WASHINGTON
— The effort to remake the intelligence relationship between the United States
and Germany after
it was disclosed last year that the National Security Agency was tapping
Chancellor Angela
Merkel’s cellphone has collapsed, according to German officials, who
say there will be no broad intelligence sharing or “no-spy” agreement between
the two countries when Ms. Merkel visits the White House on Friday.
The
failure to reach a broader accord has led to some bitter recriminations on both
sides, with sharply diverging accounts from officials in Berlin and Washington
about who was responsible for what was supposed to be a political solution to
an embarrassing disclosure. But it also raises broader questions at a moment
that President
Obama and Ms. Merkel will attempt to show that they are in
general accord on a strategy for both punishing Russia for its actions in
Ukraine and containing President Vladimir V. Putin in the years ahead.
The
effort to remain in step, at a time of significant disagreements within the
European alliance about how to respond to Russia, is “going to put our
intelligence relationships to the kind of test we haven’t seen since the end of
the Cold War,” a senior administration official said this week.
Just
before she left Berlin for Washington on Thursday, Ms. Merkel talked by phone
with Mr. Putin, urging the release of a German-led team of military observers —
four Germans, a Pole, a Czech and a Dane — who have been held almost a week in
the Ukrainian town of Slovyansk, one of a dozen or so east Ukrainian cities
where pro-Russian militants have assumed control.
The
fact that the observers are still being held — to growing consternation in
Berlin — has suggested to some in the West and in Ukraine that Mr. Putin, who
in general values relations with Germany, is either unable or unwilling to
intervene.
While
the disclosure that the N.S.A. had listened to Ms. Merkel’s conversations for
more than a decade was a passing story in the United States — one of many from
the files that Edward J. Snowden took with him when he left Hawaii with the
agency’s crown jewels — it has remained an issue in Germany. After the
disclosure, Mr. Obama said the United States would not monitor Ms. Merkel’s
communications, but he made no such commitment for any other German officials.
And he said nothing about the future of the N.S.A.’s operations in Germany,
including whether a listening station based in the American Embassy in Berlin,
would stay intact.
For a
number of months, German officials said the chancellor could not visit
Washington until there was a resolution, including what they called a
“restoration of trust” between the allies.
But the
talks hit the rocks as soon as they began. Germany demanded a no-spy agreement
that would ban the United States from conducting espionage activities on its
soil. That led to a series of tough exchanges between the president’s national
security adviser, Susan E. Rice, and her German counterpart, Christoph Heusgen.
Ms.
Rice, according to American officials, said that the United States did not have
no-spy agreements with any of its close allies, even with the other members of
the so-called Five Eyes — the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand — which share virtually all of their intelligence. She said any such agreement
with Germany would set a precedent that every other major European ally, along
with the Japanese, the South Koreans and others, would soon demand to
replicate.
By the American account of events, German officials decided
to proceed with an agreement for enhanced intelligence sharing, a process that
consumed the intelligence agencies in both countries, and was presided over by
Ms. Rice and Mr. Heusgen. American officials said that in January, the Germans
terminated those talks, saying that if an accord could not include a no-spy
agreement — a political necessity for Ms. Merkel — it was not worth signing.
“We were ready to conclude an agreement about intelligence
cooperation that reiterated key principles about our collection activities
around the time of the president’s January speech” that put new limits on the
N.S.A.’s activities, a senior administration official said. “But it was the
German government who told us they no longer wanted to proceed, not the other
way around.”
“They pulled the plug,” another official said. “What the
Germans want, and wanted, is that we would never do anything against their laws
on their territory.” That is an agreement the United States “has with no
country,” the official said.
Any monitoring from German soil — including from the United
States Embassy — would constitute a violation of German law.
“Our positions and those of the U.S. lie quite far apart,
that is quite obvious,” Ms. Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said
Wednesday. He added that Germany stood by “the demand that on German soil the
German laws must be respected, and by everybody.” Then, he added: “But it is a
long political process.”
Mr. Seibert’s explanation to the German press was that a
no-spy agreement and enhanced cooperation between the two country’s
intelligence agencies was first proposed as “an offer which came in last year
from the U.S.” He said that is “not being followed up on” by the Obama administration.
American officials say the concept originated with German
officials in an effort to respond to the political uproar caused by the Snowden
disclosure. “There is huge hypocrisy here,” said one senior intelligence
official, who would not talk on the record about intelligence issues. “Allies
spy on each other — that’s not exactly news. And Germany makes huge use of what
we provide them from our infrastructure in Europe and around the world. Yet
they had to respond to the outrage.”
It is unclear how the disagreement may figure in talks
between Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel. But Mr. Obama is intent on closing the
chapter that involved the revelation of N.S.A. spying on the chancellor —something Obama and Bush administration officials insist they did not know
about — and focusing on Ukraine.
Ms. Merkel’s government will also report Friday to a
parliamentary commission on the Snowden disclosures. Its report is expected to
say that Mr. Snowden will not be called to testify in Germany about the
conclusions he reached. A German newspaper, The Süddeutsche Zeitung, quoted a
document from German officials as saying that inviting Mr. Snowden, who is
wanted on criminal charges in the United States, to Germany would put a
“permanent strain” on relations with Washington.
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