The renowned journalist Peter Scholl-Latour, who died in 2014, was listed as a source by the German foreign secret service for decades and received commissions.
The German Federal Secret Service (BND) used journalists as sources for decades – sometimes even paid them – and thereby violated its own regulations. The extent of this co-operation became known through the so-called Schäfer Report in 2006, which was presented following a parliamentary investigation by the former federal judge of the same name.
Now the WDR reports on another spectacular case: the BND used the once well-known publicist and foreign reporter Peter Scholl-Latour as a so-called occasional source for years. This emerges from around 70 pages of material from the archives of the German foreign intelligence service, which the broadcaster has analysed.
A spokeswoman for the BND told WDR that Scholl-Latour had never been recruited as a ‘regular source’ for the service and had not been given a ‘constant assignment to gather information’. Nevertheless, the cooperation was extensive, according to the report: Scholl-Latour reported on his travels several times in the 1980s, provided background information on interviewees and made film and photo material from crisis areas available to the service before it was published.
In 1986, the journalist, by then editor of the magazine ‘Stern’, was also visited by a BND employee from the field of GDR reconnaissance. Scholl-Latour was asked to identify a person from the GDR who was working for the International Red Cross in Africa. He is also said to have been prepared to meet a BND source while travelling to Lebanon.
The BND is said to have compiled initial notes on Scholl-Latour as early as the early 1960s. These notes stated that he had French citizenship and could possibly have worked for the secret service there. From 1980, the files then showed concrete contacts with the German service. The code name ‘Scholar’ was used for him there, reports the WDR.
After travelling with the mujahideen in Afghanistan in 1981, the exchange with the BND intensified and meetings with employees are said to have taken place in his flat, among other places. Not all of the resulting memos of conversations with the BND have been released: The BND is withholding individual pages with reference to protection periods and the interests of the state.
The WDR report does not make it clear whether Scholl-Latour received anything in return for his co-operation with the BND – according to the service, he was not paid. However, it is conceivable that exclusive and secret information was leaked to him, as is often the case nowadays with the investigative departments of large media outlets. However, a direct influence on his journalistic work cannot be deduced from the available files.
Peter Scholl-Latour, who had also been programme director of WDR television in the 1970s before his verifiable cooperation with the BND, died in August 2014 at the age of 90. The public broadcaster ZDF, for which he worked at times during his time as a secret service agent, stated on enquiry that it had no knowledge of the events and that it adhered to journalistic guidelines and the press code. This code stipulates that secret service activities are not compatible with the professional profile of journalists.
Published in German in „nd“.
Image: MoSchle, PeterSchollLatour, CC BY-SA 3.0
