Germany expels CIA official in US spy row; vows to conduct counter espionage and spy back at the US

[Exarch]

wow, looks like things are heating up in the spying incident between the US and Deutschland, especially with the discovery of not one, but two CIA spies in Germany's security and intel establishments.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The German government has ordered the expulsion of a CIA official in Berlin in response to two cases of alleged spying by the US.The official is said to have acted as a CIA contact at the US embassy, reports say, in a scandal that has infuriated German politicians.
A German intelligence official was arrested last week on suspicion of spying.
An inquiry has also begun into a German defence ministry worker, reports said.
"The representative of the US intelligence services at the embassy of the United States of America has been told to leave Germany," government spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

Analysis by Rajini Vaidyanathan, BBC News, Washington
Earlier this week the White House described the partnership between the US and Germany as one built on respect. But no-one likes to be spied on, especially when it's your friend doing the spying.
This latest episode is yet another reminder of how American surveillance programmes are causing friction with allies. It's angered many in Germany, where the issue of snooping is historically a very sensitive one, and many are asking: "What? Again?"
It wasn't too long ago, after all, that we heard the National Security Agency was spying on Chancellor Merkel's mobile phone. After a review into the surveillance programmes, President Obama promised the US wouldn't spy on its friends overseas.
But despite requests to be included, Germany isn't part of a non-spying pact the US has with Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. The White House will want to do all it can to repair any trust issues over this latest incident, so they can work together in other areas - for example, it needs German support for tougher sanctions against Russia over Ukraine.

Analysis by Stephen Evans, BBC News, Berlin
The request by the German government follows increasing frustration that it has failed to get US assurances that spying would cease on German citizens from Chancellor Merkel down.
She was shocked to learn that her mobile phone conversations were secretly being monitored while President Obama was greeting her as a friend on his visit to Berlin.
Chancellor Merkel has tried to maintain a balance between condemning America's actions but also maintaining cordial relations. Each revelation has made that balance harder to achieve.
This matters because America needs German help on a range of issues from trying to get the world economy out of its difficulties, to finding united Western action on Russia, to dealing with the revelations emanating from Edward Snowden who is currently in Moscow but whom some German lawmakers want to invite to Berlin.

The chairman of the Bundestag (parliament) committee overseeing the secret service said the action had been taken because of America's spying on German politicians and its failure to co-operate and provide adequate responses.
The US has not denied allegations that a German intelligence agency employee arrested last week was passing secret documents to the US National Security Agency (NSA).
However, the latest reports that an employee within the defence ministry was also spying for the US were considered more serious. Although no arrest was made, searches were carried out on Wednesday at the ministry and elsewhere.

A committee at the German parliament (in background) is investigating US spying allegations
The US and Germany have been close allies for decades but relations were hit last year when it emerged that Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone had been monitored by the NSA.
The White House declined to comment on the matter but said the security and intelligence relationship with Germany "is a very important one and keeps Germans and Americans safe".
"It is essential that co-operation continue in all areas and we will continue to be in touch with the German government in appropriate channels," spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

Timeline: Germany spy scandalOctober 2013: German Chancellor Angela Merkel calls US President Barack Obama after revelations that the US may have spied on her mobile phone
June 2014: Germany announces an investigation into the claims
4 July 2014: A suspected US spy said to be working for the German intelligence agency is arrested
9 July 2014: A second case emerges as searches are carried out at the defence ministry
10 July 2014: German government orders expulsion of CIA official

On Thursday, Mrs Merkel said spying on allies was a "waste of energy".
"We have so many problems, we should focus on the important things," she said.
Claims that the US bugged Angela Merkel's phone came from intelligence leaker Edward Snowden
"In the Cold War maybe there was general mistrust. Today we are living in the 21st Century. Today there are completely new threats."
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the information that the US appeared to have gained from the suspected espionage was "laughable" but the political damage was "disproportionate and serious".
The scale of the US agency's surveillance was revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who fled the US and is now a fugitive in Russia.
The German intelligence official arrested last week was alleged to have been trying to gather details about a German parliamentary committee investigating the NSA spying scandal.
When Mrs Merkel visited the White House in May, President Barack Obama sought to assure her and the German people they were not subject to "continual surveillance" by the US.
He said "complicated issues" were involved but he anticipated that the matter would be resolved to the satisfaction of both countries.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28243933

and it looks like the Germans are clamouring and fighting back against US spying against Germans:

Chancellor Angela Merkel's government is planning to scrap a no-spy agreement Germany has held with Britain and the United States since 1945 in response to an embarrassing US-German intelligence service scandal which has deeply soured relations between Berlin and Washington.

The unprecedented change to Berlin's counter-espionage policy was announced by Ms Merkel’s Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière. He said that Berlin wanted "360-degree surveillance" of all intelligence-gathering operations in Germany.

...

