Targeting Turkey: How Germany Spies on Its Friends

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-considers-turkey-to-be-official-target-for-spying-a-986656.html



For more than a year now, German officials have criticized the US for the NSA's mass spying on Europeans and even Chancellor Angela Merkel. Now, embarrassing revelations show that Germany has inadvertently spied on Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, and has also deliberately targeted Turkey.

Targeting Turkey: How Germany Spies on Its Friends
By SPIEGEL Staff
August 18, 2014 – 02:14 PM

It was mid-July, and the German government had something it could be a bit proud of. For the first time in the never-ending spying affair, it had reacted quickly, unanimously and toughly. A spy for the Americans had been exposed inside Germany's foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), and the government in Berlin ordered the CIA's top official in Germany to leave the country, demonstrating to Washington that it refused to put up with just anything. Berlin seemed to be going on the offensive.

It didn't last long. Four weeks later, Chancellor Angela Merkel's team is backpedaling. On Friday, the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the BND -- even if apparently unintentionally -- had eavesdropped on a telephone conversation by then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The revelation made Merkel's dictum, "Spying among friends? That's unacceptable," ring a bit hollow.

Information obtained by SPIEGEL indicates that the affair goes beyond Clinton. Last year, it also drew in Clinton's successor, John Kerry, when he was mediating in the Middle East between the Israelis, the Palestinians and the Arab states. At the time, the recording of at least one Kerry conversation was apparently immediately deleted by the BND under orders.

The fact that Clinton's conversation apparently wasn't deleted is one of many oddities in the NSA scandal that is filled with them. And it is the product of a number of unfortunate coincidences within the BND.