Communications from the former US president were intercepted for several years by German intelligence, including aboard Air Force One, according to a book published Monday. The surveillance, which ended in 2014, was reportedly initiated without Angela Merkel's approval.

The book has caused quite a stir in Germany. German intelligence monitored the telephone communications of former US President Barack Obama aboard Air Force One for several years, reveals an investigation by journalist Holger Stark, published this Monday, January 5th, in his book *The Grown-Up Country: Germany Without America — A Historic Opportunity*. According to his investigation, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the German foreign intelligence service and equivalent to the DGSE in France, intercepted some of the former US president's conversations, taking advantage of technical flaws in the encryption system for communications aboard the presidential aircraft.

"Even occasional clandestine listening to the president's conversations could have turned into a foreign policy scandal of considerable magnitude," asserts the author of the book, now deputy editor of the newspaper Die Zeit and former correspondent for the daily in the United States, while specifying however that Angela Merkel's office had not initially been informed of this intelligence gathering.

"Verbal information"

The operation relied on the vulnerability of calls made from the presidential plane, which were not systematically encrypted and used a dozen frequencies identified by the BND. The intercepts were not continuous, but systematic enough to allow the agency to collect conversations of the Democratic president and other American officials on several occasions. A former senior official in the German administration confirmed, on condition of anonymity, to the Washington Post that "verbal information" concerning the surveillance of Air Force One was circulating at the time within the chancellor's office.

This information, described as "incidental capture" by some German officials, was recorded in a secret file intended for a select circle at the head of the service, including the chairman of the BND, his deputies, and the head of the relevant department. After review, the transcripts were destroyed, and only general analyses of the American position were transmitted to the government. The United States, however, was not on the list of countries under surveillance by German agents.

The practice had never been officially authorized by Berlin, and doubts remain as to whether it was known at the highest levels of power. Chancellor Angela Merkel, who publicly denounced the American wiretapping of her phone in 2013, stating that "spying among friends is unacceptable," was likely unaware of the surveillance of the American head of state. At the time, the scandal of the US National Security Agency's (NSA) wiretapping of the German chancellor provoked a political outcry and comparisons to the Stasi among some German officials.

Date when the wiretapping began is unknown

According to Holger Stark, the existence of the secret file was only revealed during the parliamentary inquiries into the BND conducted in 2014 and 2015. The book also highlights that German intelligence had already wiretapped other American officials, notably former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (2009-2013), which led the Chancellor's Chief of Staff, Peter Altmaier, to end this practice in 2014. The end of surveillance of Barack Obama, which was not disclosed when this report was published, appears to have occurred the same year, although the precise moment the operation began is unknown, as is whether it extended to his predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush.

Following the revelations about US wiretapping, Angela Merkel attempted to ease strained relations with Washington, emphasizing the need to rebuild trust between partners in the face of shared challenges. The BND, for its part, declined to comment publicly on its activities to our colleagues.