MAD President Grimm retired: the bitter farewell of a secret service chief

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Retired: Christof Gramm, President of the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD)

Photo: Jens Schicke / imago images / Jens Schicke

Christof Gramm had already largely prepared his farewell letter when he met the Defense Minister at MAD headquarters on Thursday morning.

After Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer had submitted his retirement in private, Gramm only made final changes.

He added the date and signature by hand.

Then the president, who had just been demoted to retirement, sent his letter to his staff.

Gramm's record, immediately classified as classified by the apparatus, is remarkable.

Objectively precise, but sometimes also bitterly ironic, the president, who was always a little too intellectual for the agent business and the intrigues in the military department, describes how he became a bogeyman.

How he expected to be released every day.

Between the lines there is a lot of frustration of an official who admits mistakes, but also sees himself as a scapegoat for politics.

Dismissal came "not surprisingly"

In the letter, Gramm gives his employees at the Military Counterintelligence Service one last piece of advice.

"Keep your humanity and respect for one another," he recommends.

That can be an empty phrase.

Nevertheless, one suspects that Gramm has repeatedly missed the two virtues in his superiors in the management wing of the defense department, the secret service controllers in parliament and, ultimately, the defense minister.

What does the MAD do?

The shield service operates domestically and abroad.

It is supposed to prevent espionage and sabotage in the Bundeswehr.

To do this, he checks soldiers for extremist attitudes and activities.

The officers carry out more than 50,000 security checks every year.

When deployed abroad, they monitor the partners on site, but also cooperate with foreign services in order to obtain information about opponents such as the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The MAD also protects German soldiers on missions abroad - but only within the Bundeswehr camps.

In addition, he secures armaments projects and properties.

Gramm describes the last conversation with the minister briefly.

"During her visit today, Federal Minister Kramp-Karrenbauer informed me that the reform efforts that have already been successfully implemented and initiated in the MAD are now also underlined by a change at the top of the MAD," writes Gramm.

The dismissal was "unsurprising" for him, rather it was "announced for a long time".

Then Gramm, who has headed the MAD since 2015, describes the reasons for his resignation.

As a long-time MAD president, despite all the innovations and improvements in the military intelligence service, he "also stands for the old days, which brought us a lot of criticism".

When it started, the 2015 MAD was seen as hopelessly encrusted and paralyzed by intrigue.

Even generals whispered that the service was more concerned with covering up than solving suspected right-wing extremist cases.

Gramm should clean up, preferably quickly.

He writes that we have "achieved a great deal and also learned a lot", at least the MAD is "on the right track" today.

A number of examples are cited as evidence: The clarification of networks and structures has been improved, the standards for the dismissal of right-wing extremists have been tightened.

With the Office for the Protection of the Constitution one sometimes cooperates "more intensively and cooperatively", one has become more professional.

Domino logic

The replaced president also admits mistakes "for which I am personally responsible".

He doesn't give any examples, but the list of mishaps is long.

When right-wing extremist Lieutenant Franco A. was exposed in 2017, the MAD was completely clueless.

In the years that followed, Gramm always denied that there were right-wing extremist networks in the troops, although there were already proven cross-connections between the right-wing extremist soldiers that the MAD had in its sights.

Despite all the reforms and the vow to cooperate closely with the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, things didn't get much better afterwards.

In the early summer of 2020, when Gramm had already been in office for five years, the MAD did not inform the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in advance of a raid on a KSK elite soldier, investigators unearthed an arsenal with two kilos of explosives there.

Shortly thereafter, a senior MAD man provided old KSK comrades with secret MAD details about the raid.

Gramm precisely describes the domino logic that ultimately led to his removal.

Because of his long term of office, he could "only partially credibly embody" the restart of the MAD requested by the ministry.

"Especially in political Berlin" his name was recently only associated with the old and new breakdowns of the MAD.

"Against this background, I cannot and will not stand in the way of a new start at MAD," writes Gramm.

The current president tries hard not to appear bitter.

He resigned his post "without any resentment", instead he was grateful for a "great service with the MAD with great employees".

Believe it.

But there is also anger in the letter.

Gramm argues that reform of the MAD will take patience.

"In our chronically agitated society," he complains with consternation, "unfortunately we don't always understand this."

Succession still open

This is probably one of the reasons why Gramm foresees a troubled time for the MAD.

"It is foreseeable that the political pressure on the MAD in the fight against right-wing extremism will increase significantly in the near future," he writes.

In fact, the minister urgently needs success in the fight against right-wing structures, after all, after the scandals surrounding the KSK elite unit, she spoke of an "iron broom" that was supposed to put an abrupt end to the brown ghost.

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Dismissal of MAD boss Gramm: Kramp-Karrenbauers risky Rochade by Matthias Gebauer

The newcomer on the MAD's executive chair will certainly read Gram's farewell note carefully.

Minister Kramp-Karrenbauer has not yet named a successor for the outgoing MAD boss Gramm.

When visiting the troops on Friday, she only said that the MAD had to become more dynamic and powerful under a new leadership.

She thanked Gramm for having driven the reforms so far "with passion".

But now "additional dynamics" are needed.

Kramp-Karrenbauer obviously did not arrange the succession for the MAD before Gramm's dismissal.

That is unusual in the defense department.

In the Bendler block, however, there are already rumors that a female lawyer from the apparatus is on the shortlist for the ejection seat post.

For the minister, the personnel could be a small political coup - there has never been a woman as head of one of the three German secret services.

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