Germany to 'spy on US and UK intelligence gathering' for the first time in 45 years

Germany has ordered surveillance of British and American intelligence gathering on its soil to begin for the first time since 1945, according to reports.

Under the decision, US and British intelligence operations in Germany will be subject to the same counter-espionage measures as those of Russia, China and Iran.

“We need to send a strong signal,” a source close to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government told Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. The unprecedented move is a direct response to a series of spy scandals that have rocked British and American relations with Germany in the past year.

Mrs Merkel’s government has given the go-ahead to surveillance plans that first emerged after two suspected double agents were found allegedly spying for the Americans inside the German security establishment a few weeks ago.

Relations were already strained after it was revealed last year that the US and Britain both use the roofs of their Berlin embassies as “listening posts” to monitor the German government, and that the NSA had eavesdropped on Mrs Merkel’s mobile phone calls.

Germany has asked the CIA station chief in Berlin to leave the country over the double agent affair – an almost unheard of rebuke between allies.

The new measures go still further, and will bring to an end decades of cooperation that date back to the Cold War, when West German, British and American intelligence worked together against the Soviet Union.

From now on, the BND, Germany’s equivalent of MI5, will extend its surveillance and counter-espionage operations to all foreign intelligence agencies operating on German soil.

But Mrs Merkel’s government has stopped short of a full retaliation, and ruled out its own spying operations in the US.

There has been considerable irritation in Germany that it was excluded from the mutual no spying agreement the US has with the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand under the “Five Eyes” agreement, and that Mrs Merkel’s requests for a similar agreement were rebuffed by the US.

It appears the new measures have been under consideration for some time, since it first emerged the NSA had spied on Mrs Merkel’s phone, but Germany hesitated to implement them for fear of a confrontation with the US.

For months, Mrs Merkel tried to downplay the spying affair despite public anger in Germany as scandal after scandal emerged. It appears her government’s patience finally ran out with the discovery of the two alleged double agents.

But there are indications that while Germany is taking tough action in public, behind the scenes it is still trying to patch up relations with the US. In a sign that President Barack Obama is taking German anger seriously, two senior American officials flew in to Berlin for talks in recent days.

White House Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, and the Homeland Security Advisor, Lisa Monaco – an unusually high-ranking delegation – met with the head of Mrs Merkel’s office and, according to a report in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, agreed to draw up policy guidelines for future intelligence cooperation.