Something is rotten in the state of Germany

“The poison of betrayal is by no means as rare as we like to think of it. It’s not a nice part of our existence but it’s an entirely predictable one.” I had good reason in recent days to remember this cynical observation on human nature and espionage as an extraordinary scandal rocked Germany and its allies. My spy-philosopher was Markus Wolf, who had spent four decades at the helm of East Germany’s feared foreign intelligence services, earning himself the nickname “the man without a face” – which would be the title of our book. It was the early 1990s…