Gerhard Schindler

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Gerhard Schindler (born October 4, 1952 in Kollig ) is a German lawyer and civil servant in temporary retirement . He was President of the Federal Intelligence Service from December 2011 to June 2016 and has been a management consultant and lobbyist ever since .

Gerhard Schindler, 2018, in Berlin.

Life

Schindler's parents came from Transylvania and Bessarabia . He attended the then Kurfürst-Balduin-Aufbaugymnasium in Münstermaifeld and passed the Abitur there in 1972 . He then did military service with the paratrooper troops of the Bundeswehr ; he is first lieutenant in the reserve. In 1974 he began studying law at the Saarland University in Saarbrücken and became a member of the Saarbrücker Burschenschaft Germania; In 1980 he passed the first state examination and in 1982 the second state examination.

Until 1984 he worked as a police enforcement officer for the Federal Border Guard . In 1985 he became a consultant in the civil defense department in the Federal Ministry of the Interior . At the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Cologne, he was head of department from 1987 to 1989. In 1989 he returned to the Ministry of the Interior. He was head of the budget department, permanent representative of the head of the central department and head of the staff unit “Modern State - Modern Administration”. In 2003 he became Head of the Counter-Terrorism Division . From 2008 he was Head of the Public Security Department as Ministerial Director . He was responsible for the technical supervision of the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. He is considered a specialist in criminal and terrorist networks, IT security and computer crime .

In December 2011 he succeeded Ernst Uhrlau as President of the Federal Intelligence Service . Like the former President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maaßen and the President of the Federal Police Headquarters Dieter Romann, he was considered a critic of Chancellor Angela Merkel's acceptance of refugees as part of the refugee crisis from 2015 . On June 30, 2016, Schindler was put into temporary retirement and Bruno Kahl succeeded Schindler on July 1, 2016.

Schindler has been advising companies on security issues since November 2016 and works for an international lobbying company based in Berlin and Brussels .

Schindler has been a member of the FDP since his studies . From 1989 to 1994 he was a member of the local council in Nörvenich . He is married and has one child.

Controversy

In July 2013, Schindler had to explain his behavior in the NSA affair when the ARD magazine fact reported that the surveillance program PRISM was known to the Bundeswehr even before the first revelations. The BND then had government spokesman Steffen Seibert explain that it was NATO software (of the same name?) The Federal Ministry of Defense contradicted this representation; rather, you order the information you need from the Americans and have it delivered to you.

As of August 10, 2013, German media reported that the BND, headed by Schindler, was involved in the transfer of cell phone data to the USA, which also helped to target suspects by using drones to kill them.

In April 2015, Schindler was criticized by politicians from all parties represented in the Bundestag for allegedly skimming off data and communication from European companies and politicians under his leadership on behalf of the NSA .

His efforts to achieve transparency, such as filming permission in the BND and interviews on breakfast television, as well as conversations with journalists in which Schindler disseminated assessments about Saudi Arabia, for example, that ran counter to the diplomatic interests of the Foreign Office, were unusual.

Author activity after the end of service

The Federal Chancellery rejected the publication of his memoirs after almost two years of examination . The originally planned book was 284 pages long and was entitled Memories of the Federal Intelligence Service , dedicated to “all active and former members” of the BND. At first he did not comment on the decision of the Chancellery on his memoirs. At an event of the former SPD member of the Bundestag Burkhard Lischka , he formulated his original motivation for writing his memoir: "I wanted to show what the Federal Intelligence Service is from my point of view: No organized crime, no hyper-people, no James Bond." Schindler, presumably on October 12, 2020, will publish a pamphlet at Ullstein Verlag under the title: Who is afraid of the BND? Why we need more courage to fight the threats to our country.

literature

  • Gerhard Schindler. , In: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 45/2013 from November 5, 2013, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  • Mariam Lau : Having fun. Gerhard Schindler, head of the Federal Intelligence Service, is a kind of state liberal, in: Die Zeit No. 32, August 1, 2013, p. 2.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Der Burschenschafter , edition 1/2018, p. 39, ISSN  2511-610X , accessed on March 26, 2018.
  2. ↑ Hans Peter Schütz: Role of the Germans in the NSA affair: Schäuble's model students sniff the citizens . Stern , July 24, 2013.
  3. ^ Secret service: Gerhard Schindler (59) becomes the new head of the BND . AFP report in DerWesten , December 7, 2011.
  4. ↑ Matthias Geis, Moritz Aisslinger, Marc Brost, Peter Dausend, Tina Hildebrandt, Mariam Lau, Martin Machowecz, Anna Mayr, Nicola Meier , Paul Middelhoff, Yassin Musharbash, Valerie Schönian, Holger Stark, Veronika Völlinger, Heinrich Wefing: Die Deutungsschlacht , Zeit online, September 12, 2018.
  5. ^ Government confirms change at the top of the BND , faz.net of April 27, 2016
  6. ↑ Ex-BND boss Schindler becomes a management consultant . faz.net, accessed December 16, 2019
  7. ↑ From BND boss to management consultant . Wiwo.de, accessed on November 16, 2019
  8. ↑ Listening technology: BND and Bundeswehr have known Prism for years . Zeit Online , July 17, 2013, accessed on April 17, 2016.
    Federal Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich had also claimed that the Federal Government only learned about PRISM and its British counterpart TEMPORA through Snowden: PRISM: Bundeswehr has been using NSA espionage since 2011 . ( Memento of May 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Chip , July 2013, accessed on April 17, 2016.
  9. ↑ Jörg Diehl, Veit Medick : BND boss Schindler: The NSA apprentice . Spiegel Online , July 22, 2013, accessed April 17, 2016.
  10. ^ Matthias Gebauer: Prism mission in Afghanistan: Ministry of Defense contradicts BND . Spiegel Online , July 18, 2013, accessed April 17, 2016.
  11. ^ Stefan Buchen, Hans Leyendecker : Cooperation with US secret services: displeasure with BND boss Schindler . Süddeutsche Zeitung , August 10, 2013, accessed on April 17, 2016.
  12. ↑ Eckart Lohse : Chancellery exercises severe criticism of BND . faz.net , April 24, 2015, accessed April 17, 2016.
  13. ↑ JOST MÜLLER-NEUHOF: How the outgoing BND boss made news. Gerhard Schindler was known for his frank words in front of the press - but it may not always have been fully coordinated with the Chancellery. - Daily mirror 2016
  14. ^ Florian Flade, Georg Mascolo: Chancellery holds back secret service book. tagesschau.de, February 3, 2020, accessed on May 17, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Book presentation , on the website of Ullstein Buchverlage, Berlin, accessed on May 17, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Schindler, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and civil servant
DATE OF BIRTH 4th October 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Great