Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (the Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND) allegedly ran a wire-tap on former US President Barack Obama during five of his years as US President, from 2009 to 2014.
This was revealed on January 4 by German journalist Holger Stark, deputy editor-in-chief of the Zeit newspaper.
Stark said his research showed the German agency was intercepting calls Obama made onboard the presidential aeroplane Air Force One.
The BND was able to intercept the calls because the encryption of communications onboard the aeroplane was not fully secure.
According to insiders quoted by Stark, the Americans used roughly a dozen different frequencies for their transmissions.
The German intelligence agency reportedly knew all these frequencies and was monitoring them, albeit not permanently.
As the US was not among the countries for which the BND had been specifically tasked to gather intelligence, transcripts of the intercepted calls were kept in a special file and only distributed to a small number of BND senior officials, Stark writes, including the agency’s president and vice-president.
The findings were incorporated into a general assessment of US positions which was forwarded to Chancellor Merkel’s office. Afterwards the transcripts of the calls were destroyed.
The operation reportedly went on until 2014, when the office of Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered an end to the BND’s spying on US politicians. The decision followed revelations that the agency had also run a wire-tap on Obama’s foreign secretary Hillary Clinton.
It is unclear when the alleged wire-tap on Obama was set up, and whether the German agency was also listening in on his predecessor George W. Bush.
Merkel herself had in turn been spied on by the US security agency NSA for years.
In October 2013, a leaked document reportedly confirmed the US signals intelligence agency was listening in on the German Chancellor’s mobile phone. Barack Obama was allegedly unaware of the operation.
Brussels Signal contacted the BND regarding the allegations, but an agency spokesperson declined to answer questions on the telephone. The spokesperson asked for a written request for comment which had not been answered at the time of writing.
Brussels Signal also contacted the Office of Barack Obama for comment, but had not heard back at the time of publication.
