German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s top foreign affairs and intelligence advisers were due to quiz officials in Washington yesterday over the activities of US spies in Germany, including allegations they tapped Merkel’s phone.
The visit is one of a series of trips by high-ranking German and EU officials to the US this week after revelations of the scale of the surveillance triggered outrage and shattered European trust in Washington.
Merkel wants the US to agree a “no spying” deal with Berlin and Paris by the end of the year, and to stop alleged espionage against two of Washington’s closest EU allies.
Photo: Reuters
“I can confirm that the two top aides from the chancellery are in Washington for talks today [Wednesday],” Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said. “As you see, we are in a process of intense contact with our US partners on the intelligence and political levels, and this process of contact and investigation will take more time. The talks aim to set up a new foundation for trust.”
The White House did not deny reports that the US’ National Security Agency (NSA) had monitored Merkel’s phone, but said no such surveillance was taking place now.
Yesterday’s visit comes a day after an EU team met the head of the NSA, Army General Keith Alexander, and US Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Later this week, the heads of Germany’s domestic and foreign intelligence agencies are also due to travel to Washington.
EU lawmaker Elmar Brok, a German national, told German daily Bild that his meeting with US officials produced no breakthroughs, but did generate good signals.
“Our talks showed that the Americans recognize the immense political damage caused by this affair and are open to more transparency,” Brok said.
The visit came a day after espionage chiefs turned the tables on the US’ European allies in the transatlantic spat, saying in many cases it was European agencies — not the NSA — that gathered data and shared it with the US.
They dismissed as “completely false” allegations that US spy agencies had swept up data on millions of phone calls and said European newspapers that had made those claims did not understand the data they were using to make the allegations.
The assertion came as a senior official said US President Barack Obama was considering banning US spies from tapping the phones of allied leaders.
Alexander and US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified to Congress that the reports were based on a misunderstanding of information passed to European newspapers.
“The assertions by reporters in France, Spain, Italy that NSA collected tens of millions of phone calls are completely false,” Alexander told the US House Committee on Intelligence. “To be perfectly clear, this is not information that we collected on European citizens.”
Hours earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that the electronic spying was carried out by the intelligence agencies of France and Spain outside their own borders, and sometimes in war zones, and then passed onto the NSA.
The claims, if true, could embarrass European governments, which have vehemently protested to the US about alleged overreaching and infringements of the privacy of their citizens by the NSA.
Feinstein backed up claims that the European media reports were wrong.
“This was not the United States collecting on France and Germany. This was France and Germany collecting and it had nothing to do with their citizens, it had to do with collecting in NATO areas of war, like Afghanistan,” she said.
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
A former television news host and six military personnel — active and retired — have been indicted on espionage charges, Kaohsiung prosecutors said yesterday. Lin Chen-you (林宸佑), a former CTi News host and YouTuber, last year allegedly made videos at the direction of a Chinese agent criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party’s recall campaign, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office told a news conference in Kaohsiung. He allegedly received 4,325 tether coins for the videos from an unidentified person surnamed Huang (黃), believed to be an agent of a hostile foreign power, they said. Lin, also known as Ma Te (馬德), has a show named
RSS