BERLIN, April 22 (UPI) -- Germany's foreign intelligence service apologized for once again having spied on a German journalist.

Spies from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, read several e-mails that Susanne Koelbl, a reporter at German news magazine Der Spiegel, had exchanged with a politician from Afghanistan between June and November 2006.

Officials said BND head Ernst Uhrlau personally apologized to Koelbl, a 42-year-old journalist known as an Afghanistan expert with excellent contacts in the Afghan and Pakistani political realm. The case is to be discussed by a parliamentary control committee tasked with overseeing the intelligence services on Wednesday, Der Spiegel said in its latest issue.

It's not the first time German agents have been caught spying on journalists: In 2006 a report emerged from the parliamentary committee acknowledging that intelligence agents had illegally spied on journalists, with BND spies having picked through journalists' garbage to reveal their sources.