Wolbert Klaus Smidt


Wolbert Klaus Smidt was a high-ranking German secret service official, diplomat and publicist. He was First Director at the German Federal Intelligence Service and Embassy Counselor in Paris.

Career

Wolbert Klaus Smidt was a son of admiral Karl Smidt, the NATO commander of the West German navy fleet. After his studies of law at the universities of Mainz, Berlin, Munich and Kiel, Smidt joined the German Federal Intelligence Service in the 1960s in Pullach under their legendary founder Reinhard Gehlen. Among others, Smidt was responsible for intelligence on terrorism and international economic interconnections. Starting from the 1970s he was in charge of several special operations, about which details are not reported in the press.
Starting from the 1980s he was the official representative of the German Federal Intelligence Service in Paris, simultaneously acting as a diplomat and as the director of the Intelligence Service's branch in France. From 1989 he was responsible for networking and consultation in the process of reform and re-foundation of secret services in eastern European countries. At the end of his career he was first director of the department for operative intelligence.
Smidt had received high decorations such as the Bundesverdienstkreuz and Officier de l'Ordre national du Mérite of the French State.

Public Engagement and Debates

In 2003 he founded the Think Tank "Gesprächskreis Nachrichtendienste in Deutschland" in Berlin, together with other high-ranking former secret service officials, journalists and academics, such as Hans-Georg Wieck, in order to contribute to the public debate on the role of secret services in the world. He was the association's president until 2012, and then acted as its honorary president. „The association was founded in order to contribute to a better informed debate about the role of secret services and provide 'intelligence about intelligence'
He organized numerous academic conferences in cooperation with influential German institutions, held numerous lectures and was considered a key-informant for the German press and political think tanks in questions of international terrorism and democratic control of secret services in modern democracies. He was one of the first high-ranking German government representatives who publicly denounced the alleged US American proofs for weapons of mass destruction in the Iraq as evident falsifications, easily recognizable as such by any professional secret service. In diverse publications and interviews he underlined the priority of civil rights and democratic principles over other interests of the state. The new laws issued after 9/11 in Germany, the US and other countries were seen as largely problematic by him, produced in great haste, going too far and even not being efficient. In 2005, the War on Terror was described by him as a dangerous development in international politics in German TV : „It was forgotten that one has to respect one's own principles when fighting terrorism. If one totally forgets about one's own core values, it is not worth it.“ His condemnation of secret actions of the CIA directed against Muslim individuals in Europe, which included illegal kidnappings, in 2005 received wide attention in the press. In 2011 he organized a conference on secret services and the question of ethics at the Evangelische Akademie Bad Boll, with the participation of important representatives of the international intelligence community, from the USA, Russia, Israel, France among others.
He was involved in numerous book publications which focus on the question of the uneasy interconnection between democratic principles and secret services, among others together with the German government's Federal Agency for Civic Education

Publications