Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

“woke” is the new caravan.

In my day, never was longer.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

I really should read my own blog.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Come on, man.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

You are here: Home / Politics / An Unexamined Scandal / Sir, Zee Germans Are On The Line

Sir, Zee Germans Are On The Line

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I’m just going to leave this one right here like so…

Germany’s top public prosecutor said an investigation into suspected tapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone by U.S. spies had so far failed to find any concrete evidence.

Revelations by former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden that Washington carried out large-scale electronic espionage in Germany provoked widespread outrage — particularly the allegation that the NSA had bugged Merkel’s phone.

Harald Range launched an official investigation in June, believing there was enough preliminary evidence to show unknown U.S. intelligence officers had tapped the phone, although there was not enough clarity on the issue to bring charges.

On Wednesday he said however, “the document presented in public as proof of an actual tapping of the mobile phone is not an authentic surveillance order by the NSA. It does not come from the NSA database.

“There is no proof at the moment which could lead to charges that Chancellor Merkel’s phone connection data was collected or her calls tapped.”

Oh.

How very interesting.

Now, who would benefit from a fake a surveillance order from the NSA on wiretapping Angela Merkel’s phone and how did Edward Snowden get a hold of it to release it?

Reader Interactions

210Comments

  4. 4.

    scav

    And, Christmas came early that year to all the tribes of competing conspiracy theorists. Interwebs need a good strss-testing.

  5. 5.

    Betty Cracker

    It was widely reported in the media that Obama apologized to Merkel for tapping her phone, and I remember seeing a joint appearance where the awkwardness occasioned by the revelation was alluded to by both Obama and Merkel. The document Snowden released may be hinky, but unless someone is also hoaxing President Obama, the phone tap was real, right? What am I missing?

  6. 6.

    Ben Cisco

    A fake document implicating a government agency, brought to light during the current administration.

    Nope, can’t imagine who.

    Splitters, perhaps.

  7. 7.

    catclub

    I think the key phrase is “Chancellor Merkel”. Her phone was tapped years ago when she was a lower level pol with poorer security. This construction leaves that possible.

  8. 8.

    David Fud

    It seems Zandar is implying the Russians benefit most from NATO discord. I wouldn’t discount such a chain of events. However, speculation is fine for a blog but not so much for news outlets and official international relations. Good luck coming up with anything substantial on this one…

  17. 17.

    MomSense

    @Betty Cracker:

    There was a lot of outrage in Germany about the scandal. There was a simultaneous kerfuffle about US spying on German businesses which turned out to be the Chinese (unclear whether state or private). It is likely that it was a public relations response by both Merkel and Obama.

  19. 19.

    gvg

    Any US president would have to smooth over our relationship with Germany (or several other countries) with an allegation like that and saying that it was a fake order ourselves would tend not to be believable. If germany was able somehow to prove it fake themselves, that is more believable (although they could be polite lying also in order to end the fuss). I doubt that Obama could be believed if he had denied it at the time (and not just Obama, I think other US presidents would be disregarded). It is kind of surprising that Germany has concluded this as I have always thought it is just hard to be sure of the facts on intellegence/spying type stuff.

    When did Snowden make this specific allegation? Was it after he was in Russia? Or before. I don’t recall-in fact I don’t actually recall that it was him, but I am assuming your recollection is better. The way Zandar phased his leading question, I think he was aiming at Russia. Wouldn’t surprise me.

  20. 20.

    Bill Arnold

    @David Fud:

    Good luck coming up with anything substantial on this one…

    Well sure, but German investigators have a reputation for being persistent.

  22. 22.

    Spinwheel

    Wow.

    It was only a matter of time before we’re right back to Zandar trolling the community by all but accusing Snowden of being a Russian agent again.

    Good call letting him post again Cole.

  23. 23.

    Corner Stone

    @Bill Arnold:

    Well sure, but German investigators have a reputation of being persistent.

    Vee haff vays uff making you talk!

    That is somehow oddly appropriate for these times, somehow.

  24. 24.

    gvg

    I might add, based on the CIA was lying about torture news…..would Obama have believed them if they told him they weren’t? That is a problem about a reputation for lying. when did he know, they lied to Bush and congress?

  25. 25.

    different-church-lady

    @Betty Cracker: Despite my snarky brevity, I wasn’t trying to discount it.

    However, it’s also possible that the actual content of the discussion wasn’t exactly what was reported. Accuracy in Journalism is more of a name of an organization than a value nowadays. Merkle and Obama had a conversation, it gets reported, then runs through the filters of hundreds of blogs and before you know it what people “know” about that conversation has only a distant relationship to the actual conversation.

    Last night Omnes was asking me why I have such a bee in my bonnet lately. This is a first stab at articulating it. We take a scrap of material, misunderstand it, embellish it, and then run with it while shouting through a bullhorn.

  26. 26.

    Corner Stone

    @Spinwheel: I may be wrong but Cole never stopped him from posting, that was a personal choice on his part.
    Cole is notoriously loose with his…keys.

  27. 27.

    Corner Stone

    “Speaking about the effectiveness of torture…let’s play a little bit of that.”
    /Toure

  28. 28.

    Cacti

    Not that I would accuse St. Greenwald or Disciple Snowden of fabricating things to hype their principal source of income…

    Wait, yes I would.

  31. 31.

    Belafon

    @David Fud: That was my thought.

    At the same time, I’m confused by the people who seem to think that we’re the big bad spying country. Even before it was announced that Germany was also spying on the US I knew they were. If you didn’t you were being naive.

    What if this announcement is a “Sorry, we were spying on you as well. As a return, we’ll just kind of say you’re not doing it.”

  32. 32.

    Bobby Thomson

    @gvg: I don’t think Germany is “polite lying,” but they are either taking the NSA’s word that it didn’t come from their database or just admitted to spying on the NSA. I don’t think they just admitted to spying on the NSA.

  34. 34.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Corner Stone:

    I may be wrong but Cole never stopped him from posting, that was a personal choice on his part.

    A choice based on a particularly malevolent stalker, who may or may not have changed his handle.

  40. 40.

    Spinwheel

    @Corner Stone: besides if I wanted to read uninformed speculation from people who clearly don’t see continual violations of our civil liberties as one of the major issues of this presidency (given his stance on the Michael Brown and Eric Garner murders and government abuse of power, I just cannot reconcile why he or anyone can consistently give Obama a pass on this) I would go over to Bob Cesca’s or Charles Johnson’s respective garbage dumps.

