2023-09-16 09:52:56
There are two stories about Nancy Faeser and Arne Schönbohm. The initial boom lasted for months. It’s the story of a cybersecurity boss who became a security risk himself and therefore had to leave. In recent months, the other narrative has dominated. It is about a minister without a compass who allowed herself to be driven by a satirical program in her personnel decisions and ultimately even used the Office for the Protection of the Constitution against her own people.
This is politics as a crime novel. Exciting to read, also entertaining. And without any claim to depict reality. It’s more complicated. Perpetrators are also victims, there are no good guys, everyone is a loser in some way. Seen from the end, the Schönbohm case is extremely astonishing: the former president of a subordinate authority is shaking up the republic. It’s worth tracing how it got to this point.
Last October, the satirist Jan Böhmermann dedicated a program to Schönbohm. That was the first time most viewers had heard of the President of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). But Böhmermann wasn’t particularly investigative. The parts of the program that were based on facts were well known in expert circles. Böhmermann didn’t even come up with the insult “cyberclown” himself. It dates from 2016, when Schönbohm was appointed BSI President. Schönbohm’s defenders today sound as if he was the ideal man for this position, but the mood back then was different. Schönbohm was not at the top of the list of then Interior Minister Thomas de Mazière. But public service is not particularly attractive for cyber experts, and so Schönbohm got the chance.
Schönbohm had already handed over the chairmanship of the club
His appointment was heavily criticized. For left-wing politicians, this may have had something to do with his CDU party membership, but the skepticism in the professional community was based on doubts about his professional suitability. Schönbohm is not a computer scientist or mathematician, but a business economist who previously worked as a lobbyist. In 2012 he founded the “Cyber Security Council Germany” association, a network for IT companies and institutions. Because of the name there was trouble with the Federal Ministry of the Interior. “Cyber Security Council Germany” does not sound like a private association, but rather a state institution – especially if, as is often the case, the addition eV has been omitted. In fact, the federal government has had a National Cyber Security Council since 2011.
Didn’t want to leave the rumors about him like that: Former BSI boss Arne Schönbohm: Image: Imago
The rumors about the club’s contacts with Russian secret services, which Böhmermann also picked up on, only emerged after Schönbohm had handed over the club’s chairmanship to Hans-Wilhelm Dünn. In 2019, Dünn took part in an international conference in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, which, according to “Zeit” reports, was used by Russian services to deepen contacts. At the conference, Dünn’s association signed a joint declaration of intent on the peaceful use of information technology with a Russian association. Schönbohm had nothing more to do with it. The fact that he is well acquainted with Dünn does not give rise to suspicion. Last September he appeared to celebrate the club’s tenth anniversary. There were kind words on Twitter and shared pictures. However, Schönbohm had the appearance approved by the responsible state secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior.
The relationship between Schönbohm and the ministry, which oversees his agency, was already strained before Faeser came into office. There were always conflicts. There were problems with press work until Schönbohm was instructed to submit all interviews to the ministry before they were released. It emerged that he had already set the course for a BSI location in Saarbrücken, even though the then Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) had another city in mind. There is a rumor in the ministry that an entry in Schönbohm’s personal file was discussed at the time. Seehofer didn’t want that after all. When Faeser spoke a few days after the Böhmermann broadcast about how trust in Schönbohm had been damaged, officials complained that this situation had been going on for years.