Uproar in Germany continues over accusations that U.S. tapped Merkel's phone
By Michael Birnbaum and Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, October 24, 2013
BERLIN--Harsh fallout over suspicions that U.S. intelligence agencies had listened in on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone continued Thursday, with the U.S. ambassador in Berlin summoned to a meeting with Germany's foreign minister.
Other senior German officials said that, if the accusations are true, the United States had gone too far with one of its closest allies.
The suspicions about American monitoring of a close allied leader's personal communications threatened to deal a blow to a host of U.S.-German efforts, including some long-standing counterterrorism collaborations. German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called for a suspension of financial data-sharing program that target suspected terrorists. Other analysts said that efforts to forge a U.S.-European Union trade deal could be damaged as well.
Merkel called President Obama on Wednesday to demand an explanation of the allegations, and he told her that the United States "is not monitoring and will not monitor" her communications, the White House said.
But the assurances conspicuously left out any discussion of whether she had been monitored in the past.
German officials said they understood the necessity of spying for national security purposes. But they said that they expected that meant eavesdropping on suspected terrorists, not top allied leaders.
Wednesday's phone conversation was the second time in 48 hours that Obama had spoken to a close allied leader who was upset about the possibility that the United States had overstepped boundaries in its eavesdropping programs.
On Monday, Obama placed a phone call to French President François Hollande, amid furor there over reports that millions of French phone calls were recorded over a 30-day period last year. A top U.S. intelligence official denied those wiretapping reports Wednesday.
The accusations in Germany were prompted by a report in the news magazine Der Spiegel, which has run many stories based on classified U.S. National Security Agency documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Der Spiegel said on its Web site Wednesday that the German intelligence agencies had reviewed the technical data that had been given to the magazine and concluded that information on the monitoring of Merkel's cellphone "over years" was plausible enough to confront the U.S. government about it.
Merkel told Obama that if the accusations are confirmed, she "unequivocally disapproves of such practices and sees them as completely unacceptable," her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said in a statement Wednesday, adding that any monitoring "would be a grave breach of trust."
During a visit to Germany in June, Obama met with Merkel, who expressed displeasure that the NSA had been monitoring the communications of German citizens. But Merkel and her top allies had declared the issue closed over the summer. The latest developments are reviving tensions that the White House had hoped had been resolved.
Merkel is a famously avid user of text messaging, and she is frequently photographed checking her smartphone during long sessions of parliament and on the road. Earlier this year, she posed at a technology fair with a secure version of a Blackberry Z10; on the back of the phone was a decal of a black eagle, which is the emblem of modern Germany.
One E.U. lawmaker said the fresh accusations about the monitoring of Merkel's cellphone could dispel any lingering resistance to taking stronger action against the United States.
"Even the 'hawks' will feel eavesdropping on Angela Merkel is a bridge too far," said Sophie in 't Veld, a Liberal Democrat member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands, who said NSA Director Keith B. Alexander ought to appear before the body to respond to the broader allegations about U.S. spying.
"Public opinion in Europe is extremely negative about U.S. snooping," she said. "People feel, 'Is there no limit? Do we have no privacy anywhere?' "
Analysts say that European leaders privately recognize that some of the outrage rings hollow, given that their countries spy on the United States and on one another. But that argument does not assuage their audience, said James A. Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
