http://rt.com/news/180840-germany-spied-kerry-turkey/
Germany tapped John Kerry’s phone, spied on Turkey for years - report
Germany’s foreign intelligence agency eavesdropped at least one telephone conversation of US Secretary of State John Kerry and spied on NATO ally Turkey since 2009, Der Spiegel newspaper revealed on Saturday.
Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) picked up the phone call "by accident" in 2013, the weekly newspaper reported in a pre-publication citing unnamed sources. Kerry was discussing the Middle East tensions between Israelis, Palestinians and Arab states in a satellite link, according to Der Spiegel.
The new revelation comes after German media - Daily newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and regional public broadcasters NDR and WDR – reported on Friday that BND intercepted at least one phone call made by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The date of the call was not given and the media said that it was also picked up “by accident”.
The German media retrieved the information of the hacking from documents that were passed to the CIA by one of its moles inside the BND.
On Saturday Der Spiegel reported that Clinton’s call recorded was intercepted in 2012. Clinton was in talks with former UN chief Kofi Annan, who had just returned from negotiations in Syria and wanted to brief the former Secretary of State.
The NDR added on Friday that Clinton wasn’t the only one spied on as “apparently, phone calls by US politicians and from other friendly nations have been repeatedly recorded and submitted to the respective BND President as instructed”.
“The fact that the recording wasn't deleted immediately was called ‘idiocy’ by a member of the government in Berlin,” NDR reported.
In another leak, Der Spiegel also learned that BND has been spying on its NATO ally Turkey since 2009. No further details on the scale of surveillance were given. Sources confirmed the wiretapping to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, saying that it was essential for national security as there are many Turkish people living in Germany.
The government in Ankara says it intends to carefully investigate the Der Spiegel report.
"I am of the opinion that this needs to be taken seriously… Definitely, our government and foreign ministry will carry out the necessary research about the allegations in the magazine,” Mehmet Ali Sahin, deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), was quoted as saying by Agence France Presse.
According to Der Spiegel, the German government reviews its espionage program every four years but did not modify its priorities after the NSA scandal that deeply strained US-German relations last year.
The full version of the report will be published by Der Spiegel on Sunday.
In October, US whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked information that Washington had conducted intensive spying operations including tapping phones of at least 35 heads of state, including Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merkel called US President Barack Obama over the issue, saying that if the revelations were proven to be true it would be “completely unacceptable” and represent a “grave breach of trust,”Steffen Seibert, a German government spokesman, said at the time.
The issue was brought up again in July when two US agents were unmasked, suspected of acting as double agents within the state security apparatus, and passing secrets to US intelligence contacts. In response to the espionage scandal Germany promptly expelled the Berlin CIA chief.
The new reports may escalate the growing political tension between the two states, key partners in the NATO military alliance.
Last month in an interview to German broadcaster ZDF Germany’s Chancellor said that Washington and Berlin have different perceptions of the role of the intelligence service.
“For me it is a sign that we have fundamentally different conceptions of the work of the intelligence services.”
"I can't say in advance if [the measures we took] will have an effect, of course I hope something will change. But the important thing is to show how we view things... and it is not a co-operative partnership when such things take place."
http://en.ria.ru/military_news/20140817/192090328/German-Intelligence-Spied-on-Turkey.html
Berlin Confirms German Intelligence Spied on Turkey, Ankara to Investigate - Reports
Topic: US-Germany spy row
Turkey is reportedly among the countries watched closely by the German foreign intelligence (BND).
© Flickr/ Andreas Levers
16:20 17/08/2014
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BERLIN, August 17 (RIA Novosti) - German intelligence has been spying on one of the NATO countries, Turkey, for many years, government sources told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper.
The source said that Turkey cannot be compared to other European partners of Germany, such as France or the UK, because the events in Turkey have a direct impact on Germany’s internal security because many Turks reside there.
Turkey is among the countries watched closely by the German foreign intelligence (BND), which uses there a whole variety of means of surveillance, including wiretapping, the newspaper wrote.
On Saturday, reports appeared saying that BND had been spying on Turkey since 2009, and intercepted telephone conversations between US Secretary of State John Kerry and his predecessor Hillary Clinton. The conversations were recorded “by accident,” Der Spiegel magazine reported.
Ankara, in turn, intends to carefully investigate the Der Spiegel report, Agence France-Presse reported Sunday.
"I am off the opinion that this needs to be taken seriously… Definitely, our government and foreign ministry will carry out the necessary research about the allegations in the magazine,” Deputy Chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Mehmet Ali Sahin said.
He stressed the need to approach the story "cautiously," since “Der Spiegel is not a magazine that sees favorable dreams about Turkey” and about Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the elected president.
In July, two spy scandals involving the US intelligence agencies broke out in Germany. First, the detention of a BND agent was reported on July 2. After that, another German citizen was reported to have been allegedly spying in favor of the US intelligence agencies, the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung said on July 9. The suspect was an employee of the German Defense Ministry, the newspaper reported.
In light of the spy scandal, Office of the Federal Chancellor of Germany limited cooperation of the national foreign intelligence and the Defense Ministry with the US partners. In particular, the German government ordered a representative of the US intelligence services at the US Embassy in Germany to leave the country.
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