Obama kept unaware of spying scandal in Germanyv

Iran Press TV

vWed Jul 9, 2014 2:0PM

President Barack Obama was not aware of the new US spying scandal in Germany when he placed a call to Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday, according to an article published by The New York Times on June 8.

Just a day before the call, a young German intelligence operative had been arrested and had admitted that he had been passing secrets to the American Central Intelligence Agency.

Merkel chose not to raise the issue during the call, the article said, but the fact is that Obama "was kept in the dark about the blown spying operation at a particularly delicate moment in American relations with Germany."

White House officials are now questioning who in the CIA's chain of command was aware of the case and why the president was not informed about it.

By the call, Obama intended to consult with Germany over a deteriorating crisis in Ukraine, the newspaper said. American authorities fear that the new spying scandal could set back US relations with Germany just as the two states are struggling to move past the distrust generated by another scandal last year.

In 2013, Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, revealed that the agency had spied on many people in Germany, including that it had tapped Merkel's cellphone.

According to the Times, US officials are investigating why the CIA did not inform the White House that its agent — a 31-year-old employee of Germany's federal intelligence service, the BND — had been compromised, given his arrest the day before the two leaders spoke.

German news media reported that the agency may have been aware three weeks before the arrest that the German authorities were monitoring the man.

"Such operations threaten the close intelligence-sharing relationship that American and German spies have developed in recent years," the article warned, saying that the disclosures "poisoned" close relations between the two leaders.

ARA/ARA