Three weeks after the German government announced it was to abandon the €500m Euro Hawk surveillance drone project, Defence Minister Thomas de Maizière has claimed he holds no responsibility for the fiasco.
In a report published on June 5, the minister says that he "was not sufficiently involved in this affair" and goes on to blame his undersecretaries and his predecessor.
"I can't do anything, it was them – what a chump," says Die Tageszeitung in its headline, accompanied by a photo spoofing the famous crop dusting scene in Alfred Hitchcock's film North by Northwest.
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