Spying on Our Friends: German Chancellor Merkel Protests NSA Tapping Her Cell Phone
National Security Agency (NSA) documents leaked by former NSA contract employee Edward Snowden revealed, in an article published on this day, that the NSA had tapped the cell phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The revelation that the NSA had spied on one of the closest allies of the U.S. seriously strained relations between the two countries. It added additional weight to the argument, supported by the various Snowden-related documents, that NSA spying had virtually no limits.
Articles about NSA spying based on the Snowden documents began appearing on June 5, 2013, and continued for many months afterward. On April 14, 2014, The 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was awarded to the Guardian US and the Washington Post for their stories on National Security Agency (NSA) spying based on documents leaked to them by Edward Snowden. On February 16, 2014, reporters also won the prestigious George Polk Award for Excellence in Journalism for their stories based on the Snowden-released documents.
The NSA began operation on November 4, 1952, at the height of the Cold War. The agency remained secret for over twenty years (Washington insiders referred to it as “No Such Agency”). Finally, on October 29, 1975, NSA Director Lt. General Lew Allen testified in open hearings before the Senate Church Committee, marking the first time any agency person had testified publicly.
Get the full story: Luke Harding, The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man (2014)
Read the best book on President Obama and the war on terrorism: Charlie Savage, Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency (2015)
Search the ACLU database of Snowden-related NSA documents (searchable by date, relevance, or date of release): https://www.aclu.org/nsa-documents-search?page=1