“Spiegel” admits mistakes in cover story about Bad Kleinen

Position: 29.10.2020 | Reading time: 4 minutes

METERIn a cover story published some 27 years ago about a GSG-9 mission against the terrorist faction of the Red Army (RAF) in Bad Kleinen, the “Spiegel” made a mistake from the perspective of an intelligence commission.

In the final report, which the news magazine published on its website on Thursday, it says: “After many discussions with those involved at the time, inside and outside the editorial team, the commission concluded that the ‘Spiegel ‘with reports on the trials in Bad Kleinen made a journalistic error on the basis of a false and poorly verified statement “.

The author of the cover story at the time “Der Todesschuss” (“Spiegel” 27/1993), Hans Leyendecker, described the final report as “dishonest and doubtful”.

The article is about the 1993 collapse of elite police officers in the small town of Bad Kleinen in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to arrest two members of the RAF. Terrorist Wolfgang Grams and a GSG-9 official were killed. According to an expert report, Grams had committed suicide.

An anonymous source claims to have seen the shooting.

However, there were rumors that the RAF member had been executed, as well as media reports such as the “Spiegel” article on this issue. The source for the cover story also included an anonymous witness who, according to the article, wanted to see a police officer shoot Grams.

As a result, the then Interior Minister Rudolf Seiters (CDU) resigned and Attorney General Alexander von Stahl was sent into temporary retirement. In the wake of the story, however, questions arose as to the credibility of the source and whether Leyendecker also had a second source for the thesis.

The commission commissioned by “Spiegel” writes that there was one source, at least one anonymous, according to Leyendecker, a federal official. At the same time, it is criticized in other parts of the report: “Editorial controls and verification by documentation have failed; the judiciary noted discrepancies but did not raise the alarm. ”

“Apparently, the exposed status that Leyendecker had achieved on the editorial team through a prominent investigative investigation made it difficult to express doubts in this case,” the commission continues.

The mistake isn’t just Leyendecker’s culprit. At the end of the report it says: “However, the responsibility for turning an unverified and contradictory statement of this magnitude into a cover story fell on the editor-in-chief.”

Leyendecker, who now works for “Süddeutsche Zeitung” and is one of the most prominent journalists in the field of investigation, told the German Press Agency: “The fact that” Spiegel “basically does not respect source protection is for someone who has been around for almost 20 years. He worked for this important piece of paper. The Commission’s question as to whether he could contact the source at the time was a bankruptcy from today’s ‘Spiegel’ makers. “

“That was my fault”

Leyendecker also emphasized: “For 27 years I have been apologizing for misjudging the credibility of a source in 1993. That was my fault. But of course this source existed ”. The fact that “Spiegel” now goes there and accuses the former editor-in-chief of “Spiegel” of making mistakes on the matter is absurd: “The then-editor-in-chief did everything necessary. With this type of reporting, the ‘Spiegel’ is damaging the necessary discussion about errors in journalism ”.

The entire Bad Kleinen incident, including rumors about it, had thrown the federal government and security authorities into crisis. There were personal consequences. The then attorney general von Stahl had to step down. The federal Minister of the Interior, Seiters, also resigned. According to the information in “Spiegel”, von Stahl contacted us 25 years after the article was published; that was the starting point for the review.

Stefan, media journalist Niggemeier criticized the Commission’s final report as “difficult to read”. “Apparently no one intervened who knows how to write such a complex topic with contradictory statements without constantly repeating descriptions and quotes and completely confusing the reader,” he complained.

The commission of inquiry, which has now been replaced by an ombudsman, had also dealt with the forgery scandal surrounding Claas Relotius. The magazine itself made the scandal public in December 2018. Reporter Relotius had repeatedly made up scenes, conversations and events in “Spiegel” articles. The Ombudsman’s Office was the consequence of the scandal. You intend to be impartial in handling disputes.