Germany Spied on Kerry, Hillary: Report
In a new report by German magazine Der Spiegel, which released Saturday, it was revealed that the German Foreign Intelligence Service (BND) tapped phone calls made by US Secretary of State John Kerry and his predecessor Hillary Clinton, and for years monitored its NATO partner Turkey.
According to the magazine, the German foreign intelligence agency tapped a satellite phone conversation that Kerry made in 2013 and also recorded a conversation between Clinton and former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan a year ago, The Guardian reports.
Relations between Germany and the US have been tense ever since revelations of U.S. espionage, including surveillance of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone and evidence that the ordinary Germans' phone and internet communications were being monitored by the U.S. National Security Agency, came into light.
The magazine further stated that the conversations "collected by accident within the context of other operations" and BND did not purposely target them, The Jerusalem Post reports.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and broadcasters NDR and WDR Friday reported that Clinton's conversations were tapped and this information was conveyed to the United States by a BND employee who was allegedly spying for the country. Germany arrested the BND employee in July after he reportedly confessed to selling as many as 218 documents to a U.S. handler - post which it was discovered that a German Defence Ministry policy adviser was passing on the information to the U.S. Following that the top U.S. Central Intelligence Agency agent was asked to leave the country.
