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U.S. Disputes Reports of Wiretapping in France and Germany Anger Growing Among Allies on U.S. Spying
(about 1 hour later)
BERLIN — The German government said Wednesday that it had received information that the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was under surveillance by United States intelligence services and that she had called President Obama to make clear that such practices – if confirmed – were “completely unacceptable.” BERLIN — The diplomatic fallout from the documents harvested by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden intensified on Wednesday, with one of the United States’ closest allies, Germany, announcing that its leader had angrily called President Obama seeking reassurance that her cellphone was not the target of an American intelligence tap.
Steffen Seibert, the chancellor’s spokesman, quoted her as telling Mr. Obama: “Between close friends and partners, which the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America have been for decades, there should be no such surveillance of the communications of a head of government.” Washington hastily pledged that Chancellor Angela Merkel, leader of Europe’s most powerful economy, was not the target of current surveillance and would not be in the future, while conspicuously saying nothing about the past. After a similar furor with France, the call was the second time in 48 hours that the president found himself on the phone with a close European ally to argue that the unceasing revelations of invasive American intelligence gathering should not undermine decades of hard-won trans-Atlantic trust.
He further quoted her as telling him: “That would be a grave breach of trust. Such practices must cease immediately.” Both episodes illustrated the diplomatic challenge to the United States posed by the cache of documents that Mr. Snowden handed to the journalist Glenn Greenwald. Last week, Mr. Greenwald concluded a deal with the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar to build a new media platform that aims in part to publicize other revelations from the data Mr. Greenwald now possesses.
It was the second time in three days that allegations of American government surveillance threatened to cloud relations between Washington and close European allies. The consternation in Berlin followed a furor in France over reports in the newspaper Le Monde that American intelligence had collected data on 70 million communications by French citizens in a 30-day period late last year and into January. The damage to core American relationships continues to mount. Last month, President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil postponed a state visit to the United States after Brazilian news media reports — fed by material from Mr. Greenwald — that the National Security Agency had intercepted messages from Ms. Rousseff, her aides and the state oil company, Petrobras. Last weekend, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, which has said it has a stack of Snowden documents, suggested that United States intelligence had gained access to communications to and from President Felipe Calderón of Mexico when he was still in office.
The White House issued a statement confirming that Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel had spoken “regarding allegations that the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted the communications of the German Chancellor. The President assured the Chancellor that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of Chancellor Merkel.” Secretary of State John F. Kerry had barely landed in France on Monday when the newspaper Le Monde disclosed what it said was the mass surveillance of French citizens, as well as spying on French diplomats. Furious, the French summoned the United States ambassador, Charles H. Rivkin, and President François Hollande expressed “extreme reprobation” for the reported collection of 70 million phone calls in 30 days late last year and into January.
The statement did not address whether those communications had been intercepted in the past. In a statement published on the Web site of the national intelligence office on Wednesday, James R. Clapper, the director, disputed some aspects of Le Monde’s reporting, calling it misleading and inaccurate in unspecified ways.
Also on Wednesday, James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence in the United States, disputed some details of Le Monde’s reports as misleading. He did not address another report by Le Monde that monitoring by the United States had extended to “French diplomatic interests” at the United Nations and in Washington. Information garnered by the N.S.A. played a significant part in a United Nations vote on June 9, 2010, in favor of sanctions against Iran, Le Monde said.
The vehement French criticism of the United States – Ambassador Charles H. Rivkin was summoned on Monday to the French foreign ministry -- followed unhappiness expressed by Germany in June and since then by Brazil and Mexico, about having been targeted by the National Security Agency’s surveillance program. Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff canceled a visit to the United States over the issue. Two senior administration officials — from the State Department and the National Security Council — had arrived in Berlin only hours before the German government disclosed on Wednesday that it had received unspecified information that Ms. Merkel’s cellphone was under surveillance.
Like earlier accusations of widespread surveillance in Germany, the disclosures in France were based on documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who has been charged in the United States with espionage and theft. His leaks of N.S.A. materials have pointed an uncomfortable spotlight on the scope of American spying at home and abroad. Mr. Snowden, who has been granted asylum in Russia, has been both denounced as a traitor and lauded as a hero for exposing the perils of government spying on private citizens in the digital age. If confirmed, that is “completely unacceptable,” said her spokesman, Steffen Seibert. The accusations followed Der Spiegel’s disclosures in June of widespread American surveillance of German communications, which struck an especially unsettling chord in a country scarred by the surveillance undertaken by Nazi and Communist governments in its past.
The statement from Mr. Seibert did not make clear what information the German government had received. Der Spiegel, a German newsmagazine, said on its Web site that it had made an inquiry to the government in the course of routine research, and said that inquiry had triggered the reaction. “Apparently, after an examination by the Federal Intelligence Service and the Federal Office for Security in Information Technology the government found sufficient plausible grounds to confront the U.S. government,” the magazine said. Mr. Seibert quoted the chancellor, who was raised in Communist East Germany, as telling Mr. Obama that “between close friends and partners, which the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America have been for decades, there should be no such surveillance of the communications of a head of government.”
In France, President François Hollande expressed “extreme reprobation” after the revelations of surveillance of French citizens. A White House official said Mr. Obama called Mr. Hollande on Monday and acknowledged that some of the reports had raised “legitimate questions for our friends and allies.” “That would be a grave breach of trust,” Mr. Seibert quoted her as saying. “Such practices must cease immediately.”
