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German Report: Obama Aware of Merkel Spying Since 2010

First time accepted submitter pupsocket writes "Yesterday the German newspaper of record, Frankfurter Allgemeine, reported that the President told German Chancellor Merkel that he would have stopped the tap on her phone had he known about it. Today, another German paper, Bild am Sonntag, quoted U.S. Intelligence sources that the President had been briefed in 2010. 'Obama did not halt the operation but rather let it continue,' the newspaper quoted a high-ranking NSA official as saying."

8 of 280 comments (clear)

  1. The Pervert! by flyneye · · Score: 5, Funny

    Quietly spying on the womans cell since 2010, no one else knew but a few NSA lackeys. Even they couldn't see him locked in a dark office, alone, with no sound but the repetitive monkey slapping between his legs and the faint conversation of Merkel in his earpiece. " MMMmmm, I got your cigar Biatch! Daddy's gonna Farfergnugen your strudel, Heidi".....

    It's a Democrat thing, ask Bill or John or Lyndon.

    --
    *Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
  2. what a joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    IRS targeting conservatives? Nobody at the White House knew.

    Healthcare enrollment website has massive problems? The President didn't know.

    NSA tapping German Prime Minister's phone? The President didn't know.

    At some point, the American people have to start wondering if the President knows anything.

  3. About what by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How do you know the US is the good guy. Unmanned drones killing women and children in the middle east, psychotic banks out of control, eugenics. You sound so emboldened and brash about ur choices considering ur country is becoming completely satanic..

    And bear in mind that China and Russia already have an alliance to protect themselves from u. If the EU (inclusing France and UK) joined that - both have nukes - your potential list of allies will have dwindled and you could be alienated internationally.

    However, I think u just don't get it. It's not about u or me. It's all a big charade by rich people globally, to hide pillaging from their own countries. And American people seem to be the biggest suckers of them all in this regard.

  4. Re:Credibility gap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you like your doctor you can keep him.
    If you like your insurance you can keep it.
    My administration will be the most transparent ever.
    This is the moment when the rise of the oceans began to stop video
    Gitmo will close by the end of my first term.
    The average family of four will see their health insurance lower by $2500 a year.
    If we pass my stimilus the unemployment won't go over 8%.
    The US is the country that invented the automobile video
    What you are not seeing with the NSA spying is abuses of their abilities.
    via Clapper... The NSA is not spying on millions of Americans
    I did call the attack on Benghazi a terrorist attack right from the beginning.

    I could go on all day. Its actually harder to find things he say that are truthful then lies. Not sure why it takes what has been going on recently for everyone else to start seeing this.

  5. Wutend by Phoenix666 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've been reading Der Spiegel for 25 years. I've never seen them get angry about anything, not even when Russia shut off the natural gas pipeline running to Central Europe to mess with the Ukraine and whacked Germany in the process. They're white hot mad about this. The German Interior Minister is talking about bringing the NSA to justice. The SPD is pushing to drop trade talks with the US unless Washington does something real about it. Meanwhile, Obama wants to talk about immigration and fly off to visit schools in Crown Heights rather than deal with this directly. Caught in lie after lie after lie about the NSA he owns this now, and he owns the consequences for the entire world if he doesn't deal with it.

    Consider, fellow Americans, what goes if Germany goes. That's NATO and the EU. That's all our happy European client states cheerily playing along when Washington wants to force the President of Bolivia's plane down and search it. That's an economy bigger than ours, a continent whose population is much bigger than ours, suddenly not playing ball with us any more and pushing back hard on everything. That's a profoundly different world for American geopolitical power that will have material consequences for every American.

    This, the government shutdown, the near default, the promise of more of the same in February, it all has everyone who has been on our team the last 50 years looking for the exits at once. The American government has proven it can't even get a website right; there's no way in hell they can deal with all of this at once. A fat, happy American middle class would have been a bulwark against it, but the elites have spent 20 years scraping out their substance. Most of us are running mighty thin. The risk of a trigger event, like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand or the Rodney King verdict, bringing it all down is growing.

    --
    Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
  6. Re: Credibility gap by JWW · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not just optimism and self deception, theres a great deal of narcissism and megalomania there too.

  7. Since 2002 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    She's been spied on since before she became the German leader, the 2010 thing comes out from possible Keith Alexander backers:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24692908#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

    "But on Sunday Bild newspaper quoted US intelligence sources as saying NSA head Keith Alexander personally briefed the president about the covert operation targeting Mrs Merkel in 2010."

    Which sounds like Keith Alexander having a go at Obama if anything (or supporters of Alexander).

    But what struck me is the sheer naivety of the woman:

    "Mrs Merkel - an Americophile who was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 - is said to be shocked that Washington may have engaged in the sort of spying she had to endure growing up in Communist East Germany."

    That's why they let her become Chancellor! if she was against America, you can be damn sure they'd be using all that info they have on her to her disadvantage to make sure she didn't come into power. It's not *her* who is the victim here, its the German they spied on to weed him out of the race for Chancellor. And the democracy they undermined in the process.

    She should know this from the KGB control of East Germany that ensured only party approved leaders could ever be elected.

    They're shaping their 'allies' to make them into 'servants'. I think a few of them know it. 5 eyes countries leaders seems to know they have to tow the US line or be leaked against, and maybe a few others. Some others, might suspect it, but don't want to seem paranoid.

    Merkel needs to realize that her surfing history is known too, so is her emails, the public info she read that's known, the open discussions, known. Coutresy of Bullrun, probably even the encrypted one. It's not done for laughs, it's done for control.

  8. Re:Germany sells nuclear tech to Iran by nava68 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just remember Seimens (a German company) has sold nuclear tech to Iran.

    The Iranian nuclear program was actually started by the US "Atoms for Peace" program, Siemens (actually KWU which was part of Siemens at that time) was a major supplier for the Busher programme which was cancelled - ironically - by Khomeini who thought all weapons of mass destruction as un-islamic. The contracts were terminated with the islamic revolution in 79 and the Russian government (via Rosatom) helped build that reactor and other nuclear facilities. A lot of western companies did supply parts for that, not only Germans but also american companies since many contracts went through Rosatom puppets.

    I have no problem with what Bush and then Obama did.

    And if Seimens were to sell to North Korea, I say we start bombing.

    The French supplied Pakistan with the technology (CEA), the US helped the Indian program (notably with Uranium and Thorium delivered by the Bush administration), so go and bomb France and your hometown...