A week ago, I mentioned a story I had read in the German press about Germany’s arrest of an employee of its foreign intelligence agency on charges of spying for the United States. It wasn’t, and hasn’t been, big news in the United States, what with the “children’s crusade” down south and all, but it has been in Germany. Especially once the Germans announced they were investigating a second German government employee on suspicion of spying for the US. Last Thursday Germany “asked” the United States’ top CIA official to leave the country. That is normally the kind of thing you do to the Russians, not an ally.
Needless to say, this is a big deal for Germany. Chancellor Merkel first spoke about it when she was in China recently, even though it obviously had nothing to do with her trip there. The Chicago Tribune reported that, on Saturday, Chancellor Merkel said:
“It is not how about how angry I was. For me it is a sign that we [i.e., Germany and the U.S.] have fundamentally different conceptions of the work of the intelligence services.”
“We are not living in the Cold War anymore and are exposed to different threats. We should concentrate on what is essential.”*
Josh Earnest, President Obama’s new Press Secretary, tried to tell Chancellor Merkel to cool it:
“[W]hen differences arise, we’re committed to resolving those differences through the established channels. … We don’t believe that trying to resolve them through the media is appropriate.”*
Clearly, however, given Chancellor Merkel’s comments on Saturday, Germany doesn’t think that “established channels” are working.
Eli Lake at the Daily Beast explains why he thinks it makes sense for the US to spy on Germany. Still, it was only last fall that Chancellor Merkel discovered the US was listening in on her private cellphone calls.** Spying and governmental monitoring of people’s private phone calls, etc., are a sensitive issue in Germany because of the Nazis and Stasi periods in German history.
Given that, and given all of the problems around the world where we need Germany’s help, I find it a little hard to believe that the United States would be risking our relationship with the Germans and Chancellor Merkel by this spying. It seems dumb. Clearly, the Administration needs to get its act together. If leadership at the CIA, the State Department, and the White House knew about spying, they need to get smarter. If they didn’t know, it’s even worse, and the Administration needs to figure out how it can know – and control – what the CIA, et al, are doing.
The bottom line is, as German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said last week: “[This] is just so stupid, and so much stupidity makes you just want to cry.”
---------
* “Merkel: U.S., Germany at odds over intel methods,” Chicago Tribune, July 13, 2014. (It was a short, seven-paragraph story on the far-inside pages.
** Why should Chancellor Merkel be any different than anybody else? Lots of people in the US have traded in their answering machines, figuring the NSA can just pass on any messages it thinks are important. Just kidding. I think.
Comments