“The president and President Hollande discussed recent disclosures in the press — some of which have distorted our activities, and some of which raise legitimate questions for our friends and allies about how these capabilities are employed,” the White House said in a statement. “The president made clear that the United States has begun to review the way that we gather intelligence, so that we properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share. The two presidents agreed that we should continue to discuss these issues in diplomatic channels.” The government statement did not disclose the source or nature of its suspicions. But Der Spiegel said on its Web site that Ms. Merkel acted after it submitted a reporting inquiry to the government. “Apparently, after an examination by the Federal Intelligence Service and the Federal Office for Security in Information Technology, the government found sufficient plausible grounds to confront the U.S. government,” Der Spiegel wrote.
In late June, after reports in Der Spiegel that the United States had been spying on the European Union and that the N.S.A. had tapped its offices in Washington, Brussels and the United Nations, European politicians expressed anger and demanded an explanation. ARD, Germany’s premier state television channel, said without naming its sources that the supposed monitoring had targeted Ms. Merkel’s official cellphone, not her private one.
The White House statement issued on Wednesday emphasized that “the United States greatly values our close cooperation with Germany on a broad range of shared security challenges. As the President has said, the United States is reviewing the way that we gather intelligence to ensure that we properly balance the security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share.” About an hour after the news broke in Berlin, Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, appeared before news media in Washington, reporting the Obama-Merkel phone call and saying that “the president assured the chancellor that the United States is not monitoring, and will not monitor, the communications of the chancellor.”
The leaders agreed “to intensify further the cooperation between our intelligence services with the goal of protecting the security of both countries and of our partners, as well as protecting the privacy of our citizens,” it added. Mr. Obama pledged, as he had to Mr. Hollande, and to Mexico and Brazil, that intelligence operations were under scrutiny and that he was aware of the need to balance security against privacy.
The need to issue two statements in 48 hours over relations with close trans-Atlantic allies underscored the damage wrought by the documents Mr. Snowden says he collected while working for American intelligence agencies. The first disclosures from Der Spiegel in June almost soured the long-planned meeting between Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel in her capital, which the president visited as a candidate in 2008, delivering a speech before an estimated 200,000 people.
In a statement published on the Web site of the office of the director of national intelligence on Wednesday, Mr. Clapper raised objections to Le Monde’s reporting, saying recent articles “contain inaccurate and misleading information regarding U.S. foreign intelligence activities.” Last June, there were far fewer, carefully screened and invited Germans and Americans on hand to hear Mr. Obama at the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of Berlin’s unity and freedom since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
In the statement, first reported by The Associated Press late Tuesday, Mr. Clapper did not address additional allegations in Le Monde that the N.S.A. had monitored “French diplomatic interests” at the United Nations and in Washington. Shortly beforehand, Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel stood side by side in her chancellery, fielding questions about American surveillance of foreigners’ phone and e-mail traffic. Pressed personally by Ms. Merkel, the president said that terrorist threats in Germany were among those foiled by intelligence operations around the world, and Ms. Merkel concurred.
The newspaper reported that confidential information garnered by the N.S.A. from eavesdropping had played a “big role” in securing a vote at the United Nations on June 9, 2010, in favor of a resolution imposing sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. Senior intelligence officials have since made plain that cooperation between the United States and Germany in the field is essential to tracking what they view as potential terrorist threats.
If indeed American intelligence was listening to Ms. Merkel’s phone, or registering what calls she made and received, the trust between Berlin and Washington could be severely damaged. Since Der Spiegel’s original revelations in June, even senior officials in the German government have voiced more caution about cooperating with the United States, and wondered in private about the extent to which any information gleaned was shared with, say, business rivals of German companies. The German government said it had been assured that German laws were not broken, but the sensitivity of the issue – in a country with Nazi and Communist pasts – is hard to overstate. But if indeed American intelligence was listening to Ms. Merkel’s phone, or registering calls made and received, the trust between Berlin and Washington could be severely damaged. Since June, even senior officials in the German government have voiced more caution about cooperating with the United States, and wondered in private about the extent to which any information gleaned was shared with, say, business rivals of German companies.
In July, Mrs. Merkel, herself raised in Communist East Germany, signaled that she understood the importance – for all Western allies – of collecting intelligence. But she also emphasized that German or European laws should not be violated, and one needed to ensure that it was the rule of law and not of the strong that guided allied actions. The German government said it had been assured that German laws were not broken, but the issue remains politically fragile.
The alarm of Americans – and indeed their allies – after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was understandable, Ms. Merkel said then, but “the aim does not justify the means. Not everything which is technically doable, should be done. The question of relative means must always be answered: what relation is there between the danger and the means we choose, also and especially with regard to preserving the basic rights contained in our Basic law?” In July, Ms. Merkel joked with television interviewers asking about the affair, “I know of no case where I was listened to.”
Two senior Obama administration officials were visiting Berlin on Wednesday as part of the continuing exchange on intelligence and many other matters, in particular the trans-Atlantic trade negotiations that both the United States and the European Union portray as a pillar for future relations. The latest round of such talks was canceled earlier this month because the United States government shutdown prevented the relevant American officials from traveling to Europe. At a separate news conference that month, she signaled on a more serious note that she understood the importance, for all Western allies, of collecting intelligence. But she also emphasized that German or European laws should not be violated.

Jackie Calmes and Mark Landler contributed reporting from Washington, Melissa Eddy from Berlin and Dan Bilefsky from Paris.

The alarm of Americans — and, indeed, their allies — after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was understandable, Ms. Merkel said then, but “the aim does not justify the means. Not everything which is technically doable should be done. The question of relative means must always be answered: What relation is there between the danger and the means we choose, also and especially with regard to preserving the basic rights contained in our Basic Law?”

Melissa Eddy contributed reporting from Berlin, Dan Bilefsky from Paris, and Jackie Calmes from Washington.