Eavesdropping among friends is okay: BND allegedly bugged US President Obama

It was one of those sentences that went down in history and long defined German-American relations: "Eavesdropping among friends is simply not done." This was how then-Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) reacted in 2013 to the revelation that the US intelligence agency NSA had been monitoring her private mobile phone for years. But while Berlin reacted with outrage, and Merkel even drew comparisons to the surveillance practices of the Stasi in private circles, the German foreign intelligence service apparently tapped into the highest political circles in Washington itself. Research by a "Zeit" journalist suggests that the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) regularly eavesdropped on Barack Obama.

According to the report, the target of the operation was Air Force One. When the former US President picked up the phone on board his flying command center, the BND partially listened in.

This insight into the communication of the world's most powerful man is said to have been made possible by a technical vulnerability. Insiders report that the encryption of communication on board the government aircraft was surprisingly prone to errors at the time. The BND technicians were reportedly aware of about a dozen frequencies over which Obama's phone calls were handled. These radio channels were allegedly monitored by the agents repeatedly. Conversations were likely captured on a large scale in the BND's data vacuum cleaner.

Those responsible at BND headquarters were well aware of the explosive nature of this operation. The USA was not on the Federal Government's official mandate profile at any point. This specifies which countries and regions the service is allowed to investigate.

Altmaier allegedly stopped the activities indirectly

According to "Zeit", remarkable effort was made to disguise the espionage operation. The transcripts of the intercepted phone calls were not filed in the regular reporting system but were collected in a special folder. This existed only in a single copy and was circulated only among a small group consisting of the BND President, his deputy, and the responsible department head. After reading, the transcripts were destroyed, and the findings were incorporated in anonymized form into general situation reports on US policy for the Chancellery.

When the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported in 2014 that the BND had spied on then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Chancellery Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) is said to have pulled the plug. He ordered the cessation of such surveillance measures against allies. However, even Altmaier probably did not suspect at the time that the German intelligence agents had already had the President in their sights one level higher.

As early as March 2015, it had emerged that the BND had been spying on institutions in EU and NATO countries on a large scale for years with NSA target specifications. Merkel defended her famous quote as the last witness in the relevant parliamentary inquiry in 2017. She dismissed the fact that the BND itself violated it as a "deficit." In October 2015, former BND President August Hanning declined to comment on the Chancellor's moral imperative. He felt uncomfortable even with the question and merely stated: "You have to expect that if you communicate openly, services will listen in."

The BND itself, as usual, remains silent about the new scandal.

(nie)