Obama aware of spying on Merkel: reports
Print Edition
US President Barack Obama was personally informed of phone tapping against German Chancellor Angela Merkel, which may have begun as early as 2002, German media reported yesterday as a damaging espionage scandal widened.
Bild am Sonntag newspaper quoted US intelligence sources as saying that National Security Agency chief Keith Alexander briefed Obama on the operation against Merkel in 2010.
“Obama did not halt the operation but rather let it continue,” the newspaper quoted a high-ranking NSA official as saying.
Der Spiegel reported that leaked NSA documents showed that Merkel’s phone had appeared on a list of spying targets since 2002, and was still under surveillance weeks before Obama visited Berlin in June.
Merkel confronted Obama with the snooping allegations in a phone call last Wednesday saying that such spying would be a “breach of trust” between international partners.
Der Spiegel said Obama told Merkel that if he had been informed of the operation he would have stopped it at once.
Bild am Sonntag said that Obama wanted to be informed in detail about Merkel, who has played a decisive role in the eurozone debt crisis and is widely seen as Europe’s most powerful leader. As a result, the report said, the NSA stepped up its surveillance of her communications, targeting not only the mobile phone she uses to conduct business for her conservative Christian Democratic Union party but also her encrypted official device.
Bild said US intelligence specialists were then able to monitor the content of her conversations as well as text messages, which Merkel sends by the dozen each day to key associates.
Only the specially secured land line in her office was out of the reach of the NSA, which sent the intelligence gathered straight to the White House bypassing the agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, the report said.
Bild and Spiegel described a hive of spying activity on the fourth floor of the US embassy in Berlin, from which the US kept tabs on Merkel.
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