Bundesnachrichtendienst

The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) or Federal Intelligence Service is the current civilian foreign intelligence agency of Germany. Its immediate ancestor was the Gehlen Organization, a post-WWII organization set up by the U.S. Army and then directed by the Central Intelligence Agency, using staff and records from Reinhard Gehlen. Gehlen who had been an officer of the army of the Third Reich who was not himself considered a Nazi. He had run the Army intelligence branch directed at the Soviet Union.

In 1999, its website said it had a staff of approximately 6,000, divided into five main departments: h


 * Department 1: Operational intelligence, appears to be responsible for human-source intelligence, both with agents recruited by the BND and through liaison with other intelligence agencies.
 * Department 2: Technical procurement: Principally Signals intelligence; it does some information processing but the main computing center is in Department 6.
 * Department 3: Evaluation
 * Department 4: Administration, law and central services
 * Department 6: Technical developments and researc