On the morning of Feb. 28, police stormed offices of Austria’s main domestic intelligence agency and carted off some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets in open crates and plastic bags. “We used to have very deep and good cooperation,” said a top European intelligence official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly. In the trust-is-everything realm of intelligence work, that raises tricky questions for allies, which must decide whether they can risk continued cooperation. To critics, the raids were nothing less than an attempt to quash intelligence work that ran counter to the party’s interests. “The alarms are going off,” one senior European intelligence official said.

Source: Washington Post August 17, 2018 22:18 UTC