Mr de Maizière 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 Ms Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrats. “We must focus more strongly on our so-called allies,” he said.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...l-9590645.html

As far as foreign policy goes, this is embarassing for the US, specially in the wake of Snowden's revelations and NSA activities of recording your porn habits, but having said all that, it is refreshing to see the Germans finally being forced to be a little more outspoken vis-a-vis US espionage against Germans.

Kinda puts into perspective the practice of NSA industrial espionage against German firms; the bigger question is why is Germany being treated like an adversarial nation when the US and Germany are said to be close allies?

[pajomife]

The good old cold war vices.Don't forget,Merkel born in the wrong side of wall.

[mrmouth]

The good old cold war vices.Don't forget,Merkel born in the wrong side of wall.

Exactly. The whole spying thing is an issue that young Germans have run with (like young people everywhere, while they post their lives on social media), despite never experiencing it. Merkel cannot ignore it, politically.


The issue for the US is that they remain entirely concerned about the well documented history of terrorists using countries like Germany (specifically, Germany) as a very secure base of planning. That appears to continue and the worries about flights out of Europe just this week shows that it is in fact only becoming more of a worry, with Syria being what it is.

The problem is that the US used the intelligence inroads they made to eavesdrop on Merkel when the EU was teetering on the brink of collapse. She wasn't being very vocal on whether the German dominated EU ATM was going to spit out money to save countries from default. So yeah, the US wanted to know what the hell she was going to do, for obvious reasons. That level of 'spying' is nothing new. For people to package it into a new narrative shows what kind kneejerk, naive world we are living in today. Other heads of intelligence around the world have said as much. They just haven't been exposed/targeted by the media machine.


Certain European laws about privacy, the very issue at the heart of the matter, is what makes these countries attractive to people who have no problem blowing themselves up and murdering civilians. Nobody has made the proper argument that in this electronic age you cannot have it both ways. And the point at which we either rejected the digital age, or accepted it, long sailed.

The UK is acting on that, this week, and getting plenty of hate for doing so. They are indeed rolling back a little bit of privacy to keep people alive.

[justicar5]

The UK is acting on that, this week, and getting plenty of hate for doing so. They are indeed rolling back a little bit of privacy to keep people alive.

No, they are eroding democracy to pave the way for the neo-liberal agenda, simple as, you can bet their corporate and finance sector overlords will see this data. GET A WARRANT if you want to do ANY covert observation, no secret trials, no secret evidence, full legal accountability for the security services, all evidence to be given in open court, massive payouts for whistle blowers, prosecute police forces that use kettling against protesters for kidnap and false imprisonment. Crush the control apparatus of GCHQ and the riot police.

It should be a legal requirement that any MP voting for increased invasion of privacy has an always on webcam and microphone surgically bolted to their foreheads, after all, nothing to hide, nothing to fear right?

[Lord of Nihilism]

This is good news and a step in the right direction. American influence in Germany has been mostly negative, and these recent revelations regarding the CIA bribing/paying off German intelligence agents cements that fact. All Germany needs to do now is evict all US troops from the country and maybe the US will respect Germany instead of treating it like an enemy.

[Dromikaites]

This is good news and a step in the right direction. American influence in Germany has been mostly negative, and these recent revelations regarding the CIA bribing/paying off German intelligence agents cements that fact.

Yeah, that's why the Federal Republic of Germany was a Third World country unlike the worker's paradise German Democrat Republic.

All Germany needs to do now is evict all US troops from the country and maybe the US will respect Germany instead of treating it like an enemy.

I happened to visit Ulm, Germany, one year after the Americans have closed their base there.

Since I was coming from an ex-communist country the communist propaganda was still fresh in my brain. So I was shocked to see how sad the Germans were to see the Americans go. To me it looked strange to regret the departure of the "occupation troops". So I asked why and they told me that a lot of people's jobs depended on that base.

Two or three years later I was at a party in Worms, organized by the Germans for their American friends who were leaving because another base near that city was closing.

In both cases the bases were closed because the Americans have decided to cut the budget, not because the Germans have asked them to leave. The Germans would have loved them to stay.

Besides, as conon943 pointed out, Poland is eagerly awaiting to see those Americans coming to their country. And so are the Romanians.

As for the spying scandal itself, what got the Germans ticked off was not that the Americans were spying on them (that happens both ways), but that they have recruited a 31 years old German intelligence officer.

And actually even that incident would have been handled behind the scenes if the tabloids would not have got wind of the affair.

The German intelligence community is fragmented and quite often the German intelligence agencies are fighting turf wars, occasionally using the tabloids to settle scores.

The German government had to preempt the leak by going public and looking tough but that is not how such issues are normally handled. Not even among enemies.

Case in point: in 1973, prior to his state visit to the USA, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu gave an interview to Business Week. He was interviewed by Business Week deputy editor-in-chief, an American gentleman called John Pearson. A former US academic before joining Business Week, John Pearson was actually...Ion Agheana, a Romanian national operating deep undercover in America since the late '50s.

When the head of the Romanian espionage, general Pacepa, defected to the US 5 years later, John Pearson was exposed for what he really was. However the FBI handled the issue very discretely and Mr. Pearson/Agheana continued to live a happy life in the US (after of course spilling the beans to the feds). His true identity became known only some 15 years after his death.

