- Apr 24, 2013
- 1,200
German intelligence services eavesdropped on calls made by US secretary of state John Kerry and his predecessor Hillary Clinton, Der Spiegel has reported.
The German foreign intelligence agency, BND, tapped a satellite phone conversation Kerry made in 2013 and also recorded a conversation between Clinton and former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan a year earlier, according to the magazine.
The three officials were not directly targeted with phone calls collected by accident within the context of other operations, according to the report. In Clinton's case, the call reportedly took place on the same "frequency" as a terror suspect.
The tapping of Clinton's call was reported on Friday by German public broadcaster ARD and Munich daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Der Spiegel also cited a confidential 2009 BND document listing Nato member Turkey as a target for German intelligence gathering.
A spokesman for the US embassy in Berlin and the State Department in Washington declined to comment on the latest reports. A BND spokeswoman told Reuters Germany was not tapping the phones of allied countries and said the United States was not a target.
"Any accidental recordings are deleted immediately," she added.
A spokesman for the German government said it was up to the parliamentary control committee to deal with the accusations.
The Bild newspaper cited a US secret service employee as saying the phone calls of the secretary of state were encrypted just like those of the president so it would be "impressive if the BND was able to crack this encryption" and it was more likely Clinton's statements were intercepted on an unsecured line.
Earlier this month Der Spiegel reported that John Kerry's phone was tapped by Israeli spies during Middle East peace talks last year, who listened to his conversations with officials from Israel, Palestinian territories and Arab states.
The Israeli government then used the information obtained in negotiations to try to reach a settlement.
If true, the revelations would be embarrassing for the German government, which has spent months complaining to Washington about alleged American spy activity in Germany. Last year German media reports based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden prompted a sharp rebuke from Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was allegedly among the US intelligence agency's targets.
The dispute was revived in July when Germany's federal prosecutor arrested a 31-year old BND employee on suspicion of spying for the Americans.
