Thursday September 30 1:10 AM ET
Germans Force Recall Of Three CIA Agents - Report
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has recalled three CIA agents
at Germany's insistence after they were accused of using false pretenses
to recruit German citizens for unspecified economic espionage,
Thursday's Washington Post reported.
In a report from Berlin quoting unidentified German officials, the
newspaper said the three Americans were described as a married couple
and their supervisor working under cover out of the U.S. consulate in
Munich.
It marked only the second time since the Second World War that Germany
has made public that it had sought the removal of American agents, the
Post said. Both instances occurred in the past two years.
While details of the alleged spying were not made public, German
officials told the newspaper the Americans had violated long-standing
practice by failing to make their activities known to Germany's domestic
intelligence agency.
The state television network, ZDF, which first reported the action, said
the three agents were not accredited as diplomats and that only one of
them actually worked at the Munich consulate.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government agreed not to expel the three
agents, but only with the understanding that Washington would order
their withdrawal, which was carried out over the past five months,
German officials told the Post.
The newspaper said the recall was a fresh sign of tension between the
two allies over the scale and purpose of U.S. intelligence-gathering in
Germany.
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