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France and Germany Piqued Over Spying Scandal Outrage in Europe Grows Over Spying Disclosures
(about 9 hours later)
LONDON — The leaders of France and Germany added their voices on Monday to the growing outrage over reports that the United States has been spying on its European Union allies, raising new suggestions that talks on a new trans-Atlantic trade agreement may be at risk. PARIS — Damage from the disclosures of United States spying on its European and Asian allies spread on Monday, threatening negotiations on a free trade agreement, hurting President Obama’s standing in Europe and raising basic questions of trust among nations that have been on friendly terms for generations.
President François Hollande of France issued some of the harshest language from a European leader, telling reporters during a visit in northwestern France that “we cannot accept this kind of behavior between partners and allies.” He said the spying should “immediately stop.” President François Hollande of France issued some of the harshest language yet from a European leader on the issue, telling reporters that “we cannot accept this kind of behavior between partners and allies” and suggesting that talks on the trade pact, scheduled to start next week, should be delayed at least until questions over the spying issue were resolved and confidence restored.
In Berlin, a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Steffen Seibert, echoed Mr. Hollande’s anger over the eavesdropping. “We’re not in the cold war anymore,” he told reporters. It was not so much the fact of the spying as its sheer scale that alarmed European leaders and others here. Elmar Brok, an outspoken German who is chairman of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said that “the spying has reached dimensions that I did not think were possible for a democratic country.” He said the United States had “lost all balance — George Orwell is nothing by comparison.”
Mr. Hollande hinted that talks on a new trans-Atlantic trade pact, scheduled to start next week, should be delayed until questions over the spying issue were resolved. “We can only have negotiations, transactions, in all areas once we have obtained these guarantees for France, but that goes for the whole European Union, and I would say for all partners of the United States,” he said, according to a translation of his remarks reported by The Associated Press. While some of the comments were political and from leaders of countries that also spy with great energy against their allies, there was a new tone of disappointment with President Obama and concern that the American intelligence system had become too large for careful political oversight.
The anger overshadowed efforts by Secretary of State John Kerry to play down concerns about American surveillance, telling reporters at a conference of Southeast Asian nations in Brunei on Monday that “every country in the world” involved in international affairs engages in activities to protect its national security. “France is a cynical country,” said François Heisbourg, a defense expert at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. “We all spy, but the difference here is the scale — up to 60 million connections in Germany in a day!”
The latest accusations surfaced in the online edition of the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, which reported on Saturday that American agencies had monitored the offices of the European Union in New York and Washington. Der Spiegel said information about the spying appeared in documents that were obtained by Edward J. Snowden, the former American intelligence contractor, and were seen in part by the magazine. That spies go “spearfishing” after particular targets is one thing, he said. “But no one has understood that our societies were being spied on so massively — this isn’t spearfishing but trawling with a big, big net. That’s the real shocker.”
On Sunday, the online edition of The Guardian in Britain reported additional details about the surveillance program. The newspaper said that one document it had obtained listed 38 embassies and diplomatic missions in Washington and New York, describing them as “targets.” It detailed a broad range of spying methods used against one, including bugs implanted in electronic communications gear and the collection of transmissions using specialized antennas. The European Parliament, which will vote on any free trade agreement, will debate the latest spying revelations in Brussels on Wednesday, with the Parliament’s president, Martin Schulz of Germany, saying that he was “deeply worried and shocked.” If the latest reports, which include American spying on the European Union itself, are true, he said, “it would be an extremely serious matter that will have a severe impact on E.U.-U.S. relations.”
The list of targets included the European Union’s missions and the French, Italian and Greek Embassies, as well as those of several other American allies, including India, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and Turkey, The Guardian reported. European lawmakers across the political spectrum warned of a loss of confidence in the Obama administration that would make a free trade deal difficult. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the Green Party floor leader, spoke for many when he said that the European Union “must immediately suspend negotiations with the U.S. over a free trade agreement.” First, he said, “we need a deal on data protection so that something like that never happens again.”
The reports came at a time when there was already considerable tension between the United States and its European allies over Mr. Snowden’s earlier revelations of apparent American spying on officials of allied governments and the gathering of data on electronic communications by millions of people around the world. The reaction was particularly angry in Germany, with its history of Nazism and the East German Stasi, made more acute by the disclosure that a large part of the American interception efforts were aimed there.
