On 16 May 2006, Schmidbauer announced that he was suspending his work in the Parliamentary Control Committee until the allegations against the BND in the so-called journalist affair had been clarified. As justification, Schmidbauer stated that some of the spying on journalists occurred during his time as intelligence coordinator. At the same time, Schmidbauer stated that he had "no knowledge of the events that are the subject of today's discussions."
