German spy caught selling top secret U.S. battle plans while working for NATO is jailed for seven years

Manfred Koenig was paid £5m by the Russian FSB secret service



Caught with top secret plans of American operations on his computer

Mr Koenig, who worked at a German air base, was jailed for seven years



A German spy caught selling American battle plans while working at a NATO base has been jailed for seven years for plunging western security into danger.

Manfred Koenig - who hid most of his £5million loot in bank accounts in London and Luxembourg - was a civilian worker at the vast Ramstein Air Force Base in western Germany when he was caught in June last year with USB sticks and top secret plans of American land and air operations on his computer.

He also had secret passwords for computer programmes intended for military top brass only. It is described as 'grade A’ material that the Russian FSB secret service paid him handsomely for.

Spy game: Manfred Koenig worked at Ramstein Air Force Base when he was caught with top secret plans of American land and air operations on his computer

America had to rebuild its global military strategy plans ‘from scratch’ after routine security checks unearthed his spying, which had gone on for many years.

Police and intelligence officers traced the bank accounts to London and Luxembourg where they were held under false names, and the money has been frozen. But the damage to NATO planning had, in the words of one official, ‘been immeasurable.’

‘We are talking names, codes to top secret operational files, the planning of black ops, the targeting of enemy strongholds, tactical land missions everywhere - it is the whole shooting match, not just in Afghanistan but across the world,’ said one NATO official.

Koenig, 61, was portrayed in court as an embittered man who grew disillusioned with his meagre pay and status and so began collating the material for his ‘pension.’



The stolen material was retrieved from his home in the village of Boerrstadt near Kaiserslautern after he left the employ of the Americans after a row.

Similar plans: Whisteblower Edward Snowden, former technical assistant for the CIA, revealed details of top-secret surveillance conducted by the United States' National Security Agency

‘The disclosure of the files would have allowed a potential enemy of NATO to gain access to the secret network of NATO,’ the court in Koblenz found.

It rejected the man's claim that he had wanted to point out security gaps when he copied the data and hid it on USB memory sticks in his kitchen and basement last year.

Koenig, an IT expert, had worked for NATO for more than 30 years. He copied the data in March 2012 and failed in an attempt to obtain more in June but left NATO shortly afterward.

The data were the ‘crown jewels’ and ‘operative heart’ of the system and would have allowed a foreign power to launch a cyber-attack with ‘devastating impact’, said presiding judge Andreas Voelpel.

The defendant had earlier denied the charge, saying: ‘I was never a traitor. I am not and never was an enemy of NATO, only of the security sloppiness of employees.’