The former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder was placed under surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) after his country opposed military action in Iraq in 2002.
According to a story carried out by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and TV network NDR, US intelligence agencies began monitoring the mobile phone of the Social Democrat chancellor more than 10 years ago when Schröder was leader.
Last October the current chancellor, Angela Merkel, was furious when she learnt that the NSA of bugged her phone. It now appears that she was not the first chancellor to have phone calls and text messages monitored, says a document leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
“I would never have imagined that I was being bugged by American services then,” Schröder said in response to the revelations.
There has been some rumors circulated in Germany that the NSA has been spying for some time on German politicians other than Merkel. These rumors are now confirmed by these new revelations.
Unlike Merkel, who has been using heavily her mobile phone since taking office, her predecessor Schröder was reluctant to use electronic gadgets. In 2005, he claimed in an interview that he didn’t have a mobile phone at all: “if someone wanted to get in touch with him, he said, they would just call his personal assistants”, he said.
Schröder’s former spokesman Béla Anda expressed his surprise, saying the former chancellor “didn’t have his own phone, but kept on changing it”
The latest revelations about NSA surveillance of German politicians come out as US diplomats are working hard to repair trust. Following the revelations of the NSA snooping and tapping of phones of several world leaders, US president Barack Obama announced reforms to reshape NSA electronic spying practices and end mass collection of internet and phone data.