    He is hurting what credibility this community has with this stupid Snowden/Greenwald/Russia stuff.

  41. 41.

    Cervantes

    On Wednesday he said however, “the document presented in public as proof of an actual tapping of the mobile phone is not an authentic surveillance order by the NSA. It does not come from the NSA database. There is no proof at the moment which could lead to charges that Chancellor Merkel’s phone connection data was collected or her calls tapped.”

    To understand what is being communicated here, one should at least go back to identify and look at “the document presented in public” — not very difficult to do.

    Or, yes, one could say “I’m just going to leave this one right here like so…” and immediately proceed to make insinuations.

    (There may be options other than these two, of course.)

  42. 42.

    Roger Moore

    @Betty Cracker:

    Okay, feel free to discount that part, but why were Obama and Merkel making remarks about repairing the rift and setting new parameters for spycraft among friends?

    It was certainly a low point in recent German/American relations, and that was true whether the underlying revelation was true or a hoax. There was nothing the Obama administration could have said at that point that would have convinced people the document was a forgery, so the only path open was to say it wouldn’t happen again. That would even be easier if it had never happened in the first place. At the least, that’s plausible explanation if the whole thing was a hoax.

    You still have to ask, though, how the Germans were able to establish Snowden’s document is a forgery. How do you go about showing it’s not from the NSA archive without help from the NSA? And are you really going to believe anything that shows the NSA is clean if the NSA had a hand in proving it?

  43. 43.

    different-church-lady

    @Spinwheel:

    I would go over to Bob Cesca’s or Charles Johnson’s respective garbage dumps.

    Instead you stay here in this garbage dump, when you could be rereading The Intercept and nodding along. Choices, baby, choices*.

    *(Said with awareness of irony)

  44. 44.

    Cacti

    Well, obviously the top German prosecutor is a mole on the payroll of the NSA.

    Snowden has always been a hero.

  45. 45.

    Belafon

    @Spinwheel:

    given his stance on the Michael Brown and Eric Garner murders and government abuse of power

    So, which would you rather have, Obama abuse government power forcing his way into the states handling of Brown and Garner – oh, wait, now that the states have done their lack of effort the DoJ is getting involved.

    There are more than three political blogs on the internet, some even more radical than those started by people that once considered themselves Republican.

  46. 46.

    GregB

    We need to Fox News this and refer to the Germans as the Nazis.

    Obama apologized to the fricken’ Nazis!

  49. 49.

    Tree With Water

    Wiretapping is the second outrage Merkel has suffered at the hands of the United States. Literally. Remember how her body shook, and how she grimaced in revulsion when G.W. placed his reptilian hands on her shoulders, as if to massage her? You can bet it’s something she’ll never forget.

  50. 50.

    Cacti

    Wiretapping is the second outrage Merkel has suffered at the hands of the United States. Literally.

    Yeah, except for that part about no evidence of it.

  51. 51.

    Spinwheel

    @SatanicPanic: Yes, I am. I don’t think he does at all, and I think that can be traced directly back to his apparently utter disregard for digital privacy concerns.

  53. 53.

    srv

    @Cacti: Why spend $10B/yr for exotic national technical means when you can just buy 5-10K people with a $1B/yr?

    Imagine how many hops there are in that voicestream.

  55. 55.

    max

    @gvg: Any US president would have to smooth over our relationship with Germany (or several other countries) with an allegation like that and saying that it was a fake order ourselves would tend not to be believable. If germany was able somehow to prove it fake themselves, that is more believable (although they could be polite lying also in order to end the fuss). I doubt that Obama could be believed if he had denied it at the time (and not just Obama, I think other US presidents would be disregarded).

    Shorter version –

    On Wednesday he said however, “the document presented in public as proof of an actual tapping of the mobile phone is not an authentic surveillance order by the NSA. It does not come from the NSA database.

    How the fuck would he know that?

    max
    [‘What, he called the NSA and they totally told him Snowden faked it?’]

  58. 58.

    JGabriel

    @David Fud:

    It seems Zandar is implying the Russians benefit most from NATO discord.

    Maybe, though I think Republicans is an equally plausible response. The most plausible of course is No One.

    US-German and US-NATO diplomatic relations, however, benefit from a plausible fiction that no evidence exists. So I suspect this news is most likely the result of some back-channel diplomacy to tamp down diplomatic awkwardness and outrage – implicating Snowden is, maybe, just extra gravy.

  59. 59.

    Cacti

    Watching the cog dis from the Snowdenistas gives a lot of…what’s that German word?

    Oh yeah, schadenfreude.

  63. 63.

    different-church-lady

    @Cacti: In order to have cognitive dissonance, one needs to be capable of holding conflicting thoughts in one’s head. I have yet to witness a Snowdenista demonstrate such a capacity.

  66. 66.

    Betty Cracker

    @different-church-lady: I’m not talking about reportage — I’m talking about actual words enunciated by Obama and Merkel that seemed to acknowledge the possibility that the US had tapped Merkel’s phone at some point. Maybe it’s all kabuki.

  67. 67.

    Cacti

    Now if only someone had warned all of you dupes that you were being snookered by a libertarian Pied Piper.

  70. 70.

    Spinwheel

    @different-church-lady: I think it’s sad that the same people who clearly believe Bush is responsible for and knew completely about torturing people for information see no problem with Obama spying on Mullins of Americans looking for the same thing.

    I would consider that to be cognitive dissonance.

  73. 73.

    Cervantes

    Meanwhile, at the Woodrow Wilson School two days ago:

    George Ellard, inspector general of the National Security Agency, defended the agency’s work in a talk at Princeton University Tuesday, including the NSA’s controversial eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s private cellphone. “If you’re the chancellor of Germany, you don’t have a private cellphone,” Ellard said. “If you’re the president of the United States, you don’t have a private cellphone.”

  76. 76.

    Carolinus

    @Spinwheel:

    … torturing people for information see no problem with Obama spying on Mullins of Americans …

    Yeah, I fail to see the equivalence between torturing prisoners and a couple hundred queries a year run against a phone records database (supported by congress and upheld as legal by the courts).

  77. 77.

    japa21

    Always love it when someone who exists for no other reason than to spout uninformed speculation complains about uninformed specualtion.

  78. 78.

