After AfD election victory, Thuringia intelligence chief considers limiting information flows

Stephan Kramer, Thuringia’s constitutional protection chief, is considering precautionary limits on the exchange of sensitive intelligence if the AfD takes part in governing neighboring Saxony-Anhalt.

Kramer told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland that agencies should prepare for graded information rights, a need-to-know principle and, if necessary, restricted distribution of especially sensitive material if “concrete doubts about the security of classified information under a political leadership” arise. He described the approach as “not a political sanction,” but risk management intended to protect lives, intelligence access and secrecy.

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Concrete doubts about the security of classified information under a political leadership

The AfD is classified as confirmed far-right extremist in Saxony-Anhalt. Kramer said last year that he considered proceedings to ban the party appropriate.

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Not a political sanction

Thuringia Interior Minister Georg Maier, a Social Democrat, has also called a possible AfD takeover in Saxony-Anhalt a threat to national security. Like Hamburg Interior Senator Andy Grote, he urged preventive protective measures. Maier told Handelsblatt that important infrastructure could be at risk if the AfD appointed the interior minister in the neighboring state.

Maier said risks would arise in counterespionage and the fight against right-wing extremism. He warned that public disclosure of intelligence about the AfD’s partly violent far-right milieu could expose sources and put informants’ lives at risk. According to RND, the heads of Germany’s 16 state constitutional protection offices and federal agency president Sinan Selen are due to meet from Wednesday to Friday for consultations that are expected to address the possibility of the AfD assuming government responsibility.

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The most important instrument of destabilization in Germany