with former subordinates, saying that only Martin Weiss, a former department head, happened to bump into him in late 2017. He claims not to have had anything to do with other meetings, where information was gathered cleverly disguised in the cigar smoke of a Viennese gentlemen's room. Nothing to do with a precise situation assessment, nothing with probing weaknesses in the BVT, and certainly nothing to do with approaching frustrated, overlooked leadership personnel on purpose.

Nonetheless, a loose circle of conversation partners comprising of frustrated BVT insiders and other departments of the Ministry of the Interior began meeting over weeks. Some of the informants have already retired but are still active behind the scenes. At the end, a dossier circulates among certain circles. It spans 39 pages and is soon strategically spread out. Eventually, the compromising material lands on the desk of the public prosecutor. The target is clear: the old ÖVP (Austrian People's Party). The network around the current black Interior Minister and his chief of staff in Lower Austria specifically comes under scrutiny. They have been in control of the Ministry of the Interior for years. Naturally, the head of the BVT should also be implicated.

The Dossier

This collection of factual representations lands in the hands of various journalists. Almost no higher officials with ÖVP ties are spared from the compromising stories. Everything is on the table: Sex, Drugs, and CIA. Nevertheless, some details can be confirmed. The all-encompassing conspiracy, however, cannot. Even the Vienna public prosecutor's office gets hold of the papers but soon puts them aside. Later, the Economic and Corruption Public Prosecutor's Office steps in. Investigations against unknown perpetrators are ongoing. The focus of the investigations lies on the distribution of passport blanks (North Korean ones to South Korea, printed by the Austrian State Printing House), embezzlement of funds, and failure to erase sensitive data. National elections are around the corner. Things will change afterward. Investigations pick up pace.

The Change of Power

The Interior Minister now is Herbert Kickl, and the public is mostly interested in his search for police horses. His team takes over. The ministerial cabinet and the new secretary-general face criminal activities within the Ministry of the Interior and its environment, which, according to internal notes, need to be cleaned up at the personal request of the minister. Concrete leads have been in their possession for months, as the insider papers had already reached high-ranking officials of the FPÖ in the summer, during the peak of the election campaign. At the same time, the founding chief of the BVT, Gert-René Polli, has an ongoing contract with the FPÖ. At that time, he also saw himself as a potential candidate for the top post, being considered for the position of Interior Minister. This sunny position eluded him because Kickl took over. The chief seat at the BVT also remained occupied by his successor, Peter Gridling. However, with the turn of the year, the investigations by the public prosecutor's office began to gather momentum. Even the throne of his successor came under scrutiny by the investigators.

An individual from the Ministry of the Interior is pulling the strings: the secretary-general. A quasi-civil servant secretary of state. Peter Goldgruber is the operative hand of the minister. Kickl has placed a motivated man in this position. Every paper has to go through him. Eventually, even the 39-page dossier ends up on his desk and that of his key staff member, an intelligence officer from the Vienna regional office.

The Storm

What exactly happened in the weeks between New Year and D-Day will be dissected in the coming weeks. The first chapter of the BVT parliamentary inquiry will likely focus extensively on how and why the raids on February 28, 2018, unfolded as they did. On that day, a series of raids, a unique event in the Second Republic in its dimensions, took place. The search of six office workplaces in the BVT and four private residences was ordered by the responsible senior prosecutor at the Economic and Corruption Public Prosecutor's Office, approved by the judicial editor on the previous evening, and executed by the Special Operations Unit to Combat Street Crime (EGS). The resorting to the EGS, led by an FPÖ councilor, raises questions, as do the meetings between the secretary-general, his staff, and the four witnesses with compromising information prior to the house searches.

The Accompanied Witnesses

From early February, the minister is kept personally updated by his secretary-general on the discussions between the cabinet staff and the witnesses. However, the Economic and Corruption Public Prosecutor's Office also receives a visit from the secretary-general of the Interior Minister, who personally hands over the 39-page dossier once again. Regardless of how strange this chosen procedure by Kickl's team may seem, the interrogations of the witnesses have sometimes been even more bizarre. Three out of four witnesses were personally escorted to the public prosecutor by the cabinet staff. Later, the incumbent Minister of Justice will speak of "pressure to investigate" from Kickl's secretary-general.

The Other Secretary-General

Minister of Justice Josef Moser also has a secretary-general with a self-confident sense of duty. He has had a firm grip on his office for years. Several justice ministers have interacted with him, but he has outlasted them all. Someone like Christian Pilnacek is not easily ruffled. Only one person has managed to do that. The puppeteer at Palais Trautson still feels that his colleague from Herrengasse deliberately sidelined him. One thing is certain: the two secretary-generals will not be friends in this lifetime.

But it's not just his counterpart who has cut him off. The Economic and Corruption Public Prosecutor's Office did not inform him in advance about the planned searches of the houses. They were not obligated to do so, but given the particularly delicate nature of this case, the secretary-general would have likely expected it.

A personal relationship between the Justice Secretary-General and representatives of the scrutinized black network within the Ministry of the Interior could have been the determining factor for the - permitted - bypassing. The person in question denies this and does not see any conflict, preferring to speak of a chance encounter occurring just at that time, when those two acquaintances started to ask questions about themselves.  The otherwise reticent Minister of Justice Moser uses the approach of the Economic and Corruption Public Prosecutor's Office as an opportunity to call for a reform of the supervisory chain.

The opposition members will soon question the first witnesses extensively in Pub 7 to clarify these events. The Higher Regional Court of Vienna already completed the warm-up round on August 28, 2018. Most of the raids were deemed unlawful. The house search in the premises of the dismissed head of the espionage department, a liaison officer of the ÖVP Parliamentary Club, was explicitly excluded. It is worth noting that the Economic and Corruption Public Prosecutor's Office stated in a press release that the "initial suspicion against individual suspects has significantly materialized."

The King Without Land

Whether it was an over-zealous and completely amateurishly conducted makeover operation or a clumsy cleaning out of the Augean stables will become evident in the coming months when the results of the investigations by the Economic and Corruption Public Prosecutor's Office and its six special investigators are on the table. Supporters of the theory that the blue Interior Minister saw red, or black, when looking at the BVT can argue, among other things, that not even the suspension of the agency chief Peter Gridling lasted longer than two months. Advocates of the theory that political appointments were common in the BVT argue that even BVT chief Gridling admitted in a small circle that he could not prevent the governance of others in his agency. The BVT boss as a king without land? A veritable leadership weakness that starts at the top, and cannot be ignored in light of the events of the last years.

The Reform

Regardless of the parliamentary inquiry and the accompanying political show, the end of the BVT in its current form has long been signaled. Research by Addendum revealed that the reform group appointed by the Interior Minister in May has completed a concept for the future that advocates for a clean separation between investigative and intelligence areas. So far, the BVT has been a kind of hybrid, not fish, not meat. In the future, the competencies will be clearly allocated. A significant part of the agency will be integrated into the Federal Criminal Police Office to conduct targeted police investigations more efficiently; the rest will collect and analyze intelligence information.

It is clear that with such a profound structural change, all leadership positions can be reopened for application. It will also demonstrate whether lessons have been learned from the past in terms of politics.

If you want to drink from this cup: it's available on Amazon.

Addendum Series on BVT: 

The Introduction on SPARTANAT: BVT in Austria: How Broken was the Intelligence Service? 

Part 1: The BVT - A Faulty Construction?

Part 2: Austrian Agent with an Agenda

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