Against this background, the fact that America spies on other countries, and that American allies spy on other countries, that America spies on its allies, and that those allies spy on each other, seems less shocking. Or at least it should. One of the most sensational disclosures in the Snowden material was that America’s NSA spied on Germany, chiefly from a listening post on the roof of the American embassy in the heart of Berlin: part of a network run by the agency’s Special Collection Service, which uses 80 foreign locations to intercept electronic communications. Among the targets was the chancellor, Angela Merkel, chiefly via an insecure old mobile phone which she uses for party and private business. Disclosed by Der Spiegel in October 2013, this caused outrage.[21] The American ambassador was summoned to the foreign ministry to be rebuked. Mrs Merkel phoned Barack Obama to complain. Germany cancelled an intelligence-sharing agreement with the United States and Britain.[22] The then justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called for the suspension of the deal under which American counter-terrorism officials have limited access to European banking data.
For many Germans, the idea that America was spying on their country epitomised an arrogance and untrustworthiness which had rankled for years. During the Cold War, when the then West Germany needed America to secure its survival against an existential threat from the east, such grievances had to be swallowed. Now they erupt freely.
Yet the idea that American intelligence is active in Germany and other European countries is hardly surprising. Anyone with access to Google could find a pithy commentary in the Wall Street Journal written in March 2000 by James Woolsey, the former head of the CIA, called ‘Why we spy on our allies’. It was prompted by a previous row about the Echelon programme, under which America and its close allies search international telecommunications traffic for keywords. A report to the European Parliament had alleged that America was collecting economic intelligence that was specifically used to stop European countries winning international contracts. Woolsey made his case with admirable bluntness:
Yes, my continental European friends, we have spied on you. And it’s true that we use computers to sort through data by using keywords. Have you stopped to ask yourselves what we’re looking for?[23]
European companies habitually win contracts by bribery, he maintained. In most cases their products are too backward or costly to win any other way. By disclosing the payment of bribes by Europeans, the American government levels the playing field. He added that America spies on European sales of dual-use technology to rogue states and on other sanctions-busting. And he pointed out that France is a mighty practitioner of industrial espionage.[24]
Woolsey’s points were true in 2000. Nothing has changed since then. On the contrary: America is now far more aware that it faces a grave terrorist threat. And European countries have behaved in ways that make the worries of the 1990s seem mild. Germany in particular has cultivated Russia, adopted a unilateral policy of appeasement towards China, and has repeatedly undermined international sanctions on Iran.
At least some of the outrage prompted by revelations of America’s spying may stem from envy. European spy agencies (Britain is a partial exception) are unable to match the NSA’s capabilities and are therefore left playing the role of junior partners, offering collection services in exchange for shared intelligence. But the hypocrisy is still striking. I have already mentioned France, but Germany also has well-resourced and effective intelligence and security services which do exactly what such agencies are expected to do, including spying on other countries.[25]
Germany’s electronic intelligence agency is the low-profile Kommando Strategische Aufklärung (Strategic Intelligence Office). A report in Der Spiegel in 2008 admiringly described how this organisation, which is notionally a pure military intelligence agency, can ‘bug the world’.[26] Its targets included calls made on the civilian phone system in Russia, and the communications of drug barons in Kosovo. Some of this intelligence activity is clearly commendable. Some of it may be questionable. But it undermines the recent German outrage.
So too does a further point: that Germany is one of the world’s top intelligence targets—from all directions. Chancellor Merkel’s penchant for using an old-fashioned phone for her private use (she has a cumbersome but highly secure phone for government business) is no secret: it has been a subject of much jocular mention in past years. It is hardly surprising that other countries try to glean what clues they can from her text messages and phone calls. These countries, incidentally, include France, China and Russia—as well as America.
Given that German policymakers, as a rule, read English, have access to the internet, know that their country is often at cross-purposes with America, themselves receive intelligence information based on electronic intercepts, and are not stupid, what exactly is bothering them?[27] The answer is the publicity. Asked privately about espionage, few if any would contest the picture outlined above. But when the details of spying operations are revealed, it is often politically impossible in the targeted country for even seasoned and cynical politicians to remain silent. Faced with an irate media, and demands from opposition parties for action and explanation, they have to feign outrage.
