Secret service was watching Willy Brandt

Former SPD politician Willy Brandt was frequently spied on by the German secret service in his time as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) had, among other things, a spy at the headquarters of the Social Democratic party to keep an eye on him.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports this on the basis of documents from Reinhard Gehlen, the first director of the BND. Even when Brandt and other SPD politicians visited the Italian Communist Party in 1968, they were shadowed. The BND also spread outrageous rumors about Brandt. Among other things about his role in the Spanish Civil War.

Gehlen, a former Nazarene, distrusted the SPD. That Brandt, who later became Chancellor, fled from Nazi Germany in 1933, he saw as a treason, writes the newspaper.