GERMANY: Secret service informer exposed
01 March 2001
A Munich based "documentary film maker" who had been posing as an activist in the left-wing radical scene in Germany and neighbouring countries for over 20 years, has been exposed as gathering evidence for several secret service agencies. Material found in the flat of Manfred Schlickenrieder, who under the code name “Camus” has gathered vast amounts of intelligence on networks in Germany, Italy, Austria and Switzerland, points to connections with not only the German Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst ? BND) and the Bavarian Regional Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bayerisches Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz ? LfV), but also to the Italian secret service SISDE and the UK industrial intelligence agency, Hakluyt. Hakluyt was formed by former MI6 members and conducts investigations into the environmental movement for multinational companies such as Shell and British Petroleum.
During the course of last year, members of the Swiss radical group Revolutionärer Aufbau Schweiz had become suspicious of their long?standing member who gained access to left?wing activist networks with film projects through the video and documentation centre Gruppe 2 in Munich; Gruppe 2 turned out to be a one?man operation. The Swiss activists formed an investigation committee to examine his activities. They uncovered written notes and official correspondence on a scale unseen before in secret service exposures, all of which can now be downloaded in pdf format from the group's website (http://www.geocities.com/aufbaulist).
Schlickenrieder had meticulously recorded every meeting and personal details of hundreds of activists and their contacts, often with photographs and films, enriched with personal assessments of potentially militant tendencies of individuals and groups. The discovery of official correspondence, the authenticity of which has not been disputed by the relevant secret services, further supports the suspicions that Schlickenrieder has worked for several agencies: a summary report by the Italian SISDE on the Red Brigades, details on interception of telecommunications of Red Army Fraction prisoners, interception and observation reports by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesverfassungsschutz) on alleged members of the French Action Directe and letters to Schlickenrieder by a former MI6 agent which specifically asks for details on Greenpeace's stance towards possible compensation claims by oil companies after protest actions.
Schlickenrieder made a “documentary” on Shell in Nigeria (“Business as Usual ? the Arrogance of Power”) during which he filmed and interviewed friends of Ken Saro?Wiwa amongst others, and passed these details on to the London?based “business?intelligence bureau” Hakluyt, which in turn passed the information on to their multinational clients. Schlickenrieder even kept the pay slips issued by Hakluyt. Other films, all based on personal interviews with prisoners and activists, investigated the Italian Red Brigades, the German Rote Armee Fraktion and industrial action taken by British dock workers. An archive with photos (front and profile view) of members of the Revolutionärer Aufbau Schweiz, their personal histories and international contacts, was found at Schlickenrieder's office, and activists suspect this archive to be the tip of the iceberg.
Schlickenrieder is now thought to have left Switzerland, where he could face several years imprisonment for engaging in foreign spying activities on Swiss soil. Meanwhile, the Revolutionärer Aufbau Schweiz has intensified its publicity campaign with planned information tours in Germany and the Netherlands. They are calling for those who believe that they may have been subjected to Schlickenrieder's investigations to come forward, so that they can gain insight into the data collected on them.
More detailed background information in German and also in English can be found under www.salonrouge.de/gruppe_2.htm a