Data Suggest Push to Spy on Merkel Dates to 2002
By ALISON SMALE, MELISSA EDDY and DAVID E. SANGER, NYT
BERLIN — New details about the monitoring of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone by the National Security Agency further stoked the German government’s anger on Sunday and raised two questions: Why did the United States target her as early as 2002, and why did it take five years for the Obama administration to put a halt to the surveillance?
The latest round of recriminations came after Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, published details from what it described as an entry from an N.S.A. database, apparently from the trove of documents downloaded by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who is now in temporary asylum in Moscow.
The database entry, according to Der Spiegel and outside experts, seemed to indicate that the request to monitor her cellphone began in 2002. But the document refers to her as “chancellor,” a position she has held only since late 2005. That seems to suggest the database entry had been updated.
The authenticity of the document could not be independently confirmed. But the German intelligence services believe it to be real, and in conversations between Susan E. Rice, the national security adviser, and her German counterpart, Ms. Rice made no effort to question the evidence, even while declining to confirm that Ms. Merkel’s cellphone was ever monitored, according to both American and German officials.
(More here.)
BERLIN — New details about the monitoring of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone by the National Security Agency further stoked the German government’s anger on Sunday and raised two questions: Why did the United States target her as early as 2002, and why did it take five years for the Obama administration to put a halt to the surveillance?
The latest round of recriminations came after Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, published details from what it described as an entry from an N.S.A. database, apparently from the trove of documents downloaded by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who is now in temporary asylum in Moscow.
The database entry, according to Der Spiegel and outside experts, seemed to indicate that the request to monitor her cellphone began in 2002. But the document refers to her as “chancellor,” a position she has held only since late 2005. That seems to suggest the database entry had been updated.
The authenticity of the document could not be independently confirmed. But the German intelligence services believe it to be real, and in conversations between Susan E. Rice, the national security adviser, and her German counterpart, Ms. Rice made no effort to question the evidence, even while declining to confirm that Ms. Merkel’s cellphone was ever monitored, according to both American and German officials.
(More here.)
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