Germany Boots CIA Station Chief

Germany Expels Top U.S. Intelligence Officer

By ALISON SMALE and MELISSA EDDY, The New York Times

JULY 10, 2014

“The representative of the U.S. intelligence services at the United States Embassy has been asked to leave Germany,” a government spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said in a statement.

“The request occurred against the backdrop of the ongoing investigation by federal prosecutors as well as the questions that were posed months ago about the activities of U.S. intelligence agencies in Germany,” he said. “The government takes the matter very seriously.”

…

German officials have been frustrated in their efforts to receive clarification from Washington over allegations of spying that began last year when it was revealed that the National Security Agency had been monitoring the chancellor’s cellphone. Although President Obama has offered assurances that it will no longer happen, revelations last week that a member of the German secret services had been spying for the United States sparked a fresh round of outrage.

On Wednesday, the police searched the Berlin office and apartment of a man suspected of being a spy, federal prosecutors said. They declined to give further information, but the German news media reported that the suspect worked for the Defense Ministry. A ministry spokesman confirmed that it was involved in an investigation.

Oh, that’s right.  In case you missed it the was a second spy, this one in the Defense Department.

Second German government worker suspected of spying for US

Philip Oltermann, The Guardian

Wednesday 9 July 2014 13.20 EDT

Public prosecutors confirmed that the home and office of a defence ministry employee in the greater Berlin area had been searched on Wednesday morning.

They told the Guardian that a search had been conducted “under suspicion of secret agent activity” and that evidence – including computers and several data storage devices – had been seized for analysis. The federal prosecutor’s office confirmed that no arrest had yet been made.

According to Die Welt newspaper, the staffer being investigated is a soldier who had caught the attention of the German military counter-intelligence service after establishing regular contact with people thought to be working for a US secret agency.

The news came just days after a member of the German intelligence agency BND confessed to having passed more than 200 confidential files to a contact at the CIA.

The new case is not thought to be directly related to that of the BND staffer. However, one government insider familiar with the case told Süddeutsche Zeitung that the new case being investigated was “more serious” than that of the BND spy, in which the sold documents are thought to have been of limited value.

So we have the NSA tapping Andrea Merkel’s phone.  A spy at the German intelligence agency.  Another spy in the Defense Department and John Brennan, Director of National Intellegence for the United States and proven liar under oath to Congress calling to try and patch things up.

US officials have been trying to limit the diplomatic fallout, with the CIA’s head, John Brennan, reportedly calling Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, in the wake of the latest spying scandal.

Why John Brennan you ask?  Well because the CIA and the NSA don’t deign to tell Barack Obama about their spying on friendly allied governments.

Spying Case Left Obama in Dark, U.S. Officials Say

By MARK MAZZETTI and MARK LANDLER, The New York Times

JULY 8, 2014

What Mr. Obama did not know was that a day earlier, a young German intelligence operative had been arrested and had admitted that he had been passing secrets to the Central Intelligence Agency.

While Ms. Merkel chose not to raise the issue during the call, the fact that the president was kept in the dark about the blown spying operation at a particularly delicate moment in American relations with Germany has led frustrated White House officials to question who in the C.I.A.’s chain of command was aware of the case – and why that information did not make it to the Oval Office before the call.

…

What is particularly baffling to these officials is that the C.I.A. 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. According to German news media reports, the agency may have been aware three weeks before the arrest that the German authorities were monitoring the man.

A central question, one American official said, is how high the information about the agent went in the C.I.A.’s command – whether it was bottled up at the level of the station chief in Berlin or transmitted to senior officials, including the director, John O. Brennan, who is responsible for briefing the White House.

Yeah, right.  The BND spy was arrested and in custody and identified as a  CIA spy a full day before the phone call to Merkel.

And Brennan didn’t know?  And Barack Obama didn’t know?

There’s a lovely little bridge in their home town I’d like to sell these propagandists.