Merkel defends German intelligence cooperation with NSA

[Blue_Tires]

Source: Reuters


Chancellor Angela Merkel defended Germany's BND intelligence agency on Monday against accusations it illegally helped the United States spy on officials and firms in Europe.

In her first public comments on a scandal that has gripped Germany for weeks, Merkel said it was still unacceptable for friendly nations to spy on each other - a reference to her dismay over reports the NSA had tapped her cell phone up to 2013.

She ardently backed BND cooperation with the U.S. National Security Agency in fighting terror even as Germany's top public prosecutor launched an investigation. Spying on behalf of the NSA has upset many in Germany where surveillance is a sensitive issue due to abuses by the Nazis and East German Stasi.

"We've quite correctly got controls on the BND in parliament and I consider that to be absolutely essential," Merkel said, adding that her office stood ready to answer all its questions.


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/04/us-germany-spying-merkel-idUSKBN0NP13620150504?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

[jakeXT]

1. What do we expect from the BND, whose first president was Nazi General and recieved a CIA pension

Reinhard Gehlen (3 April 1902 – 8 June 1979) was a German general who served as chief of the Fremde Heere Ost (FHO) military intelligence unit during the Second World War and who later became leader of the Gehlen Organization and the first President of the Federal Intelligence Service during the Cold War. Gehlen is considered one of the most legendary Cold War spymasters.

From 1942 he served as chief of Fremde Heere Ost (FHO), the German Army's military intelligence unit on the Eastern Front. As an officer in the German Wehrmacht, he reached the rank of Major General just before being sacked by Hitler for his accurately pessimistic intelligence reports. During the emerging phases of the Cold War, he was recruited by the United States military to set up a spy ring directed against the Soviet Union (known as the Gehlen Organization) which employed numerous former SS, SD and Wehrmacht officers, and eventually became head of the West German intelligence apparatus. He served as the first president of the Federal Intelligence Service until 1968. As President of the Federal Intelligence Service, itself a civilian office, he was promoted to Lieutenant-General of the Reserve in the West German Bundeswehr and thus became the country's highest-ranking reserve officer.[1]

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He retired from government service in 1968, receiving the pension of a Ministerialdirektor (one of the most senior civil service grades),[16] plus, allegedly, a pension from the CIA. He died in 1979 at the age of 77.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Gehlen