According to the charge sheet, the suspects are accused of passing confidential documents bought from a Dutch foreign ministry official and passing them to Russian intelligence services, German newspaper Die Welt reported.

BBC: Russia 'spies' go on trial in Germany

How can the BND's categorical statement of 5 May 1988, to the effect that no German companies were involved at Rabta, be squared with intelligence to the contrary in its possession as of at least 3 February 1988?

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy

Below, on the battlefields of Europe, German intelligence officers made the same oath to another computer, the Enigma coding machine.

FORBES: Malone's Musings: Memorial Day 1999

The German Foreign Office does not pass this information on to the Intelligence Service or other agencies for a full week.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy

In the fall of 2010, a year after the document was written, European intelligence agencies were scrambling to investigate a Mumbai-style plot involving German and other European militants -- which sparked an unprecedented U.S. State Department travel warning for Americans in Europe.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Maturin was involved in wartime espionage and there is a strong suggestion that O'Brian's notorious secrecy derived from his own experience working for the Political Intelligence Department during the Second World War, supplying 'black' propaganda to undermine German morale.

BBC: Patrick O'Brian: Master of the seafaring saga

In refusing to make such an assumption, the intelligence community does not tell the world, as the French and German leaders now fear in their public statements, why Tehran invested in a nuclear program until 2003.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Questionable intelligence on Iran

Until late last year, German intelligence officials said they believed the immigrant murders, which were committed across the country from 2000 to 2007, were retribution killings within Germany's Turkish community.

WSJ: German Intelligence Chief to Step Down