Breaking News English

Several German news sources are questioning how much President Obama knows the US spying German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The 'Spiegel' magazine reported that the USA's National Security Agency (NSA) started tapping Ms Merkel's mobile telephone 2002, the George W. Bush administration. It says President Obama knew that the tap was still place as early as 2010, before he visited Berlin June that year to tell Germans the warm friendship that existed their two countries. A newspaper reported that the contents Ms Merkel's SMS messages and phone calls went straight to the White House. The US Embassy Berlin was used as a base the surveillance.

The spying allegedly began when former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was office. US intelligence sources were suspicious his refusal to support the second Iraq War. Obama told Ms Merkel last week that he had not known the bugging. However, a media report cites an NSA official who said Mr Obama ordered the programme to be escalated. A document the NSA warned "grave damage relations" if its spying programme was discovered. Ms Merkel is shocked that the USA may have engaged the sort spying she thought was a relic the Cold War. She was also spied in the former East Germany, the fall the Berlin Wall and the collapse communism in Eastern Europe.