As a CIA agent in West Germany during the Cold War, Joseph Wippl monitored Soviet spies and their network of influential sympathisers.
It was a dangerous time. In the late 70s and early 80s, Moscow’s intelligence agencies were active throughout Europe and few people could imagine the Berlin Wall ever being demolished.
Wippl was overjoyed when Germany reunited in 1990, saying that historic moment “changed everything”. He later became America’s highest-ranking spy in the country, serving as the CIA’s chief of station in Berlin between 2001 and 2003.
Analysis reveals why Kent meningitis outbreak was so severe
Scientists have revealed what made the bacteria behind a deadly meningitis B outbreak in Kent in March particularly dangerous.
The context
Twenty-one people were diagnosed with invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) in a week, in the outbreak which was linked to a nightclub in Canterbury.
Two teenagers died and nine required intensive care.
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Why it was so dangerous
Experts from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and University of Oxford found that the bacteria underwent a process called horizontal gene transfer – where it picked up small pieces of DNA from other bacteria.
This means the bacteria can borrow genetic traits without reproducing and changes how it interacts with human cells. The change made it particularly effective at causing severe illness and may have affected how the immune system recognised it.
How the UK is trying to prevent future outbreaks
Following the Kent outbreak, a one-off menB vaccination programme was launched as universities start again.
What else is being done?
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has also recommended that teenagers be offered the jab on the NHS at the age of 15.
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How PIP claims for ADHD are rising for teens in richer areas
The number of 16- to 17-year-olds claiming personal independence payment (PIP) for ADHD and autism has more than tripled in richer areas over six years, according to analysis by the Nuffield Trust.
What is PIP for?
PIP is the main benefit paid to people who have a long-term physical or mental health condition or disability and is intended to help with everyday tasks and living costs.
According to government statistics from July, there were 4.1 million claimants entitled to PIP in England and Wales.
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A closer look at the figures
While the amount of teenagers claiming PIP in deprived areas is higher, the number has grown at a slower rate, from 2.1 per cent in 2019 to 5.1 per cent last year.
This compares to a rise from 0.8 per cent to 2.5 per cent for teenagers from the least-deprived neighbourhoods.
- The think-tank also found that PIP recipient rates for ADHD and autism for white people were higher overall than those of other ethnicities.
The new claims about Lucy Letby – and what it means for appeal
Lucy Letby has failed – twice – to get judges to overturn her convictions for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more. However, fresh claims that her prosecution is a major miscarriage of justice have been made in the new documentary, Lucy Letby – Scapegoat?, a collaboration between and Channel 5.
A doctor who worked alongside Letby at the Countess of Chester Hospital says he believes the evidence used to convict her is “extremely poor” and that there was no killer on the neonatal unit, saying instead she was a “scapegoat” used by hospital bosses to cover up the unit’s poor performance.
- Individual failings and sub-optimal care at the hospital were discussed at length during both of Letby’s trials, but prosecutors insisted they did not explain the deaths.
Some details ‘not shared with jury’
The documentary claims there was a set of results relating to a baby who was poisoned by Letby that were not shared with the jury.
- Letby was convicted of attempting to murder two babies by secretly injecting insulin into IV bags which were being used to treat them.
- During the trial, jurors were told how a blood result for Baby F pointed to insulin coming from an external source rather than being produced by the body.
- now claims that there were a further 14 glucose readings which were “normal” at the time Baby F was poisoned but that this evidence was not shown to the jury.
- Retired detective Stuart Clifton, who investigated killer nurse Beverley Allitt, said the result should offer “clear grounds for appeal”.
Baby died ‘after Letby left the unit’
A mother has said her baby suddenly collapsed at the hospital and later died, six months after Letby was taken off the unit.
The statistics around the unusual number of collapses and deaths at the Countess of Chester between 2015 and 2016 were a key part of the prosecution case.
There were a total of 12 deaths from 2010-14 and then eight in 2015. Since Letby left the unit in July 2016, there has only been one.
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Expert questions method of alleged murders
One of the methods by which Letby was said to have murdered babies was injecting them with air to cause an air embolism.
However, vascular surgeon Dr Colin Ferguson told : “The fact that in no case was air found in the heart at post-mortem means that this is just not true.”
Following her retrial, Letby was convicted of attempting to murder a baby by removing her breathing tube.
- Senior doctor Ravi Jayaram claimed that he walked in to find Baby K having collapsed with Letby standing over her cot doing nothing.
- However the documentary obtained a contemporaneous email written by Jayaram which said that Letby called him for help.
- The discrepancy over whether Jayaram went in because he was worried or because Letby called him for help was highlighted in the Thirlwall public inquiry into her case.
What happens now?
Letby remains in prison and her only avenue to clear her name is an application to the miscarriages of justice watchdog the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).
The CCRC is currently considering her application but there is no timeline as to when it will decide whether it believes Letby’s case should be referred back to the Court of Appeal or not. Only a fraction of all applications submitted are successful.