In the latest accusations, the documents seen by The Guardian suggest that the intent of the eavesdropping against the union’s office in Washington was to gather inside knowledge of policy differences on global issues and other potential disagreements among member countries, the newspaper said. Catherine Ashton, the union’s top foreign policy official, said in a written statement on Sunday that the union was seeking “urgent clarification of the veracity of and facts surrounding these allegations.” Michael Grosse-Brömer, parliamentary president for the ruling conservative bloc, warned that if the reports proved true, “it would be sufficient to shatter mutual trust and to damage the close, trusting trans-Atlantic relationship.”
The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, said in a statement that he was “deeply worried and shocked.” He added, “If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter, which will have a severe impact on E.U.-U.S. relations.” Mr. Obama was in Berlin on June 19, giving a speech in which he explained that the spying programs were about counterterrorism and served the interests of all allies. But the online edition of the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel and The Guardian, based on leaks from Edward J. Snowden, the former American intelligence contractor, reported on Saturday that the spying and data collection included the European Union offices in Brussels and Washington, which struck many here as unlikely places to find terrorists.
The United States and the European Union are scheduled to complete talks on the trans-Atlantic trade agreement by November 2014. Those talks are threatened by the spying accusations, according to Viviane Reding, the European Union’s commissioner for justice. Terrorism is real and “there are systems that have to be checked, especially to fight terrorism,” Mr. Hollande said, “but I don’t think that it is in our embassies or in the European Union that this threat exists.”
“We cannot negotiate over a big trans-Atlantic market if there is the slightest doubt that our partners are carrying out spying activities on the offices of our negotiators,” Ms. Reding said at a meeting in Luxembourg on Sunday. “The American authorities should eliminate any such doubt swiftly.” France has been a critic of the proposed free trade deal, trying to ensure that its key interests, which include domestic production of films and videos and agriculture, are protected. France is also well known as having a sophisticated, well-funded intelligence system that also spies on allies and enemies to protect its national and commercial interests.
American officials declined to directly address the accusations on Sunday. In Washington, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence wrote in an e-mail, “The United States government will respond appropriately to the European Union through our diplomatic channels,” as well as through a forum for American and European intelligence specialists that the United States proposed creating several weeks ago. What also troubles people is the sense that the United States, “having unlimited means, uses them because they exist, and this speaks poorly of checks and balances in the system,” Mr. Heisbourg said .He also wondered “if Obama thought he was telling the truth in the Berlin speech,” since “spying on the E.U. was particularly revealing.”
“While we are not going to comment publicly on specific alleged intelligence activities, as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations,” the spokesman wrote. Camille Grand, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, said that the disclosures fed into “a growing disappointment with Obama in Europe” stemming from the American drone program and the president’s failure to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. For allied intelligence services to spy on one another is not new, he said, especially in trade negotiations and commercial dealings. “But it’s complicated the view of Obama, to realize he’s a rather standard U.S. president, using all the tools at his disposal.”
Michael V. Hayden, a former director of both the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, pushed back at the European anger on Sunday in an appearance on the CBS program “Face the Nation,” saying in effect that all countries spy. Mr. Obama has told Americans that an N.S.A. program, called Prism, that gathers information from major Internet companies, is not aimed at them, Mr. Grand said, “Then we find out that policy doesn’t apply to America’s allies. It creates a lot of skepticism.”
“No. 1: The United States does conduct espionage,” Mr. Hayden said. “No. 2: Our Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans’ privacy, is not an international treaty. And No. 3: Any European who wants to go out and rend their garments with regard to international espionage should look first and find out what their own governments are doing.” Many intelligence experts dismissed as posturing the expressions of shock and disappointment among Europe’s leaders. Richard J. Aldrich, a former intelligence officer who teaches international security at Britain’s University of Warwick, said that he was “often surprised by the disconnect between political leaders whom one presumes get intelligence reports and the level of indignation they express.”
According to Der Spiegel, the N.S.A. installed listening devices in European Union diplomatic offices in downtown Washington and tapped into its computer network. The Guardian reported that the eavesdropping involved three different operations focused on the office’s 90 staff members. Two were electronic implants, and one involved the use of antennas to collect transmissions. “They are political creatures,” Mr. Aldrich said, “and they detect some political mileage to be gained.”
“In this way, the Americans were able to access discussions in E.U. rooms, as well as e-mails and internal documents on computers,” Der Spiegel reported. European allies themselves spy on the European Union and have been happy to collaborate with the United States on intelligence gathering and even rendition, Mr. Aldrich said, “so long as everything remains secret.” Some of the pressure on Mr. Obama to crack down on whistle-blowers comes from his European allies, Mr. Aldrich said.
