There are new questions over how much President Obama knew about US spying on Angela Merkel. A newspaper report says that the US leader has been aware of NSA eavesdropping on the German chancellor since 2010.
On Saturday, Spiegel magazine reported that the NSA’s Special Collection Service (SCS) had listed Merkel’s mobile telephone since 2002, beginning under the George W. Bush administration, and that it had remained on the list weeks before Obama visited Berlin in June.
According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Obama had told Merkel during a phone conversation on Wednesday that he had not known of the bugging. However, a report in Bild am Sonntag published Sunday cites an unnamed NSA official who said that the US leader instead ordered the program be escalated.
The newspaper reports that Obama knew that the NSA had been spying on Merkel’s mobile phone since at least 2010, when NSA chief Keith Alexander personally informed him of the operation.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. The Centre of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post Global Research articles on community internet sites as long the source and copyright are acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original Global Research article. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: [email protected]
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the
copyright owner.