    Zandar

    @JGabriel:

    Maybe, though I think Republicans is an equally plausible response.

    To recap, a bunch of assholes who shut the government down over the debt ceiling and damaged the credit rating of the US won 9 senate seats and control of Congress in part by bringing back the Bad Old Days of 2002 and ONLY REPUBLICANS CAN PROTECT YOU.

  79. 79.

    ? Martin

    Sen Feinstein missed a good opportunity today. She should have opened the hearing by bringing in some plastic sheeting, a waterboard, a bucket of water, and a hooded gentleman to stand just off to the side of the room but well within camera view, and casually announced to the gallery that they shouldn’t mind the gentleman who we will call ‘Captain America’ as he’s just here in case Mr Brennan fails to provide us with credible testimony today.

  80. 80.

    Belafon

    @Carolinus: That’s what I was thinking about. That’s why I suspect this amounts to:

    Germany (When US caught): You’re spying on us. We’re so angry. Grrrrr.

    Germany (When Germany caught): Um. On second thought. I don’t think you’re spying.

    Notice what I say is independent of the truth of this document or what my thoughs are on Snowden.

  82. 82.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Carolinus:

    Yeah, I fail to see the equivalence between torturing prisoners and a couple hundred queries a year run against a phone records database (supported by congress and upheld as legal by the courts).

    Seems to be an excellent shiny object to distract from talking about actual torture. Whew, that was uncomfortable, let’s go back to chatting about how the uppity feckless Black man sold us out again. He must love killing people, brah. Whoops, guess I’m on an NSA watchlist now. If I don’t post tomorrow, the men in black have come for me, yuk yuk.

  84. 84.

    Betty Cracker

    @different-church-lady: Sure. Here’s one from an unimpeachable source. Here’s another. Excerpts:

    [OBAMA] If you don’t mind, I’m going to also go ahead and maybe say something about NSA just because I know it’s of great interest in the German press as well. Germany is one of our closest allies and our closest friends, and that’s true across the spectrum of issues — security, intelligence, economic, diplomatic. And Angela Merkel is one of my closest friends on the world stage, and somebody whose partnership I deeply value. And so it has pained me to see the degree to which the Snowden disclosures have created strains in the relationship.

    [snip]

    “So what I’ve pledged to Chancellor Merkel has been in addition to the reforms that we’ve already taken, in addition to saying that we are going to apply privacy standards to how we deal with non-U.S. persons as well as U.S. persons, in addition to the work that we’re doing to constrain the potential use of bulk data, we are committed to a U.S.-German cyber dialogue to close further the gaps that may exist in terms of how we operate, how German intelligence operates, to make sure that there is transparency and clarity about what we’re doing and what our goals and our intentions are.”

    [OBAMA] “A lot of suspicion had been built up in Germany and frankly around the world in the wake of the Snowden disclosures, and it’s going to take some time to win back trust.

    “Even if we have disagreements of any sort, the one thing that I know is that I have established a relationship of friendship and trust with [Merkel], in part because she’s always very honest with me and I try to be very honest with her. I don’t need, and I don’t want, to harm that relationship by surveillance mechanisms that somehow would impede the kind of communication and trust that we have.”

    “What I can say is as long as I am president of the United States, the chancellor of Germany will not have to worry about this.”

    @Cacti: I’ve never said Snowden is my hero, but feel free to go on lying about shit as usual. Moron.

  85. 85.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Zandar: We’re the ones who tortured prisoners, including water boarding and sexual assault.

    And we’re the ones who think feeding little refugee kids and arranging for them to go to school is an OUTRAGE!! and want snipers posted on the border to KILL THE VERMIN or better just airlift them back to their countries where they can get killed in gang violence GOOD LESS ANIMALS.

    The GOP didn’t have to dig very deep to rouse up what was already there. FOX has been pernicious but you know how they say you can’t cheat an honest man? Well, it’s hard to get a non selfish asshole to sign onto murdering little kids but … you know …

  89. 89.

    Another Holocene Human

    @? Martin: Like DiFi gives a fig about state sponsored torture. She’s just in a snit because CIA lied to her, Dianne Feinstein, and hacked her minions’ computers. And Madame shall have her revenge.

  90. 90.

    Cacti

    @AxelFoley:

    Zandar, why are you bursting their bubbles–or should I say balloons–here?

    Betty’s already calling names because this new information doesn’t match her beliefs.

  93. 93.

    Jeremy

    I don’t know how a person could blame Obama for the Eric Garner and Mike Brown situations. We live in crazy times in this country where so many people have an irrational hatred for one man that they will blame everything on him. Well the guy will be gone in two years so the blame Obama excuse is going to get old real quick.

  94. 94.

    NotMax

    Who benefits from it? The U.S. does, if it serves to cast a shadow of doubt on everything Snowden may put out there.

  95. 95.

    Cacti

    @AxelFoley:

    LOLOLOLOL

    I see GG’s henchman Spinwheel is on the case.

    And here to tell us that torture and someone seeing his Sailor Moon hentai collection are morally equivalent.

  96. 96.

    NotMax

    OT, but the so-called “cromnibus” contains a provision prohibiting any redesign of the $1 bill.

    …reportedly because of opposition from vending machine manufacturers, and prevents the consolidation of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the U.S. Mint without congressional approval. Source</a.

  97. 97.

    Belafon

    I find the battle here over Snowden old and boring, because it adds absolutely nothing to the conversation. If we’re going to battle, the revelations are far more important.

    (FWIW, I consider him a traitor for leaving the country with the information, not because of the leak, but I’m not entirely sure what he leaked actually showed anything truly outrageous.)

  99. 99.

    Another Holocene Human

    I’m now confused about Zandar’s OP because I went to Der Spiegel and looked at some of their reporting (bit of a crisis in Germany with Merkel now trying to prosecute leakers which is treated with considerably more indignity than the US, I think because she’s threatening MPs and you can’t do that in the US) and they are still reporting the phone hacking as fact.

    On Deutsch Welle top story is about CIA torture.

    DW and Spiegel also have top stories about the Ukraine crisis and/or the general situation with Russia in light of Ukraine crisis.

    Nothing in Sueddeutsche Zeitung either, which got in trouble with Merkel for reporting on Germany’s own secrets.

  101. 101.

    Another Holocene Human

    Okay, as of an hour ago FAZ is reporting on it, most of the initial hits were English language news wires, which is odd. Harald Range is in the news in Germany over two other cases.

