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Germany denies spies gave Iraq plan to U.S.

Germany denied on Monday that its intelligence officials obtained a copy of Saddam Hussein’s defense plan for Baghdad and passed it on to U.S. commanders a month before the 2003 Iraq invasion.
/ Source: Reuters

Germany denied on Monday that its intelligence officials obtained a copy of Saddam Hussein’s defense plan for Baghdad and passed it on to U.S. commanders a month before the 2003 Iraq invasion.

The allegation that two German spies operating in the Iraqi capital before the war provided key military information to the United States -- at a time when the Berlin government was voicing strong public opposition to a U.S. invasion -- appeared on Monday in an article in the New York Times.

The report suggests that German intelligence officials offered much more significant assistance to the United States than their government has publicly acknowledged.

But German government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm and the country’s BND foreign intelligence agency said key details in the report were incorrect. Wilhelm declined to respond to repeated questions about whether its general thrust was accurate.

“The allegation that two BND agents had Saddam Hussein’s plan for defending the Iraqi capital and, one month prior to the start of the war, passed it on to the United States -- as described in the New York Times today -- is false,” Wilhelm told a regular government news conference. “The BND and the government had up until now no knowledge of such a plan.”

‘Incorrect on all points’
A BND spokesman was even more categorical: “I would say the article is incorrect on all points.”

Any evidence that German agents provided key military information to Washington would be a major embarrassment for officials in the government of Gerhard Schroeder, who was chancellor at the time.

Schroeder lost last year’s election to conservative Angela Merkel, but some of his Social Democrats hold important positions in her governing coalition. Current Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was Schroeder’s chief aide, responsible for overseeing the security services.

According to the New York Times report, the Iraqi defense plan provided the American military with an extraordinary window into Iraq’s top-level deliberations, including where and how Saddam planned to deploy his most loyal troops.

Sourced to U.S. military study
The paper said its report was based on a classified military study prepared in 2005 by the U.S. Joint Forces Command.

The German government has said it had two BND agents in Baghdad during the war, but it has insisted it provided only limited help to the U.S.-led coalition.

In a report released last week, the government said the agents supplied U.S. officials with information on civilian sites that should be avoided in bomb raids.

But it also acknowledged they forwarded descriptions of the Iraqi army and police presence in Baghdad, including in some cases the geographic coordinates of military forces.

The 90-page report is part of a larger text given to a parliamentary oversight committee that has been investigating reports the BND helped the United States select sites to bomb during the U.S.-led invasion.

Inquiry sought
The Greens, junior partners in Schroeder’s government at the time of the invasion, and the Left Party have called for a parliamentary inquiry which would require current and former German government officials to testify under oath.

But for that to happen, Germany’s other main opposition party, the Free Democrats (FDP), would need to join them.

“If this information is confirmed, it would of course be a dramatic twist,” Max Stadler, legal expert of the FDP, told Deutschlandfunk radio.

The New York Times, citing the study, said that after the German agents obtained the Iraqi defense plan, they sent it up their chain of command.

The paper said that in February 2003, a German intelligence officer in Qatar provided a copy of the plan to an official from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency who worked at the wartime headquarters of General Tommy Franks.

The Iraqi plan called for massing troops along several defensive rings near Baghdad, including a “red line” that Republican Guard troops would hold to the end, the paper said.