Revelations of even the most justifiable spying create the impression of a scandal exposed. A good exhibit here is the Snowden camp’s attack on Sweden’s FRA electronic intelligence agency for its collaboration with Britain’s GCHQ and America’s NSA.[28] Glenn Greenwald, the American lawyer in Brazil who is the custodian of at least some of the cache of stolen material, and the most articulate public defender of its release, implies that it is wrong for Sweden to have security, defence or intelligence links with Britain and America.[29]
For anyone familiar with European security, it is hard to see the scandal. Sweden is not a NATO member, but it has excellent if discreet relations with the alliance for entirely understandable reasons. During the Cold War, Sweden experienced frequent intrusions by Soviet submarines. Now it is experiencing dummy air attacks. One of these, on Good Friday 2013, involved Russian warplanes targeting two vital defence installations.[30] Unpublished but well-sourced information suggests that the Russians also jammed Sweden’s air defence radar. A leaked military intelligence report says the drill included launch codes being received to fire nuclear-armed cruise missiles. Most Swedes do not like this, and neither does the government (or the slimmed-down armed forces, which say that in the event of a crisis they would be able to defend only part of Sweden from military attack, and for less than a week).
So Swedish policymakers want to know what Russia is up to. What is the aim of the sabre-rattling? What subversion, mischief and influence peddling are under way in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, just the other side of the Baltic sea? Why is Russia putting nuclear missiles in its Kaliningrad enclave? What state is the Russian Baltic Fleet in? What plans does it have for the two Mistral helicopter carriers it has ordered from France? These are classic national security questions to which espionage provides at least a partial answer.
21
See http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/cover-story-how-nsa-spied-on-merkel-cell-phone-from-berlin-embassy-a-930205.html; http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/angry-european-and-german-reactions-to-merkel-us-phone-spying-scandal-a-929725.html; http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/trans-atlantic-relations-threatened-by-revelations-of-mass-us-spying-a-908746.html
See also Anton Troianovski, ‘Germany to Boost Anti-Spy Efforts’,
22
Albeit a largely symbolic one: it had not actually been used since 1990: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/germany-nixes-surveillance-pact-us-britain
24
French electronic intelligence is formidable and operates with what some might think rather scanty oversight. See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/world/europe/france-broadens-its-surveillance-power.html; http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/world/europe/france-too-is-collecting-data-newspaper-reveals.html
25
In Germany’s case, this sometimes happens in a way that might be seen as questionable. The Nazi past creates particular obligations to countries and people who suffered horribly at the hands of the forebears of modern Germans. As a result, Germany is a loyal friend of Israel. It lobbied strongly to bring Poland into the EU. It has pursued a long and (in recent years) largely futile attempt to seek a close relationship with Russia. But it also owes a special debt to the Baltic states—three small countries which Nazi Germany consigned to the meat-grinder in its secret deal with Stalin’s Soviet Union in the spring of 1939. The Baltics regained their independence only in 1991. But Germany decided to put its relations with Russia ahead of any other bothersome business with small countries. It even recruited Estonia’s top defence official—in tacit collaboration with Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service—in order to find out what Britain and America were up to in the Baltic region. I write about this at length in my book
26
27
Julian Lindley-French, ‘What U.S. Intelligence Really Says About Europe’, http://lindleyfrench.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/what-us-intelligence-really-says-about.html
28
Greenwald reveals his naïveté and ignorance in a television interview, available at http://www.svt.se/nyhetsklipp/nyheter/article1669193.svt. The other material he published can be found at http://www.svt.se/ug/read-all-articles-in-english
29
For a detailed look at Greenwald’s rhetorical style, see http://m.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/08/1192256/-The-Final-Word-on-Glenn-Greenwald
30
Sources have named the air-defence headquarters, the military command centre and the FRA (signals intelligence) headquarters.