US firms involved in NSA spying in Germany
Print Edition
Private American companies play a major role in US spying in Germany, with at least 90 firms helping to feed classified information to Washington, German news weekly Stern reported yesterday.
Stern said the firms worked hand-in-hand with US intelligence, providing services and security and maintaining IT networks.
It said a core group of around 30 firms conduct spying operations themselves for the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency as well as US military intelligence.
“They help to coordinate agents’ operations, analyze intercepted communications and train soldiers in espionage techniques,” Stern said.
It said the largest of these firms was Booz Allen Hamilton, which had employed now fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, the source of extensive leaks on the activities of the NSA.
Reports that the NSA conducted mass spying operations on German soil, including tapping the mobile phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel, have sparked a crisis in transatlantic ties.
Merkel dispatched a delegation of intelligence chiefs and political advisors to Washington for high-level talks yesterday on drafting a no-spy agreement.
The heads of Germany’s foreign and domestic intelligence agencies will also visit Washington “in the coming days,” said Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert.
Meanwhile, the head of Spain’s intelligence services will give a closed-door briefing to a parliamentary committee about allegations that Spain was a target for surveillance by the NSA, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said yesterday. He did not announce a date for the session.
Rajoy spoke a day after NSA Director Keith Alexander told a US House Intelligence panel that millions of telephone records of European citizens were swept up as part of a NATO program to protect the alliance. Alexander said, however, the US didn’t collect the European records alone.
Speaking in parliament, Rajoy said Spain was taking the allegations of US spying seriously. He said such activity, if confirmed, is “inappropriate and unacceptable between partners.”
Rajoy said National Intelligence Center chief Felix Sanz Roldan would address the issue in a closed-door session of parliament’s official secrets commission.
French officials were focused on “the nature and the extent of American spying on our territory,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal.
Government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said that the facts “seem well established” and “from this point of view, the denials of the director of the NSA seem improbable.”
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