CIA recruits German intelligence officer - causes widening rift with Berlin

[David Guyatt]

Things are going from bad to worse, it seems.

White House on the back foot over CIA role in German spying scandal

Germany already taking counter-measures as CIA maintains silence over alleged recruitment of German intelligence official

• Dan Roberts in Washington, Spencer Ackerman Ackerman in New York and Philip Oltermann in Berlin
  
• theguardian.com, Monday 7 July 2014 22.50 BST
  
• Jump to comments (235)
  

One member of Angela's Merkel's party has suggested that US agents should be expelled from Germany. Photograph: Andy Wong/AP

The White House was forced to defend its increasingly fraught relationship with Berlin on Monday as the Central Intelligence Agency maintained a conspicuous silence about new allegations linking it to a spying scandal involving a German intelligence official.
Reuters quoted two US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, who told the news agency that the CIA was involved in the alleged recruitment of the official, a 31-year-old employee of the German intelligence agency (BND).
The official was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of having sold secret documents to a contact at the CIA.
The controversy has threatened to upend an uneasy, monthslong diplomatic rapproachement between the two allies after chancellor Angela Merkel revealed the National Security Agency had monitored her cellphone, causing widespread outrage in Germany and even on Capitol Hill. President Barack Obama was prompted to pledge an end to spying on the leaders of allied nations.
But a longstanding reluctance to discuss intelligence matters in public left the administration scrambling to respond.

The White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said he could not comment on the arrest of a suspected US spy because it did not want to interfere in "a pending German law enforcement investigation" and because "it obviously goes to, purportedly, a direct intelligence matter as relates to the United States."
But Earnest appeared to acknowledge that the suspicion alone may have already caused damage to its relationship with Berlin and sought to reassure its ally about the longer term relationship between the two countries.
"The relationship the US has with Germany is incredibly important," said Earnest, insisting it was a partnership "built on respect" and "decades of cooperation and shared values".
"All those things are high priorities not just of this administration but of this country, so we are going to work with the Germans to resolve this situation appropriately," he said during the White House's daily briefing with reporters.
Germany was reported on Monday to be considering stepping up its counter-espionage efforts in light of the affair. Measures being considered in response to the scandal include monitoring the intelligence activities of nominal Nato allies such as the US, Britain and France, as well as expelling US agents from Germany.
According to a report in Bild, the interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, has emphasised the urgent need for a "360-degree vision" of the foreign secret agency's activities. The newspaper claims to have obtained an internal document which outlines "concrete counter-measures", moving away from a policy of not spying on Nato allies.
Asked about the new policy, a spokesperson at the German interior ministry did not deny the reports and said "an efficient and effective counter-intelligence against all sides is important, necessary, and has to be better organised than it has until now."
The BND staffer, a technical support worker employed in a unit dealing mainly with the protection of German soldiers abroad, is alleged to have established contact with the American secret service by contacting the US embassy. Rather than report the contact to their allied German counterparts, the CIA is reported to have paid the agent €25,000 ($34,000) for 218 documents classified as confidential or top secret.
In a press conference on Monday, government officials declined to comment on the affair, but a number of high-ranking politicians and officials have expressed their outrage, with one member of Merkel's party suggesting that US agents should be expelled from Germany.
"If it emerges that the BND employee was really directed by American agents on German soil, then it would be hardly comprehensible if US employees could continue to do harm over here," Karl-Georg Wellmann of the CDU told Spiegel Online.
The German president, Joachim Gauck, said if the allegations turn out to be true, it would amount to "gambling with friendships and close alliances".
"Then it truly needs to be said: enough is enough," he added.
Merkel has been more guarded in her reaction, telling a news conferenceduring her current trip to China: "If the reports are correct it would be a serious case."
In Washington, the administration's discomfort was evident. Earnest was even forced to clarify that his brief comments on the subject should not be taken as a denial of US involvement in the affair. Initially asked whether Merkel was right to warn that the allegations, if proven, would be a "clear contradiction of trust between allies", Earnest replied: "That's obviously a big 'if'."
But when asked whether this was effectively a qualified denial of the claim, the US spokesman was forced to backpedal and make clear the White House was saying nothing to dispute the allegations at the this stage.
"That's not what it was," clarified Earnest. "It was an observation about a question which was predicated entirely on a hypothetical not that it was an unreasonable question."
The CIA refused to make any comment about its alleged involvement in the latest spy-fueled rift between the US and Germany. A spokesman, Ryan Trapani, would not even discuss whether agency director John Brennan had, as Reuters reported, requested to brief Congress on the subject.
Notably, Trapani did not deny a CIA role.
Capitol Hill sources were unaware Monday of any briefing Brennan had offered to give legislators often a method to defuse congressional tension or outrage ahead of a burgeoning scandal, particularly by the spy agencies.
Any such briefing would come at a delicate time for Brennan. The director has all but burned his bridges with the Senate intelligence committee a little more than a year into his tenure, thanks to ongoing acrimony over a congressional inquiry into the CIA's post-9/11 torture apparatus. The Obama administration is currently awaiting partial declassification of the panel's years-long inquiry, following a censorship process led by the CIA itself.
Another difficulty for Brennan with Congress is the opposition the panel's chairwoman, Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein, has voiced concerning spying on the US's ostensible partner in Berlin. Last year, Feinstein thundered against the NSA monitoring Merkel, even as the senator remained a staunch supporter of most other NSA surveillance, to include its domestic operations.