  104. 104.

    Another Holocene Human

    The article is in not really chatty but somewhat casual German and I’m having trouble parsing the most important statements!

  106. 106.

    Corner Stone

    @Cacti: Man. I think we’re going to need to call in Doctors Without Borders to rescue and treat that chicken you have been mercilessly fucking.
    What kind of person fucks a hapless chicken? I kind of feel bad for you, having nothing but chickens to keep fucking, over and over and over.

  109. 109.

    Violet

    @Jeremy:

    Well the guy will be gone in two years so the blame Obama excuse is going to get old real quick.

    It’ll never go out of style.

  111. 111.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Cacti: hold on now, SM hentai can be pretty traumatizing, someone who may or may not have been me back in the wilder early days of the WWW may have run across some rather unfortunate GIF art when looking for something else

    And I say this as someone who is totally cool with drag SM cosplays. (Unlike some (repressed) people.) But that art? Pass the brain bleach.

  112. 112.

    Corner Stone

    @Violet:

    It’ll never go out of style.

    Indeed.
    There’s a reason they tagged him with the Black Jimmy Carter BS. Because 30+ years later somehow the OG Carter, and I don’t mean HOVA, dared to drop it like it’s hot.

  113. 113.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Violet: The people who write fake biographies about how evil Abe Lincoln was will now have a more recent target for their fantasies.

  114. 114.

    SiubhanDuinne

    O/T, but dozens of not scores of Congressional staffers walked out of their Capitol offices a little while ago in the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture, in solidarity with the Michael Brown and Eric Garner protests.

    Cool.

    Edit: I’ve lost the ability to paste links, no idea why, but Mother Jones has the story and photos.

  115. 115.

    ruemara

    @Betty Cracker: Because the public appearance of offence is far more damaging than the potential actual offense. Of course he apologized and they discussed mending the rift. I’ve loved you since I stumbled onto Rumproast years upon years ago, but I am giving you a wee bit o’ the side eye. Sorry.

  116. 116.

    Corner Stone

    Is the WH really calling House Dems to whip for them voting to pass this abomination of a spending bill?
    /per MSNBC

  117. 117.

    Another Holocene Human

    FWIW, nobody in FAZ comments is believing a word that Range says. First comment is “Who even believes a single word that Range says?”

  120. 120.

    Betty Cracker

    @Cacti: Bullshit. I’m calling you a liar because you’re lying. Snowden is not my hero. I’ve been posting and commenting here for years. It should be pretty easy to link to some of my sweet hawt Snowden hero worship — put up or shut up.

    I’ve said on several occasions that I’m glad the leaks kicked off a long-overdue national conversation about security overreach, but again, Snowden is not my hero, as should be perfectly plain to non-morons who read this blog.

  121. 121.

    Cacti

    @Another Holocene Human:

    FWIW, nobody in FAZ comments is believing a word that Range says. First comment is “Who even believes a single word that Range says?”

    Does not compute. Snowden is hero. Error! Error!

  122. 122.

    Another Holocene Human

    So nobody wants to address what Spiegel told FAZ about the documents.

    Spiegel claims that the document is authentic and that they had access to the NSA database prior to reporting

    Spiegel says they are refusing to give information to the German AG Range citing journalistic privilege (of some sort, not really conversant with German law)

    Spiegel says they made a copy of the relevant document and also modified it in other ways so of course what they gave Range is not authentic

    Also it’s claimed Range is not getting cooperation from NSA himself (?)

    Looking for somewhat like Amir, whose German is much better than mine, to comment on the FAZ reporting.

  124. 124.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Cacti: It helps to know the context. Merkel has been threatening to go after MPs and journalists for leaking documents about German secrecy and the German security state.

    Now the comments on both sides have a lot of CT sounding stuff, not really surprising for a European comments section, including pro-American CT if you scroll all the way down.

    But Merkel’s gov’t earned all that distrust the hard way, no doubt about that.

  125. 125.

    Heliopause

    The document in question is referenced in a Spiegel article which does not have Laura Poitras on the byline and which does not specifically say that the document is from Snowden.

  126. 126.

    kc

    @Tree With Water:

    Wiretapping is the second outrage Merkel has suffered at the hands of the United States. Literally. Remember how her body shook, and how she grimaced in revulsion when G.W. placed his reptilian hands on her shoulders, as if to massage her? You can bet it’s something she’ll never forget.

    I feel very triggered in this moment.

  129. 129.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Heliopause: Oh, lord. I should have read this last year. I hate narcissists and liars, though, which made me avoid any reporting on the topic. Thanks Greenwald! It’s not really his fault, but freaks like him trigger me, if that’s a fair word to use.

    Germany appears on this list as well. The US intelligence agencies are mainly interested in the country’s economic stability and foreign policy objectives (both “3”), as well as in its advanced weapons systems and a few other sub-items, all of which are marked “4.” The “Leadership Intention” field is empty. So based on the list, it wouldn’t appear that Merkel should be monitored.

    Former NSA employee Thomas Drake does not see this as a contradiction. “After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Germany became intelligence target number one in Europe,” he says. The US government did not trust Germany, because some of the Sept. 11 suicide pilots had lived in Hamburg. Evidence suggests that the NSA recorded Merkel once and then became intoxicated with success, says Drake. “It has always been the NSA’s motto to conduct as much surveillance as possible,” he adds.

    Ho. Lee. Shit.

  130. 130.

    Another Holocene Human

    Wow Thomas Drake did you surveil Deval Patrick because you didn’t trust Massachusetts since the 9/11 attackers were living there prior to boarding those planes at Logan Airport? Heck, they got access all over Logan, run by Massport, strike 2.

  131. 131.

    Betty Cracker

    @ruemara: So you’re saying it was dumb of me to interpret those remarks as acknowledgement that the US had wire-tapped Merkel? Maybe. But the way-back machine seems to indicate that was the consensus view at the time. People were all like, “Of course we were spying! everyone spies!”

  132. 132.

    Another Holocene Human

    Actually should start spying on Mass GOP since they put the shitty patronage hires in charge of Massport and the airport which led to the security breaches that helped facilitate 9/11, not that facts or reason have anything to do with this….

  133. 133.

    Another Holocene Human

    You know I’m going to go out on a limb and bet that der Spiegel has oodles more credibility than Childe Harald here.

  136. 136.

