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

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