The relations between the US and communist Romania were nowhere near the current relations between Germany and the US. But the John Pearson dossier was nevertheless handled discretely because that is how espionage affairs are normally dealt with.

Therefore I don't predict a happy career to that German intelligence officer who leaked the case to the press and forced Merkel's government to adopt a tough stance.

[Roma_Victrix]

Therefore I don't predict a happy career to that German intelligence officer who leaked the case to the press and forced Merkel's government to adopt a tough stance.

It's so refreshing when an adult enters the conversation. We'll said, and thank you Dromikaites, for cutting through the BS like a hot knife through butter as usual.

[Mangalore]

...

As for the spying scandal itself, what got the Germans ticked off was not that the Americans were spying on them (that happens both ways), but that they have recruited a 31 years old German intelligence officer.

And actually even that incident would have been handled behind the scenes if the tabloids would not have got wind of the affair.

The German intelligence community is fragmented and quite often the German intelligence agencies are fighting turf wars, occasionally using the tabloids to settle scores.

The German government had to preempt the leak by going public and looking tough but that is not how such issues are normally handled. Not even among enemies.

....

Actually the reason the German government did this was also because there is a growing frustration among the politicians about a lack of acknowledgement by the US government that there is a problem to resolve. The MPs aren't happy for a good while now and the creation of an investigation by the German parliament was already a sign that the MPs will run away from the government on the issue so it's not solely a populist issue but also a political one as not just the population but most lower rank politicians expect more assertiveness by the German government. The same for an official investigation by the federal attorney. It shows the government cannot keep this issue contained and under wraps even if they wanted to.

Politely throwing the CIA official out and instructing the German secret services to throttle down cooperation solely to security concerns is the equivalent of dipping a dog's nose in his own to point out they don't like it.


It's not about the spying per se but about the US ignoring the German interests and sensibilities. These issues have been simmering for months in germany.

While I don't think the escalation will go any further since this is already a pretty hefty diplomatic affront I do believe that the German policy on internal security does change and won't be as accomodating to American secret services anymore. More precisely I think there is a sense taking hold that Germany has to improve its intelligence security against everyone including allies when it believed a higher agreement of neutrality before. Possibly there may be in fact a certain level of cultural friction here in that German politicians and secret service staff sincerely believed unofficial agreements meant something different than the Americans do.

From the phrasing, behaviour and action I would dare say it is quite consistent with politicians being sincerely pissed. You wouldn't get such candid opinions out of them and it wouldn't reach tabloids in this manner otherwise.


There is a world of difference between tabloids finding a scandal and politicians being willing to comment it and even take public action. The investigations stacking up alone indicates a shift of German services monitoring their security more closely.

[wilpuri]

Yeah, that's why the Federal Republic of Germany was a Third World country unlike the worker's paradise German Democrat Republic.

GDR was economically the soundest member of the Warsaw Pact countries. The GDR was relatively successful not because of socialism but thanks to German productivity and industriousness. Same goes for West Germany. Germans, man.

[Condottiere 40K]

Probably will then need to pay off more Germans to keep tabs on Merkel.

[Admiral Piett]

She needs to stop acting like their country doesn't do the same thing.

[Gaidin]

She needs to stop acting like their country doesn't do the same thing.

She has been acting like her country does the same thing. Note all the damn revelations from a damn leak and she doesn't retaliate past looking pissed for political sake until her country actually catches a spy(not a handler, mind you) on there own? Good on her.

And holy crap, the US turning one of their intelligence analysts. Don't act like they wouldn't pay a man's weight in gold for the same thing Exarch. Pure hypocrite if you think they wouldn't. Or naivete. I'll let you pick.

[irontaino]

Doesn't declaring your intent to spy kind of defeat the purpose of spying?

[Pielstick]

Doesn't declaring your intent to spy kind of defeat the purpose of spying?

Yes it does. However, it plays well for the domestic politics which is what much of this is really all about.

[Vanoi]

I am finding it funny Germany is basically claiming it didn't spy on Britain or the US before they decided to do it now.

[AqD]

I am finding it funny Germany is basically claiming it didn't spy on Britain or the US before they decided to do it now.

Why would they even spy on US?

[ShockBlast]

Why would they even spy on US?

Of course the Germans are spying on the Americans, the German Americans are the most numerous ethnic group in USA, Germany has a huge base of recrutement.

The trick is to prove it.

I don`t think the Germans were so careless as to use their agents on political chatter, they are doing industrial espionage there.

[AqD]

I don`t think the Germans were so careless as to use their agents on political chatter, they are doing industrial espionage there.

Industrial espionage by government? Which of their government departments is authorized to do that? I know none of ours is.

[Symphony]

Why would they even spy on US?

Allies spy on each other all the time, and always have.

[Gaidin]

Allies spy on each other all the time, and always have.

And allies react to spying all the time, and always have. Politics. Blade. Double-edged.