January 10, 2006
C'MON, THEY GOT PLAYED:
Corridors of Power: The lady was a spy (ROLAND FLAMINI, 1/09/06, UPI)
Susanne Osthoff, the German archeologist kidnapped by Iraqi gunmen on Nov. 25 and released before Christmas was connected with her country's intelligence service, the BND, and had helped arrange a meeting with a top member of the terrorist organization al-Qaida, possibly Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi himself, according to well informed German sources Sunday.The sources confirmed German press reports that the 43-year-old woman had worked for the BND in Iraq on a freelance basis, and had for some time even stayed in a German intelligence safe house in Baghdad. [...]
A day after Osthoff's release, the Germans had quietly freed and sent home to his native Lebanon Mohammed Ali Hamadi, a Hezbollah militant serving a sentence for killing a U.S. Navy diver in a hijacked TWA jetliner in 1985. [...]
[G]erman sources said the real deal involving Osthoff's release had been the payment of a ransom to her terrorist captors by the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Posted by Orrin Judd at January 10, 2006 12:04 AM
I don't have any innate problem with spies doing double and triple flips . . . but what was the bottom line here? A ransom for the spy's release? What did the spy accomplish? The Germans must believe that they're losing money on every transaction, but they'll make it up in volume.
Posted by: Fred Jacobsen (San Fran) at January 10, 2006 2:00 AMSo that's what Valerie Plame has been doing these past few months.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at January 10, 2006 11:04 AM