    Another Holocene Human

    You know, this stuff, going back to 2002, amateur hour bullshit like tracking leadership when your internal plan says “don’t bother tracking leadership in Germany”, an out of control agency that made two heads of state look like feckless assholes (Merkel and Obama, they both got fucked hard), it’s part and parcel of the run with your fear/gut kind of “leadership” (more like loss-er-ship) that we had under the GWB II admin that lead to the use of torture–pointless, cruel, counterproductive, but very psychologically rewarding for the creeps in the executive agencies who were doing this stuff.

    NSA, CIA, and FBI have never from the beginning been totally under any president’s control. That’s the ugly truth about the secret side of our national security state. Congress won’t reel them in either. The purity ponies who accuse Obama of failing to lead fucking irritate me. Obama has rotated through heads of these agencies which is one way to try to reduce the amount of power any one individual has (see Dulles brothers and JE Hoover). But aside from some reforms during the period when Dems controlled both houses of Congress to rein in the domestic warrantless bullshit these agencies have never really been cleaned out and drained of pus. You’d need to cut their fucking funding and sic DOJ and OIG on their asses hard, but DOJ was fucked to hell by GWB and it’s been all Obama and Holder can do to try to correct that situation AND try to fix the judiciary a little bit as well.

    At some level we as Americans would have to give up a lot of our bullshit fairytale beliefs about state secrets and spying and accept our fears instead of giving in to them. Not sure I see that happening any time soon.

  138. 138.

    ruemara

    It’s getting so Snowden threads are as arduous as “Obama; good boyfriend, bad boyfriend” threads. For pity’s sake, let’s just discuss the failure of concrete evidence. What does that mean? Are the points brought up AHH & Heliopause germain, as I think they are? Snowden, at this point, is highly irrelevant.

  139. 139.

    ruemara

    @Betty Cracker: No, not at all. I’m saying that it’s odd you’re wondering why he would apologize for spying if there wasn’t clear proof they were spying. If I wanted to say you’re dumb, I’d have said it. I said, that the spying revelations would demand an official head of state apology to head of state apology.

  140. 140.

    Another Holocene Human

    Think about all the FBI scandals in the last two decades, and that’s stuff we know about because there’s a much lower degree of secrecy about what they do. Got to figure CIA and NSA because they can bury their problems are so much worse.

    Also think about fact that with all these FBI scandals we are such authoritarian ass kissers that nothing serious at all has been done about it, from the Whitey Bulger scandal in the Boston office to the scandal of their paying for worthless profiling and forensic techniques and concealing the worthlessness, to the missing laptop scandal.

    I like to watch crime shows. There is a cheesy one called FBI FILES. I quickly renamed it FBI FAILS because in every fucking episode some murderous asshat becomes a fugitive for years because of successive fuckups by local and federal police. So I’m not surprised at all when FBI in Florida kill a witness in the Tsarnaev case. It’s not the Bilderbergs. They’re fucking incompetent!

  141. 141.

    MomSense

    @Another Holocene Human:

    The first mention I saw of the completed German investigations was back in August so I’m not sure that this is a terribly current story. I think I posted a French article about it a month ago or so.

  142. 142.

    burnspbesq

    @Cacti:

    Does not compute. Snowden is hero. Error! Error!

    I don’t have any problem with folks who believe Snowden is a hero, as long as they concede that he is also a felon. Those two states are not mutually exclusive.

  143. 143.

    Spinwheel

    @ruemara: given the amount of discussion in this thread, I would hardly call Edward Snowden irrelevant. We wouldn’t be having any discussion at all on Obama’s illegal spying programs without what he did.

    Hero, goat, whatever in between you like, but he is far from irrelevant as you can possibly get.

  144. 144.

    Keith G

    @Betty Cracker: Ironically, those rubes who are after you for being a Snowden lover (even though that is plainly not your thing) seem so obsessed by that quest that they will gladly cling to poorly reported items and turn away from clear and openly reported truths.

    Zandar’s first go-round at this rodeo was marred by insufficient time spent on checking the truth of what he was posting. I hoped he had gotten better.

  145. 145.

    Corner Stone

    Zach Carter @zachdcarter · 29m 29 minutes ago

    Obama never made calls to get support for foreclosure relief in bankruptcy. But he is now making calls to chop up Dodd-Frank.

  146. 146.

    burnspbesq

    @Corner Stone:

    So you think derivatives trading by insured banks is worth shutting down the government? That’s the hill you think Obama should choose to die on?

    You’re even more of an asshole and an idiot that I previously believed.

  147. 147.

    Betty Cracker

    @ruemara: Huh. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one, then. If Obama thought the Merkel phone hacking allegation was a bunch of hooey, I think he’d have denied it or at least not proposed a bunch of reforms in response to the global furor.

  148. 148.

    Spinwheel

    @Keith G: Like John Brennan, Zandar has had a long and complicated relationship with “the truth” on any number of subjects.

    This is pretty obvious from his history excusing Obama from any and all responsibility for the last six years.

  149. 149.

    Another Holocene Human

    For more incompetence in police work would you believe that bodies killed in Michigan have been washing up on the Canadian side for years and only in the last year or two are they sharing info across the border to try to identify murdered Americans?

    I’m wondering if maybe they did work together more in the olden days but when they went to computer databases maybe that stopped? Funny story, turns out the Canadian and US identification databases are incompatible. And not like a software issue rather I think they literally use different markers on forensic data meaning you’d have to have technicians re-encode everything.

    D’oh!

  151. 151.

    Corner Stone

    @burnspbesq: Yes, I do. I also think severely cutting the budgets of the IRS, and the EPA, as well as giving already extremely wealthy people even more “free speech” in our election process to be shameful.
    What, as a tax mooch lawyer, you think cutting the IRS budget even further is a *good* thing? Hoocoodaknown?!

  152. 152.

    JGabriel

    @Spinwheel:

    Because we all know that the NSA and CIA would never lie to a news agency and use them to spread disinformation.

    Of course they would, I’m not saying they wouldn’t. An agreement to pretend tapping Merkel never happened, via diplomatic or intelligence agency back-channels, seems to me to be the most likely basis for the Harald Range quote in the Reuters story Zandar excerpted – but I’m not saying that’s the only way this story could have formed.

  153. 153.

    Corner Stone

    @burnspbesq: Further, asshole, this budget is a further wealth transfer on the backs of those who can least afford it. Again.

