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German Spy in the Mideast: "Arab Intelligence Agencies Too Busy Protecting Regimes to Be Effective"
(Ha'aretz) Yossi Melman - For 11 years, Wilhelm Dietl was an agent for the West German intelligence service BND in the Middle East, with his work as a journalist for the now defunct German weekly Quick providing his cover. He visited Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other places, and met with terrorists, military commanders, intelligence services representatives and politicians. He acknowledged in a June 2007 interview in Ha'aretz: "I collected information and ran agents. I bribed army officers. I traveled throughout the Middle East - Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt." Recently Dietl published a book in German titled Shadow Armies: The Secret Services of the Islamic World, about the history of the spy agencies in Islamic countries, especially Arab ones. "The Arab agencies see their primary task as preserving the regime or the leader and therefore, they are cruel and without limits. They are above the law; they are the law itself. They see themselves as a divine entity. They torture suspects relentlessly, so it is not surprising that many suspects are willing to confess to every crime."