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Now, the veteran worries the country is once again facing huge security threats that could also harm the rest of Europe – with the far-right AfD party winning elections and arguing for rapprochement with Vladimir Putin’s regime.
“The Russians will certainly have agents in the AfD,” says Wippl, 82. He adds that many of its supporters “will be favourably inclined to Russian positions and propaganda, no doubt.”
Russia is accused of conducting a “hybrid warfare” campaign of sabotage and assassination plots in Germany and across the Continent – including an attempted drone attack at Leipzig airport last month – in retaliation for Nato supporting Ukraine.
But AfD’s co-chair, Alice Weidel, has demanded that Chancellor Friedrich Merz should “finally start pushing for peace talks” between Moscow and Kyiv.
The party wants Germany to resume imports of Russian gas, to cut voters’ energy bills, and its leaders are reportedly planning to meet Putin’s top economic envoy next year.
How AfD could disrupt intelligence sharing
AfD – Alternative für Deutschland – won the most seats in the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania on Sunday, two weeks after a similar success in Saxony-Anhalt. So far, it has been unable to form administrations in either state because rivals refuse to form coalitions with the party. But Wippl says: “I’d be very wary of what would happen if AfD takes power in a state.”
Unlike most other countries, Germany’s intelligence agencies are split between federal and regional levels. Although there are national equivalents of Britain’s MI5 and MI6 – named the BfV and BND – Germany has another service called the LfV, which reports to the 16 states individually.
Wippl fears this is “a real can of worms”, because a regional unit of the LfV could be compromised if AfD begins interfering with its operations or leaking information. “Will they be able to participate with the other state intelligence agencies as well as with the federal BfV? That’s going to be a real problem,” he says. “Will they share intelligence with them?”
Germany’s defence minister Boris Pistorius has previously argued that AfD should be barred from learning secret details about military bases and training areas. “We are obliged to do so, because it concerns the security of our country,” he said.
AfD politicians in the state of Thuringia were accused of submitting parliamentary questions on sensitive issues to aid Russian spies last year. The party dismissed the claims as a “bizarre conspiracy theory”.
Ironically, the LfV’s office in Saxony-Anhalt has officially labelled the AfD as a dangerous group. The agency’s state president, Dirk-Martin Christian, said in 2023: “There is no longer any doubt about the right-wing extremist orientation of the AfD Saxony.”
The national BfV agency followed suit last year, warning AfD’s policies were “not compatible with the free democratic order”. It cited the “xenophobic, anti-minority, Islamophobic and anti-Muslim statements made by leading party officials”.
The party responded by saying the party had been “publicly discredited and criminalised,” which was a “heavy blow” to democracy and “clearly politically motivated”.
Wippl, now a professor of international relations at Boston University, agrees with the “extremist” classifications. However, he thinks Germany is “a long way” from using national constitution powers to ban AfD altogether.
Why Putin’s hybrid war could backfire
There is growing alarm across Europe about Russia’s “grey-zone” attacks, which fall short of open warfare and are often carried out using foreign proxies to provide the Kremlin with a cloak of plausible deniability.
Wippl warns that Moscow’s forces are “incredibly active” with covert plots in Germany and across Europe. But he believes that these “crazy” actions will have “the reverse effect of what the Russians intend, they’ll be viewed as a threat… The Russians are making a big mistake.”
He is also impressed at German ministers “really beefing up their security services”.
Wippl is relieved that Germany does not have a parliamentary election until March 2029, and he hopes that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may be over by then, or least paused. “I really don’t see Russia winning it,” he says.
However, he admits nothing is certain. “You wonder who’s going to break first. Will they reach a ceasefire deal that lasts for 10 years and they’ll go at it again? That’s the question: who’s going to buckle first?”
Rise of the far right
After joining the CIA in 1972, Wippl served in Bonn, while it was the capital of West Germany. He still travels back to Germany regularly and spent a month there this summer.
He acknowledges there are important economic factors behind the AfD’s rise, when “the price of everything is increasing” and with many East Germans in particular feeling “left behind”. That has combined with anger at rising immigration, after hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees arrived at the height of their country’s civil war, while Angela Merkel was chancellor.
Wippl says attitudes in Germany match the “populist wave” of discontent that fuelled Donald Trump’s US two election victories, as well as UK support for Brexit in 2016 and for Nigel Farage’s Reform party today. France’s far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, could also win her country’s presidential election next year according to polls this summer.
However, he is baffled at how some voters compare their lives and the global political situation now to the rise of fascism in the 1930s, when millions of people in Europe and the US lost their jobs during the Great Depression.
“Last winter I was talking to some Germans and they were saying, ‘This is like 1933 again.’ My first reaction was, ‘Excuse me, but in 1933 Germany was on its back. It definitely isn’t on its back right now.”
He adds: “People have expectations of government that I just don’t think can be realised.”
Does he worry that AfD could win the German federal elections in 2029?
“The only way they could grasp national power would be if there were a semi-collapse of the economies,” he replies. “But that would hit everyone – the UK, France, Holland – and then things could happen very rapidly and nastily.”