Chancellor Angela Merkel has admitted it was "ambitious" of her to demand that the US should not spy on Germany after revelations of just that by Edward Snowden.
Dr Merkel faces growing political pressure to say whether she was aware that Germany's foreign intelligence service (BND) conducted electronic surveillance on behalf of the US National Security Agency (NSA).
According to reports, the automated electronic surveillance targeted German citizens and companies, the EADS aerospace consortium (now Airbus) as well as French, Austrian and EU government officials and institutions.
In her first public comments, the German leader insisted that intelligence services and international intelligence co-operations were essential to combat global threats, but agreed there was room for improvement in Berlin’s co-operation with US intelligence services.
“I once said that spying on friends is not on.That seems to be a more ambitious goal than I thought, but we have to work towards this,” she told Radio Bremen.
The chancellor said she was happy to appear before an ongoing German parliamentary inquiry into NSA surveillance in Europe. It was too soon to say whether her office would share with the inquiry the search terms and contact details – so called "selectors" – used by the NSA to identify surveillance targets.
“We are in a consultation process with the US, after which we can take that decision,” she said.
Beyond agreement
Two separate threads are unspooling in public: the intelligence affair over what the NSA- BND co-operation involved, and whether it went beyond an agreement signed in 2002; and a second, political affair over at what point Dr Merkel’s chancellery – the ultimate regulator of the intelligence agencies – was aware of what was going on.
The chancellery insists it learned of the BND’s assistance to the NSA in March and has demanded, in public, that the BND correct “structural deficits”.
Furious at the public dressing down, BND officials say Berlin was aware the agency was spying on the NSA’s behalf in Europe as early as 2008.
Sensing a political opportunity, Dr Merkel’s grand coalition partner has described the revelations as “an intelligence service scandal capable of causing very serious tremors”.
Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Sigmar Gabriel, who serves as economics minister, said he asked Dr Merkel on two separate occasions whether the BND was involved in NSA industrial espionage in Germany.
“Twice this was denied,” Mr Gabriel said. “I have no doubt that the chancellor answered my question correctly.”
Reporting on private conversations with Angela Merkel is an unusual step in Berlin, and viewed by the chancellor’s inner circle as a serious breach of trust.
Industrial espionage
Dr Merkel declined to respond to Mr Gabriel’s remarks, or to comment on allegations of BND assistance in industrial espionage, saying only that her 18-month-old coalition had “much important work ahead of it”.
Instead, Dr Merkel's Christian Democratic Union wasted no time sending out foot soldiers to condemn Mr Gabriel. Merkel confidantes condemned SPD "melodramatics" and reminded their coalition partners that the BND-NSA co-operation began on their watch, in the era of SPD chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