    I don’t expect you to get that as your existence is all about comforting the comfortable. And finding even more loopholes to fuck the commonweal out of funds due her.
    Go snuggle up with your purple Cutcliffe dollie and shut the fuck up. Douchecanoe.

  154. 154.

    Keith G

    @burnspbesq: I know him to be a someone who is not a felon. He skipped town (as it were) before that had a chance of happening – that damned innocent til proven guilt shit that I love so much.

    Now, it sure seems that he broke a law or two and I am glad he did. I am also happy that he fled as that gives him more of a chance to be in the public consciousness and respond in a way he could not as a guest of our federal government. My standards for “hero are rather high. I am not sure he has made it yet.

    As we have found out this week, our government has done, is doing, and certainly will want to do some very bad shit. And even our current president, St Barak of Obama cannot be counted on as a voice for the transparency that our active citizenship requires.

    I wish we didn’t live in a world where Snowden’s actions were necessary to help counter the dark impulses of our government, but such is life.

  156. 156.

    TS

    @Spinwheel:

    No-one consistently gives the President a pass on anything – he gets NO passes only criticism. You show very well how anything on any blog can become an attack on the President and there seems to be no reason other than Presidenting while black.

  158. 158.

    Keith G

    @TS:

    No-one consistently gives the President a pass on anything – he gets NO passes only criticism

    WTF?

    I feel your pain, and yes there is a quantifiable number of folks who will verbally abuse the man from sunrise to sunset. Just don’t discount his equally ardent defenders. They are legion and there are many here.

  159. 159.

    Spinwheel

    @TS: And you show how any legitimate criticism of the President is immediately reduced to implied racism on the part of the critic.

    That happens to be one of Zandar’s favorite moves.

  160. 160.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Betty Cracker:

    It’s completely plausible that the US was spying on Merkel, and they’re a close enough ally that a swift apology would be required rather than waiting for a full investigation. But as Rolling Stone just found out, an allegation isn’t necessarily true just because it’s plausible. Given what AHH and others have been finding in the German press, it may be time to wait and see which way the story ends up going.

  162. 162.

    Mandalay

    @Another Holocene Human:

    Also it’s claimed Range is not getting cooperation from NSA himself

    Well no surprise there, of course. The most damning aspect of all this is that when the German Government asked Susan Rice whether Merkel’s cell phone was being tapped she could only promise that it was not being monitored currently, nor would it be in the future.

    Given the uproar the incident had provoked in Germany, this was tantamount to admitting that Merkel had been spied on in the past:

    [National Security Adviser] Rice contacted Heusgen [Merkel’s foreign policy adviser] once again, but this time her voice sounded less certain. She said that the possibility the chancellor’s phone was under surveillance could only be ruled out currently and in the future. Heusgen asked for more details, but was put off. The chief adviser to the president on Europe, Karen Donfried, and the Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia at the US State Department, Victoria Nuland, would provide further information midweek, he was told. By this time it was clear to the Chancellery that if Obama’s top security adviser no longer felt comfortable ruling out possible surveillance, this amounted to confirmation of their suspicions.

    Of course it’s entirely possible that Merkel had never been spied on by the US, and Rice deliberately lied in order to worsen our our relationship with Germany. The odds of that are about 1 in 100 billion though.

    But there are two much more likely possibilities:
    – Merkel had been spied on during the Bush and Obama administrations, and Rice didn’t want to admit it.
    – Our security agencies wouldn’t tell Rice what was going on, so she truly had no clue; she could neither confirm nor deny.

  164. 164.

    different-church-lady

    @kc: I have here in my hand a list of 205 names that were made known to the blog host as being members of the Greenwaldian Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping commentary in Balloon Juice…

  166. 166.

    Keith G

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): Errr. No

    That is to say, that to me it seems the passage you have referenced does not equate those events in their seriousness, but saying that those actions are part of a larger set of issues (continual violations of our civil liberties).

    I guess we could ask for a clarification before you resort to profanity and personal attack. Yes?

    Edit

    I see Spinwheel covered this.

  167. 167.

    different-church-lady

    @Betty Cracker:

    …that was the consensus view at the time…

    As though that means anything anymore…

    Any rate, I’m not questioning that something hinkey was going on, or that there was no reason for feathers to be ruffled. What I’m trying to get at is that our understanding of the exact issues of that conversation are not as detailed as people believe. The quoted summary to the press — something for public consumption — is not the same as knowing the exact wording of the conversation. Nowhere in the transcript you quoted does it say, “I told Chancellor Merkel that we were tapping her phone and we’re sorry and we’ll stop.”

    There’s nothing wrong with inferences, as long as they are acknowledged as inferences. It’s when an inference gets stated as a fact that we go down the rabbit hole.

    We can square this circle by saying that (a) the particular document provided by Spiegel was less conclusive than alleged and (b) nonetheless, there were still diplomatic rifts that needed tending to.

  168. 168.

    Mandalay

    @Betty Cracker:

    People were all like, “Of course we were spying! everyone spies!”

    Yes that was certainly the argument being fed to all the Villagers for propagation, and they were pushing that line out of necessity.

    Germany was pressing the Administration to deny that they had monitored Merkel’s calls, and they refused to do that. And they couldn’t deny it, because they were monitoring her calls.

    The notion that our agencies had never monitored Merkel’s calls, but the Administration decided not to state that, is idiotic.

  170. 170.

    ruemara

    @Betty Cracker: You’re talking around something I never said. I said, an apology was mandatory. I never said he thought it was a bunch of hoey. Like I also said, this thread is the same arguments and personality conflicts, not even about the issue. And trolls. Laters.

  171. 171.

    EthylEster

    @different-church-lady wrote:

    We take a scrap of material, misunderstand it, embellish it, and then run with it while shouting through a bullhorn.

    Exactly. And when things fall apart, quickly murmur “Never mind.” Or not.
    I’ve pretty much stopped commenting here because of that.

    I don’t know how folks who seemingly spend their lives here (injecting multiple comments on EVERY thread) deal with this. I guess I’m just too old for the BS.

  172. 172.

    Mandalay

    @different-church-lady:

    What I’m trying to get at is that our understanding of the exact issues of that conversation are not as detailed as people believe.

    That is all beside the point. The details of private conversations are irrelevant.