[David Guyatt]

And this is an interesting change in policy. Germany is now going to surveil its allies:

Germany plans counter-espionage against Britain and US

Germany announces it is planning "surveillance" of intelligence operations of allies including Britain, US and France after American "double agent" scandal uncovered

Chancellor Angela Merkel interrupted a current trade visit to China on Monday to describe the scandal as a "very serious development" Photo: Getty








By Tony Paterson, Berlin

3:41PM BST 07 Jul 2014


Chancellor Angela Merkel's government is planning surveillance of British and American intelligence gathering in Germany for the first time since 1945 in response to an embarrassing US-German "double agent" scandal which has damaged relations between Berlin and Washington.

The unprecedented change to Berlin's counter-espionage policy was announced by Mrs Merkel's Interior Minister, Thomas de Maiziere. He told the mass-circulation Bild newspaper that Berlin wanted "360 degree surveillance" of all intelligence gathering operations in Germany.

His announcement came as several MPs in Mrs Merkel's government demanded the expulsion of the American agents in Germany who last week were found to have used the services of a German "double agent" to obtain secret German intelligence information in return for cash payments.

Hans Peter Uhl, a leading conservative MP told Spiegel online: " It goes without saying that the [US] intelligence official responsible should leave Germany."

The intelligence services of the United States, Britain and France had hitherto been regarded as "friendly" to Germany. Their diplomatic and information gathering activities were exempted from surveillance by Berlin's equivalent of MI5 the Bundesnachrichtendienst or BND.

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But Mr de Maiziere told Bild that he was now not ruling out permanent German counter espionage surveillance of US, British and French intelligence operations His remarks were echoed by Stephan Mayer, a domestic security spokesman for Mrs Merkel's ruling Christian Democrats: "We must focus more strongly on our so-called allies," he said.
The plans for "friendly" power surveillance follow last week's unmasking and arrest of a 31- year-old BND agent who sold top secret German intelligence documents to US officials in return for payments of £25,000.
The double agent is reported to have simply emailed Berlin's American embassy and asked whether officials were interested in "cooperation". He subsequently downloaded at least 300 secret documents on to USB sticks which he handed to his American spymasters at secret location in Austria.

Chancellor Merkel interrupted a current trade visit to China on Monday to describe the scandal as a "very serious development". She added: "It is a clear contradiction of the notion of trustworthy cooperation". German politicians have been shocked that the Americans not only failed to report the "double agent" but effectively recruited him.
The new German counter-espionage measures would almost certainly result in the monitoring of "listening posts", which both the American National Security Agency (NSA) and its British equivalent, GCHQ run from the roofs of their respective Berlin embassies. Their existence was revealed at the height of another US-German spying scandal last year in which the NSA was found to have bugged Mrs Merkel's mobile phone.
Since the end of the Second World War, Germany has kept a so-called gentlemen's agreement on surveillance with the three western Allied powers of Britain, the United States and France which occupied then West Germany after 1945.
The established practice was that friendly nations should not spy on each other but rather cooperate and exchange information. However the practice may now be scrapped.
"When a friendly intelligence service breaks these rules, it commits the most serious breach of trust known to the world of espionage," commented Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

[Peter Lemkin]

Germany has the technical skills and money needed; but I wonder if they have the will to stop following the USA like a lost puppy. It certainly would be a 'game-changer' in World Politics/alliances if carried to its logical conclusions...and could even be the first crack in NATO....

Until I see real action, I'll assume this is just bluster to hide their embarrassment.

[Magda Hassan]

Well that would be a move in the right direction. But I'm not sure Germany is up to it either. Mind you France is pretty pissed off with the US right now too. It would be a good time to leave NATO and do their own thing.

[David Guyatt]

Yep, France and Germany are pretty damned pissed off with Uncle, and in view of the recent trade deals done in currencies other than the US dollar - including the Russia-China gas deal which could have really lasting impacts on Europe as a whole - I do see a shift (albeit it tentative and slow) in relationships taking place. For me they key will be the loss of power of the dollar. If and when that happens, it will sooner or later be followed by a weakening of NATO and the US will become slowly more isolated (as will the UK if it remains Uncle's trained butler and chauffer).