The American code name for a similar eavesdropping operation focused on the union’s mission to the United Nations is “Perdido,” The Guardian reported. That operation involved the collection of data transmitted by bugs placed inside electronic devices, and another covert operation appeared to yield copies of everything on computer hard drives at the mission, the newspaper reported. Among the documents the newspaper said it had obtained from Mr. Snowden was a floor plan of the mission, in Midtown Manhattan. While France, Germany and other allies all spy, there is a large imbalance in technical means, which adds to the discomfort. James Bamford, the author of a 1982 book about the National Security Agency, “The Puzzle Palace,” said that the latest technology gives the United States a huge qualitative advantage over its partners.
Der Spiegel also suggested that eavesdropping was conducted in the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels, where representatives of European Union member nations have offices. It was not the first report of spying in that building. There were reports in 2003 that foreign intelligence agencies had planted listening devices there, and it is widely assumed that among the thousands of diplomats working in Brussels, a number are actually intelligence officers. “The difference is, you’re comparing eavesdropping with a nuclear weapon to eavesdropping with a cannon,” he said. “These countries don’t have anywhere near the capacity that the N.S.A. does in terms of their capacity to do to us what we do to them.”
In France, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Sunday that the government had urgently demanded an explanation from the American authorities. The reported American spying, if confirmed, would be “completely unacceptable,” he said in a statement. That can confer an immense edge, he said, adding, “It’s the equivalent of going to a poker game and wanting to know what everyone’s hand is before you place your bet.”
The loudest criticism came from Germany, which was not on the published list of target countries. Privacy issues are a matter of political significance there. Mr. Bamford, like other experts, said that Washington’s interest in Germany was understandable, both because of its political and economic clout and the fact that the Sept. 11, 2001, terror plot was hatched in Harburg, near Hamburg.
“If the media reports are accurate, then this recalls the methods used by enemies during the cold war,” said the German justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, according to The Associated Press. “It is beyond comprehension that our friends in the United States see Europeans as enemies.” William R. Timken Jr., who served as the United States ambassador to Germany from 2005 to 2008, said Monday that he thought the European reaction was “a little overdone.” He said the assumption among diplomats had long been that espionage among allies was a given.
Birgit Sippel, a Social Democrat and a member of a European Parliament committee on civil liberties, wrote on Twitter that she would like “to suspend upcoming negotiations with the U.S.A. and to review existing agreements.” Now retired, he said that when he moved into the ambassadorial residence in Berlin, “I asked our guys if they’d swept it for bugs and they said, ‘Ambassador, nothing can prevent anybody from listening.’ They just assume everybody’s going to be listening to everything.”
Rebecca Harms, a leader of the Green Party in the European Parliament, called for a special committee to investigate the claims and the possible cancellation of existing agreements between the European Union and the United States concerning bank transaction information and airline passenger data. Jane Harman, a former congresswoman from California and member of the House Intelligence Committee, played down the impact of the revelations. “I do think there have to be some private conversations between some in Europe and some in our intelligence community, so there’s a better understanding of what’s going on. But it has ever been thus, that governments spy on governments.”

Stephen Castle reported from London, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Scott Shane contributed reporting from Baltimore; Michael R. Gordon from Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei; and Rick Gladstone from New York.

Ms. Harman, now the president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said that European threats to stall or scrap the proposed free trade agreement were self-defeating. “It will hurt Europe not to have this trade pact,” she said.
In Tanzania on Monday, the last stop in his weeklong trip to Africa, Mr. Obama said that he had directed his staff to examine the latest reports regarding spying on United States allies. “We will take a look at this article, figure out what they may or may not be talking about, and then we’ll communicate with our allies appropriately,” Mr. Obama said.
He said of every intelligence service: “Here’s one thing that they’re going to be doing: they’re going to be trying to understand the world better and what’s going on in world capitals around the world, from sources that aren’t available through The New York Times or NBC News.”
“If that weren’t the case, then there’d be no use for an intelligence service,” he said, adding, “I guarantee you that in European capitals, there are people who are interested in, if not what I had for breakfast, at least what my talking points might be should I end up meeting with their leaders. That’s how intelligence services operate.”

Reporting was contributed by Brian B. Knowlton from Washington; Michael D. Shear from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Melissa Eddy and Chris Cottrell from Berlin; Aurelien Breeden from Paris; and Rick Gladstone from New York.