Federal Intelligence Service (Germany) Challenge Coin

The Federal Intelligence Service (German: Bundesnachrichtendienst (German pronunciation: [ˌbʊndəsˈnaːχʁɪçtnˌdiːnst], BND; CIA code name CASCOPE[2]) is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, directly subordinated to the Chancellor's Office. Its headquarters are in Pullach near Munich, and Berlin (planned to be centralised in Berlin by 2016, with about 4,000 people). The BND has 300 locations in Germany and foreign countries. In 2005, the BND employed around 6,050 people, 10% of them Bundeswehr soldiers; those are officially employed by the Amt für Militärkunde (Office for Military Sciences). The budget of the BND for 2015 was €615,577,000.

The BND acts as an early warning system to alert the German government to threats to German interests from abroad. It depends heavily on wiretapping and electronic surveillance of international communications. It collects and evaluates information on a variety of areas such as international non-state terrorism, weapons of mass destruction proliferation and illegal transfer of technology, organized crime, weapons and drug trafficking, money laundering, illegal migration and information warfare. As Germany’s only overseas intelligence service, the BND gathers both military and civil intelligence. While the Strategic Reconnaissance Command (de) (KSA) of the Bundeswehr also fulfills this mission, it is not an intelligence service. There is close cooperation between the BND and the KSA.

The domestic secret service counterparts of the BND are the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or BfV) and 16 counterparts at the state level Landesämter für Verfassungsschutz (State Offices for the Protection of the Constitution); there is also a separate military intelligence organisation, the Militärischer Abschirmdienst (MAD, Military Counterintelligence Service).

The BND is a successor to the Gehlen Organization. The most central figure in its history was Reinhard Gehlen, its first president.

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