Might be wishful thinking, I suppose...

[Peter Lemkin]

Second German government worker suspected of spying for US

Accused reportedly works 'in military', as Berlin still reels after intelligence agent was accused of working for CIA last week

• Philip Oltermann
  
• The Guardian, Wednesday 9 July 2014 18.20 BST
  

The US embassy in Berlin. Relations between Berlin and Washington are under strain after a second German national is investigated on suspicion of spying for the CIA. Photograph: Adam Berry/Getty Images

German authorities are investigating the second case of a government employee suspected of spying on confidential government affairs for US secret services within a week.
Public prosecutors confirmed that the home and office of a defence ministry employee in the greater Berlin area had been searched on Wednesday morning.
They told the Guardian that a search had been conducted "under suspicion of secret agent activity" and that evidence including computers and several data storage devices had been seized for analysis. The federal prosecutor's office confirmed that no arrest had yet been made.
According to Die Welt newspaper, the staffer being investigated is a soldier who had caught the attention of the German military counter-intelligence service after establishing regular contact with people thought to be working for a US secret agency.
The news came just days after a member of the German intelligence agency BND confessed to having passed more than 200 confidential files to a contact at the CIA.
The new case is not thought to be directly related to that of the BND staffer. However, one government insider familiar with the case told Süddeutsche Zeitung that the new case being investigated was "more serious" than that of the BND spy, in which the sold documents are thought to have been of limited value.
Last week's spying scandal gave a detailed picture of how US security agencies manage to recruit foreign agents. The staffer, employed at the German intelligence agency's department for foreign deployments, had managed to establish contact with the CIA after emailing the US embassy in Germany.
At a meeting in a Salzburg hotel, the CIA then equipped the BND employee with a specially encrypted laptop, which allowed the agent to keep in touch with the US secret service on a weekly basis: every time he opened a programme disguised as a weather app, a direct connection was established with a contact in America.
The BND employee, who is said to have a physical disability and a speech impediment, received around 25,000 euros (£20,000) for 218 confidential documents, though sources within the intelligence service told German newspapers that the 31-year-old had been motivated less by financial interests than by a craving for recognition.
After the CIA had apparently lost interest in him, he had offered his services to the Russian general consulate in Munich, inadvertently catching the attention of the German counter-espionage agency.
The Social Democratic party has reacted to the succession of scandals by urging the US to stop all of its espionage activity within Germany. Thomas Oppermann, the head of the SPD parliamentary group, told Der Spiegel: "It is a degrading spectacle to watch US spies being exposed on a weekly basis." The politician warned that trust in America's alliance with Germany could "collapse completely".
US officials have been trying to limit the diplomatic fallout, with the CIA's head, John Brennan, reportedly calling Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, in the wake of the latest spying scandal.
Over the course of the last week, the US ambassador in Berlin has twice had to visit the German foreign ministry to explain his position on the matter. After being called in for an initial meeting last Friday, John Emerson returned to the ministry for a second meeting with a senior official on Wednesday.
In a speech on Tuesday, Emerson acknowledged that "we must acknowledge that the German-American relationship is now undergoing a difficult challenge".

[David Guyatt]

Somewhere I read there were as many as six?

Why am I not surprised. Well over a decade ago I was told by a former officer in the Army Intelligence Corp that members of the unit were regularly and openly recruited by the CIA - and no one did anything about it. I have to admit I was astonished about this. Even if this was Blighty's supposed closest ally, it is still a foreign power, and allowing members of the armed forces to become CIA assets is fundamentally espionage and punishable under the law.

In my view, this will have been duplicated in every NATO member. And that the governments know it. Germany is now showing its complete disenchantment with the US.

[Magda Hassan]

Germany expels U.S. intelligence station chief over spy dispute

By Stephanie Kirchner July 10 at 10:03 AM
Government spokesman Steffen Seibert issued this statement Thursday:

The representative of the US intelligence services at the Embassy of the United States of America has been requested to leave Germany.
The request was made against the backdrop of the ongoing investigations of the Federal Prosecutor General as well as the questions pending for months about the activities of the US intelligence services in Germany, for which the Lower House of Parliament has also established a parliamentary inquiry committee.
The Federal Government takes these incidents very seriously.
It remains vital for Germany, in the interest of the security of its citizens and its forces abroad, to cooperate closely and trustfully with western partners, in particular with the USA.
To do so, however, mutual trust and openness are necessary. The Federal Government continues to be ready for this and expects the same from its closest partners.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worl...y-dispute/