Germany’s Former Spy Chief Now Being Monitored as Extremist

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has been surveilling its former chief, who is now an opposition politician, in an echo that reminds some of former communist East Germany. Hans-Georg Maassen says that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV)—Germany’s equivalent of the FBI—has compiled extensive records on him going back several years. On Jan. 31, he published on social media a letter from the BfV to his lawyer, who had previously submitted a Freedom of Information request. The BfV statement reveals that the agency has designated him an “observation case” and has compiled an extensive dossier of at least 1,000 documents....