Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, secretly monitored telephone calls involving then-U.S. president Barack Obama while he was travelling aboard Air Force One, according to an investigation by the German newspaper Die Zeit.
For several years, the wiretapping operation took advantage of weaknesses in the encryption of the aircraft’s communications, allowing the BND to intercept calls made on known frequencies. The monitoring was carried out regularly, though not continuously and without the knowledge or approval of then-chancellor Angela Merkel.
Because the United States was not part of the BND’s official surveillance mandate, the operation was treated as highly sensitive. Transcripts of Obama’s conversations were kept in a special file, circulated only among a small group of senior intelligence officials, and destroyed after review. The intelligence gathered was later included in broader assessments shared with the Chancellor’s Office.
The surveillance was eventually halted in 2014, after concerns emerged over the monitoring of senior U.S. officials. The revelations are politically explosive, coming just a year after Merkel publicly condemned U.S. spying on allies, famously stating that “spying among friends is unacceptable.” It remains unclear when the operation began or whether Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, was also targeted.
