Danish secret service helped US spy on Angela Merkel
Denmark's secret service helped the US National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a European media investigation published on Sunday revealed.
The disclosure that the US had been spying on its allies
first started coming to light in 2013, but it is only now that journalists have
gained access to reports detailing the support given to the NSA by the Danish
Defense Intelligence Service (FE).
The report showed that Germany's close ally and neighbor
cooperated with US spying operations that targeted the chancellor and
president.
The then chancellor candidate for the German center-left
socialist party (SPD), Peer Steinbrück, was also a target Secret service
sources passed on the information to a team including Danish, Swedish and
Norwegian broadcasters (DR, SVT and NRK respectively), as well as the French
newspaper Le Monde, German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and German public
broadcasters NDR and WDR.
How did German officials react?
Steinbrück spoke to the German members of the research team
upon finding out about the spying operations against him.
"Politically, I consider this a scandal," he said.
While he accepted that western states require functioning intelligence
services, the fact that Danish authorities had been spying on their partners
showed "that they are rather doing things on their own."
Neither Merkel nor Steinmeier had "any knowledge"
of the spying operations carried out by leading Danish government officials. A
spokesperson said that the chancellor had been informed of the revelations.,
the new report disclosed.
How was the Danish government involved?
The Danish government knew of the involvement of their country's
secret service in the NSA scandal by 2015 at the latest.
They began to collect information on the FE's cooperation
with the NSA between 2012 and 2014 in the secret Dunhammer report following the
disclosures by the former NSA employee and whistleblower Edward Snowden, NDR
reported.
The information they gathered made it clear that the FE had
helped the NSA to spy on leading politicians in Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands
and France, as well as Germany.
Danish intelligence also helped the US agency to spy on the
Danish foreign and finance ministries as well as a Danish weapons manufacturer.
The FE also cooperated with the NSA on spying operations against the US
government itself.
Upon discovering exactly how far the cooperation between the
two countries' intelligence services went, the Danish government forced the
entire leadership of the FE to step down in 2020.
What drove Danish spies to help the NSA?
A Danish expert in secret service operations Thomas Wegener
Friis believes that the FE was faced with a choice about which global partners
to work more closely with.
"They made a clear decision to work with the Americans
and against their European partners," he told NDR.
Patrick Sensburg, who led the German parliamentary committee
to investigate the NSA spying scandal, was not surprised by the news. For the
lawmaker from Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), it is important to
understand what drives secret services.
"It's not about friendships. It's not about
moral-ethical aspirations. It's about pursuing interests," he told NDR.
The NSA, FE and Danish defense ministry did not respond to
requests for comment on the research, however, a general statement from the
defense ministry said that "a systematic bugging of close allies is
unacceptable."
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