US spying on talks between German, Chinese militaries: German media
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German media cite a leaked Pentagon document revealing information that the US collected intelligence on a meeting between German and Chinese officials.
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The German and the US flags fly at the US Airbase in Ramstein, southern Germany, on November 6, 2013 (AFP)
US spies continue to wiretap the German military, a decade after the 2013 NSA scandal, the German newspaper Die Zeit and public broadcaster ARD reported on Thursday.
In 2013, documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the United States has been spying on its allies.
At the time, the documents suggested the US had eavesdropped on then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Die Zeit and ARD cited a leaked Pentagon document revealing information that the US collected intelligence on talks between the German and Chinese militaries, in particular, a meeting between German Defense Ministry officials and a Chinese People’s Liberation Army delegation in February.
The document seen by the two media outlets showed that the German officials showed reluctance to further cooperation with the Chinese and urged Beijing to become more "transparent".
According to the two outlets, the German authorities had officially informed the US embassy about the meeting with the Chinese delegation that was mentioned in the leaked document.
They highlighted that the document was shown to the German government and is now "occupying [the attention] of the German security authorities."
Die Zeit and ARD further pointed out that it was the way that the information was obtained that provoked Germany's concerns.
The German media explained that the "top secret" document has a "signal intelligence" mark, which suggests that the information was obtained through surveillance, explaining that this could mean that US intelligence had either intercepted the German Defense Ministry's emails or hacked its systems.
Following the reports, the German Defense Ministry denied having seen any evidence of US espionage in the documents.
The Ministry’s spokesperson claimed that "the published document in question is clearly a partial transcript of a round of talks that took place in the US embassy in Berlin."
"Since this information was shared by us directly with the US, suspicions of espionage are unfounded in this regard," the spokesperson told Germany’s dpa news agency.
In the same context, the German Der Spiegel news website reported that Germany’s domestic intelligence agency and the military counterintelligence service have been looking into whether the US has spied on the German Defense Ministry in February 2023.
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