    The central issue is that if you are truly completely innocent of a charge you will only make things worse by refusing to proclaim your innocence. Susan Rice was given a golden opportunity to tell the German government that the US had never monitored Merkel’s phone calls, and had she done so it would have improved the US-German relationship. But she didn’t do that. Instead she chose to state only that monitoring was not happening currently, nor would it happen in the future.

    One would have to be completely naive to believe that Rice’s statement says nothing either way about had happened in the past, given the price the Administration paid for her deliberate evasiveness.

  173. 173.

    different-church-lady

    @EthylEster:

    I don’t know how folks who seemingly spend their lives here (injecting multiple comments on EVERY thread) deal with this.

    Well, it’s been recently suggested to me that I dealt with it by turning into a troll and a witch. Which, even if it turns out not to be true, still reflects very badly on me from a lot of different angles…

  174. 174.

    different-church-lady

    @Mandalay:

    The details of private conversations are irrelevant.

    So when citing a private conversation as proof of something, the details of that conversation are irrelevant?

  175. 175.

    SRW1

    @Another Holocene Human:

    In what FAZ is saying Range really seems to be shitting his pants. On the one hand he actually appears to have claimed that one of Der Spiegel reporters fabricated the purported NSA document. Der Spiegel is saying that they made it clear to Range from the very beginning that what they were providing to him was a copy, but without them having made any changes to it.

    Range also stated that the NSA refused to comment on the document and that he therefore doesn’t feel in a position to decide on its veracity. The fact that he nonetheless accused Der Spegel of a fabrication smells really bad and explains the pushback he is getting. Also, Der Spiegel is quite influential. If they go after Range for the accusation and he can’t back it up, he may have gone too far out on a limb.

    The FAZ had an article in mid November that Range was about to shut down the investigation because he claimed that he couldn’t find supporting evidence. So, that in and of itself is not new. What is, though, is his accusation of a fabrication by Der Siegel. Some bizarre shit going down here and I would agree, this needs some clarifications. Especially because the German government has been stalling on providing documents to a parliamentary inquiry, for which there doesn’t appear to be any acceptable legal basis.

  176. 176.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Betty Cracker: I look at it this way. If you’re the president and the German press is reporting that they have a document showing that Americans tapped Merkel’s phone, you don’t rely on statements from conflicted internal sources – whose credibility you may doubt yourself – that it never happened. If their reassurances turn out to be wrong, any denial becomes a “lie” that you wear around your neck for the rest of your life. And if you come out with a weaselly “can neither confirm nor deny,” you satisfy no one and just throw chum in the water. Better to just make the apology now and put it behind you.

    Based on AHH’s comments above, though, it’s sounding like Spiegel gave the German prosecutor a copy of the document that had been stripped of metadata, and he is refusing to accept its authenticity without the metadata.

  177. 177.

    Mandalay

    @different-church-lady:

    So when citing a private conversation as proof of something, the details of that conversation are irrelevant?

    Maybe I misunderstood your comments. I am saying only that the details of private conversations are irrelevant for determining whether the US monitored Merkel’s phone calls. Public statements from Rice and Obama make it crystal clear that we did.

    Now we can speculate on whether anyone admitted to Merkel that we had spied on her in a private conversation, but that is irrelevant with respect to whether we spied on her. We did. She knows that. We know that. The whole world knows that.

    My apologies if I’m going off at a tangent from what you said, and missing your point. Obviously what was said in private conversations can be relevant sometimes, but not for this particular issue.

  178. 178.

    different-church-lady

    @Mandalay:

    She knows that. We know that. The whole world knows that.

    But apparently the guy leading the investigation doesn’t know it.

  179. 179.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    @Spinwheel:

    I would go over to Bob Cesca’s or Charles Johnson’s respective garbage dumps.

    You’d decrease the quality. I’d suggest rotten.com

  180. 180.

    Mandalay

    @different-church-lady:

    But apparently the guy leading the investigation doesn’t know it.

    How do you know that? All we know is that he is questioning the authenticity of a piece of evidence, and that’s his job.

    He is not evaluating whether the US monitored Merkel’s phone. That ship has already sailed.

    He is evaluating whether there is hard evidence that Merkel’s phone calls were monitored by the United States, given that the US is refusing to publicly confirm that they did.

  181. 181.

    Baud

    @Mandalay:

    So I’m only slightly following this conversation, but I’m confused by these two statements you just made.

    whether there is hard evidence that Merkel’s phone calls were monitored by the United States given that the US is refusing to publicly confirm that they did.

    . Public statements from Rice and Obama make it crystal clear that we did.

    Apologies if I missed some context.

  182. 182.

    SRW1

    @different-church-lady:

    But apparently the guy leading the investigation doesn’t know it.

    You forgot to put the ‘know’ between quotation marks. Given all the reactions to when the spying accusation first surfaced, it’s a bit late to try and reel this in. The fact that it is inconvenient for both the US and the German government and that they both would like to shut the topic down is not surprising. Range is giving off all the air of being a good soldier for the German government here. But it is a bit transparent.

  183. 183.

    Corner Stone

    @Corner Stone:

    @burnspbesq: Further, asshole, this budget is a further wealth transfer on the backs of those who can least afford it. Again.

    I don’t expect you to get that as your existence is all about comforting the comfortable. And finding even more loopholes to fuck the commonweal out of funds due her.
    Go snuggle up with your purple Cutcliffe dollie and shut the fuck up. Douchecanoe.

    Hey asshole. Now what, douchecanoe?

  184. 184.

    SRW1

    @Baud:

    I suppose the context might lie in the fact that the first statement plays in the court of public opinion, whereas the second refers to a document or witness statement that would hold up in a court of law.

  186. 186.

    Baud

    @SRW1:

    Perhaps. I’m not trying to parse Mandalay’s statements. I’m just asking him to clarify, because the two statements seem on their face inconsistent with each other.

  187. 187.

    Mandalay

    @Baud: In a nutshell, the US had every incentive to deny the allegation that it had been monitoring Merkel’s phone calls, given the harm that it had caused US-German relations, yet the Administration still refused to deny the allegations in public statements.

    If you have an explanation for why we declined to publicly reassure Merkel that we weren’t spying on her if that was truly the case then I’m interested to hear it. I can’t come up with one that makes any sense.

    What makes a lot of sense is that we were spying on her and we got caught, but we can’t admit that publicly. YMMV.

  188. 188.

