Intel HQ's

Germany’s Spy Agency Offers Rare Glimpse Inside Its New Gates

Germany’s top-secret spy service, the Federal Intelligence Agency, invited the public this weekend for the first—and only—time to visit inside the gates of its new billion-euro campus in the center of Berlin.

The Bundesnachrichtendienst—or the BND for short, Germany’s answer to the Central Intelligence Agency—is marking its 60th anniversary, and next year will leave its reclusive headquarters in a Munich suburb for its new Berlin office. It is the biggest, and one of the most expensive, buildings the postwar German government has ever built.

An advanced group of 170 workers are already on site, BND officials said. Many of them are setting up computer networks and phones for the rest of the agency’s 4,000 workers, who will move to Berlin next year. At that point, it will be impossible to visit inside the agency’s gates.