Klaus-Dieter Fritsche

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Klaus-Dieter Fritsche (left) next to the Canadian Major General Stuart Beare

Klaus-Dieter Fritsche (born May 16, 1953 in Bamberg ) is a former German administrative lawyer and political official ( CSU ). From January 2014 he was State Secretary in the Federal Chancellery and Commissioner for the Federal Intelligence Services . In March 2018 he was in retirement adopted. Since March 2019 Fritsche has been working for the Austrian ÖVP / FPÖ federal government as an advisor to the FPÖ Interior Minister Herbert Kickl with regard to the restructuring of the intelligence service.

education and profession

Fritsche passed the Abitur in 1973 at the Franz-Ludwig-Gymnasium Bamberg . After completing his military service, he studied law at the University of Erlangen until 1978 (first state examination). He completed his legal clerkship in 1981 with the second state examination.

Fritsche held various positions as administrative judge and parliamentary group officer as well as in the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior . From October 1996 to November 2005 he was Vice President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution . From December 2005 to December 2009 he worked as a department manager and coordinator of the intelligence services of the Federation in the Federal Chancellery . Fritsche then worked as State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior from December 2009 to 2013 .

After Fritsche in March 2018 for reasons of age in the retirement had been adopted, he acts beginning in 2019 as a consultant for the Austrian Interior Ministry , which at that time was under the direction of the Freedom Party Minister Herbert Kickl. Whether he would continue his activities in Austria after the fall of the blue-black government as a result of the Ibiza affair was initially open.

Federal Government Commissioner

From January 2014 to March 2018 he was State Secretary in the Federal Chancellery. There he held the newly created office of Commissioner for the Federal Intelligence Services and could thus be considered the highest-ranking official of internal security in the federal government. The position is comparable to the Director of National Intelligence in the United States .

He headed the weekly intelligence service briefing in the Chancellery, the State Secretaries Committee for Secret Intelligence and Security , at which the State Secretaries from all departments dealing with security issues meet with the presidents of the intelligence services. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, this includes the President of the Federal Criminal Police Office .

When meeting with NSA Director Keith B. Alexander on January 10, 2012, Fritsche asked for assistance in monitoring Skype communications. However, this was not granted and Fritsche was referred to the CIA and FBI . German services wanted to be able to use SIGINT information in legal proceedings, which the NSA rejected. These issues were listed in an internal NSA note as potential stumbling blocks in relations with German sister organizations.

Appearance in the NSU investigation committee

On October 18, 2012, Fritsche defended the criticized security authorities and attacked the work of the committee in the first NSU committee of the Bundestag , which investigated the misconduct of federal authorities in the investigation into the right-wing extremist National Socialist underground . He said the committee was taking part in a "scandalizing competition" in assessing the actions of the security authorities and resisted "biting criticism, scorn and ridicule of an entire branch of police and constitutional protection officers". The accusation that it was "systematically hushed up and that right-wing extremism was not dealt with with full force" was unfounded. Because of the protection of privacy, for example in the case of V-people, some documents could only be sent to the committee with blackened real names. The destruction of files for the recruitment of informants in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which became known in 2012, concerns Operation Rennsteig , in which Fritsche was involved as Deputy President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in 1997. Fritsche had underestimated the danger of right- wing terrorism and delayed the investigation of the NSU crimes through his misjudgments . Fritsche justified the refusal of unreserved cooperation by the security authorities in the investigation of the NSU complex with the often-quoted sentence: "No state secrets may be disclosed that undermine government action."

MPs rejected this criticism. The committee chairman Sebastian Edathy said it was about "the unconditional protection of people and citizens in this country, perhaps less about the unconditional protection of real names."

Edathy affair

In the committee of inquiry into the Edathy affair , the former Federal Minister of the Interior Hans-Peter Friedrich stated in June 2015 that in October 2013, as his then State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, Fritsche had not only informed him about the mediation proceedings against Sebastian Edathy , but had also advised him to go to the SPD -Chairman Sigmar Gabriel . Presumably because of this information, Edathy was surprisingly not considered for the new cabinet by the SPD during the coalition negotiations and this is probably why Edathy finally became aware of the investigation. Because of the accusation of betrayal of secrets , Friedrich resigned as the new Federal Minister of Agriculture , but an investigation against him was closed by the public prosecutor in September 2014 because of only minor guilt.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Frank Jansen: Klaus-Dieter Fritsche in retirement - The conductor of the German services leaves. In: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/ . Der Tagesspiegel, March 15, 2018, accessed on December 19, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Georg Mascolo, Ronen Steinke Berlin: Merkel's ex-chief espionage in the wake of the Ibiza affair . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2019, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on May 29, 2019]).
  3. ↑ https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2019-03/oesterreich-klaus-dieter-fritsche-geheimdienst-herbert-kickl-fpoe
  4. ↑ https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2019/Rechtsabbieger-Der-neue-Job-von-Merkels-Geheimdienstmann,fritsche108.html
  5. ↑ Merkel's ex-chief espionage in the wake of the Ibiza affair. May 29, 2019. Retrieved May 29, 2019 .
  6. ^ NSA: NSA's Counterterrorism (CT) Relationship with the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). Retrieved June 26, 2019 (American English).
  7. ↑ Karl-Otto Sattler: Attack as Defense, NSU Committee State Secretary Fritsche causes a stir with his appearance. Criticism of federal structures. ( Memento of March 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: The Parliament , 43rd edition of October 22, 2012.
  8. ↑ State Secretary gets entangled in the NSU shredding scandal. September 13, 2012, accessed June 25, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Dirk Laabs: State Secret . May 25, 2014 ( welt.de [accessed June 25, 2019]).
  10. ↑ Dirk Laabs : The protection of the constitution and the NSU. In: Wolfgang Frindte , Daniel Geschke, Nicole Haußecker, Franziska Schmidtke (eds.): Right-wing extremism and "National Socialist Underground". Interdisciplinary debates, findings and balance sheets. Springer, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-09996-1 , pp. 225–258, here p. 256 . See the full statement by State Secretary Fritsche before the NSU committee of inquiry. ( Memento from January 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: BMI.bund.de , accessed on October 22, 2012; Minutes of the entire committee meeting (PDF) .
  11. ↑ Stefan Aust , Dirk Laabs : Heimatschutz. The state and the NSU series of murders. Pantheon, Munich 2014, p. 806.
  12. ↑ Edathy Affair: Friedrich gets away . In: Frankfurter Rundschau (online), September 8, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Fritsche, Klaus-Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (CSU), State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Bamberg