Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Scandal

Germany is investigating another suspected spy in Berlin:

[Yesterday] German police raided the Berlin-area apartment and office of a man suspected of spying for the US, the second case in less than a week. The investigation is ongoing, but German authorities are taking it “very seriously,” a spokesperson told reporters. Last week, a German intelligence officer was arrested for working as a double agent and feeding documents back to Washington. The 31-year-old intelligence officer, which The Daily Beast has dubbed “Herr Wannabe,” apparently volunteered to work for the CIA. He got caught when he tried to spy for Russia as well.

All this comes, of course, after revelations that the US had been tapping German chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone since 2002. Germany tried to use this embarrassing fact to negotiate a non-spying agreement similar to the ones the US has with the UK, Canada, and other countries. However, the US has resisted out of fear that more countries will want the same thing.

Today, the German government asked our top CIA official there to leave the country. Morrissey is somewhat surprised at this reaction:

One has to assume that the Germans are not so blinded by outrage here as the public stances might suggest, as they know well how the intelligence game is played.

The French have been stealing industrial secrets for years, even though the two nations work much more closely together on the EU project than the US and Germany do in other areas. When these details about business-as-usual get made embarrassingly public, it forces everyone to make a public show of the outrage. Removing a key link in the partnership through the mechanism of a diplomatic expulsion, though, goes a bit farther than contrived outrage. That’s a step one would expect to see between two antagonists, or two loosely-affiliated nations, not between close partners like the US and Germany.

Kirchick defends our espionage activities in Germany, which he calls “a less than trustworthy ally.” In particular, he highlights the country’s ties to Russia and Iran:

German outrage at American spying would also be easier to swallow if it weren’t so hypocritical. According to former NSA intelligence and computer systems analyst Ira Winkler, the BND has penetrated the SWIFT financial messaging network, passing on the information to German businesses. In his book Spies Among Us, he writes of “the apparent willingness of German businesses to funnel sensitive information and technology to nations that are hostile to the United States,” including Iran. Germany remains one of the Islamic Republic’s largest trading partners.

American espionage in Germany—home of the Hamburg Cell, the circle of 9/11 hijackers who hung out in the port city, unmolested, for years—is aimed at protecting the national security of both America and its allies, Germany foremost among them. And while the BND cooperates extensively with America’s intelligence services, it also has worked toward giving a leg-up to German businesses, an unwritten no-no in the intelligence world.

But the latest news doesn’t much trouble Mataconis:

Understandably, there will be some degree of a diplomatic price to pay from these latest spying allegations. Allies spying on allies is, as I said, one of those things that everyone does to some degree but which is never spoken of publicly. At the same time, though, it strikes me that we shouldn’t really be all that embarrassed about what’s been revealed here, except to the extent that we got caught and the President apparently spoke to the Chancellor without being aware of what had happened earlier that week. There are good reasons to keep an eye on what’s going on in Germany and, indeed, some of those reasons ultimately benefit the national security of Germany as well as the United States. Furthermore, foreign espionage does not raise the same civil liberties issues that the N.S.A.’s domestic programs do so it’s best not to conflate the two. Foreign intelligence is sometimes an unpleasant business, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary and in this case it seems like its necessary.