    Baud

    @Mandalay:

    I have no theories. I was just trying to make sense of your comments. In one, it seemed like you were saying that Obama admitted that we were spying, and in the other, that we refused to confirm that we were spying. At least, that’s how I read them initially.

    Thanks for the explanation.

  189. 189.

    SRW1

    OK, maybe a bit of context on how this appears to look from the pov of the German government.

    The accusation of the NSA spying on Merkel apparently was somewhat of a surprise for Merkel herself, even though she appears to have been warned about it before (not that she personally was a target, but that the spying was going on). She appears to have been genuinely annoyed about it and and brought it up with Obama personally.

    The furor among the German public meant that the Merkel administration needed to be seen to do something about it. Therefore the investigation by Range and therefore the constitution of a parliamentary inquiry.

    The parliamentary inquiry has been trying to get Snowden to make an appearance as a witness before it. Which raised the question of whether the German government would provide him with an assurance that he would not be handed over to the US if he appeared in Berlin. To clarify that question, the German government asked the US government what precisely it accused Snowden of, as that would determine whether the German government would have to respond favorably to a US request to extradite Snowden.

    The US administration has given an answer to that request for a clarification, but the German government is refusing to provide its content to the parliamentary committee. Which is somewhat odd, but becomes understandable if one assumes that the answer of the US government does not translate into an obligation to extradite because that opens up the possible scenario of Snowden showing up in Berlin and convincing the parliamentary inquiry that the claim about the spying on Merkel is genuine. Not only would the German government then be prevented from extraditing him to the US, they would have to treat him as their star witness and essentially offer him asylum in Germany.

    In other words, Snowden would no longer be holed up in Moscow, but would be a free man to roam around in Germany. That is the very last thing the German government wants, as it would aggravate relations with the US immensely. What the German government wants is to shut this thing down as quickly as possible.

  194. 194.

    Cervantes

    @Belafon:

    Remember when Obama took office and they made him give up his blackberry?

    No, as of mid-2009 he used a “hardened” BlackBerry that only allows calls to, and accepts calls from, certain people.

  196. 196.

    Cervantes

    @Betty Cracker:

    On the one hand it’s not clear to me why you bother.

    On the other hand you did, not too long ago, take care of a certain other specimen by giving him enough rope to hang himself — which he predictably and promptly did.

    I suppose you know what you’re doing — which is more than I can say for myself half the time.

  197. 197.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @rea:

    Greek intelligence?

    One thing is FACT it wasn’t the Russian intelligence agency. That would imply that Snowden is just a tool of the Putin and not the brave freedom fighter that Snowdon really is. After all, that’s why Snowden started up during the boycott the Olympics because of Russian gay bashing – because Snowdon belives in FREEDOM(tm)!!!!

  198. 198.

    Mandalay

    @SRW1: An excellent summary of the situation. One point I’d add is that while Merkel was certainly pressured to investigate by the German public, she is also facing something of a backlash: there is a (mis)perception that she is eager to investigate when her own phone is tapped, but is much less concerned when the German public have their calls monitored.

    The ideal solution for Merkel would have been for the US to explicitly apologize for having tapped her calls so the whole mess would go away, but that was never going to happen.

  200. 200.

    Mnemosyne

    @Spinwheel:

    How dare I compare two obvious abuses of government power that should be illegal!

    I know, brah — you clearly are just as much a victim of the abuse of government power as Eric Garner was. Having your phone metadata collected without your knowledge and being suffocated to death are exactly the same thing.

  202. 202.

    Corner Stone

    @GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): So…let’s make sure we understand what nonsense you are spouting here.
    The WH, in fact, is not whipping House Dems to pass the bill? Which they, in fact, did fucking actually do?
    You sound more stupid than usual. Should we call your sponsor?

  203. 203.

    A Humble Lurker

    @Anne Laurie:
    Uh…that doesn’t look you better than the person you’re replying to, you know. Not to mention, it kind of doesn’t make sense.

  205. 205.

    Yastreblyansky

    @Betty Cracker: That’s never been clear. The apology report was in Spiegel (same magazine that reported the “tapping”), as re-reported in Al Jazeera:

    Obama apologized to Merkel when she called him Wednesday to seek clarification on the issue, Der Spiegel wrote, citing a source in Merkel’s office.

    Obama told Merkel he had not known of the bugging, the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung said.

    Merkel’s spokesman and the White House declined comment.

    On her nasty book tour in July, Hillary Clinton apologized and called out Obama for never having done so.

  206. 206.

    Yastreblyansky

    @Mandalay: I don’t think that’s a misperception at all; she’s said as much, and the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz spies freely on German citizens including members of the completely legal parliamentary party of Die Linke (quotes and links here).

  207. 207.

    yastreblyansky

    @Mandalay: Was the Bush admin trying to eavesdrop on Gerhard Schroeder during the runup to the Iraq war when Schroeder was the most important figure in the effort to stop it? No reason to doubt that. They could have stopped after the war started, or after Merkel became Chancellor in 2005, or after Obama took office, or whatever points in between, and Rice’s statement would still be accurate.

  208. 208.

    Mandalay

    @Yastreblyansky: Yes, it’s obvious to all that Merkel didn’t like being spied on by the US, and the general sentiment with the German public is that Merkel is way too cozy with the US.

    But I termed it a “(mis)perception” because I have no clue either way about what meaningful efforts she has made in private with the US about the German public being spied on by the US, and I doubt if many other people do either. I’m possibly being too charitable towards her, but one would think that her background and/or the opinion polls would strongly shape her views on this.

    I wasn’t commenting either way about Germans being spied on by Germans. I don’t know much about that, but your link was interesting.

  209. 209.

    Mandalay

    @yastreblyansky:

    and Rice’s statement would still be accurate.

    Well you are right of course, but her statement would be accurate precisely because it asserted so little. It’s what Rice did not say that was telling, not what she did say.

    I would think it probable that we have been spying on every German Chancellor right up until the moment we were caught spying on Merkel. Interestingly, Obama was very careful to state only that we would not be spying on Merkel as long as he was president.

  210. 210.

    a a

    Apparently the NSA has not yet released the original:

    Crucially, he said, German authorities were not able to get a hold of the authentic NSA document which authorized the wiretapping of Merkel’s phone.

    “The document presented in public as proof of an actual tapping of the mobile phone is not an authentic surveillance order by the NSA. It does not come from the NSA database,” the prosecutor said.

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