Spying Among Allies Now Normal, German Experts Say

While the recent scandal over NATO partners spying on each other may have come as a surprise to most people, to observers of the shadowy world of espionage the revelations held no shocks.



"To be realistic I think everybody spies on everybody," Ruediger Lentz, director of the Berlin-based think tank the Aspen Institute, told The Anadolu Agency. "Even the closest partners like Britain and the U.S. are spying on each other."



Press allegations that the German foreign intelligence agency BND was instructed to spy on NATO ally Turkey outraged many but were perhaps even more shocking because they followed last year's revelations that the United States tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile telephone.



Last week Der Spiegel followed this with a report on the U.S. National Security Agency's top secret files on Turkey that appeared to show the agency and British counterpart GCHQ had long gathered intelligence through stations in Istanbul and Ankara.



Der Spiegel said the documents were among the files provided by Edward Snowden, a former employee of the agency, known as the NSA.



"Nations by definition have interests," explained Lentz. "And to follow their interests they use whatever means they see fit. The problem is where the limits are."



"If you try to spy on high ranking politicians on a personal level… trying to go behind [their] private lives… I think this is out of all proportion."



Turkey has demanded answers from America and Germany on these allegations and insisted that such spying by friendly nations ends.



The spate of recent press reports, which follow Snowden's leaks of NSA documents last year, has raised the question of a conspiracy to divide NATO.



But Lentz dismissed such theories. "I think there is neither a master plan nor official intention behind it," he said. "But it is certain that it plays into the hands of people who want to distort the relations between our two countries."



Turkish and German interior ministers met in Ankara last Friday to discuss the scandal. The German government neither denied nor confirmed the alleged BND surveillance but both governments agreed that their respective intelligence chiefs should meet soon.



"Reactions from both sides on the political and official level have been very cautious, very sober, very rational," Lentz observed. "Because we all know that we both have common interests in fighting terrorism."



Lentz, a former journalist at Der Spiegel, where he was military and security correspondent, described proposals for 'no-spy agreements' among allies to avoid further embarrassment and restore trust as "totally unrealistic."



"The Americans know that the British spy on them and the British know that Americans are spying on them," Lentz said. "The problem is how can spy agencies work more closely together and to find ways and means to control spy agencies and make their work more transparent and controllable, at least for the controlling organs of politics."



Dr Henning Riecke, the head of the Transatlantic Relations Program of the German Council on Foreign Relations, told Anadolu Agency that espionage among allies was not a taboo but there was a general understanding that friends do not spy on each other.



"Usually among friends there is so much integration," he said. "For example, German officials are operating as French officials on the staff of ministries and the way around. If you have such networks, such close contacts, then what would be the added value of espionage?"



According to Riecke, it was the NSA's targeting of Merkel's private phone rather than revelations of mass digital surveillance that shocked German officials.



"Obviously there is a new normal here," he said. "We were surprised that the Americans were spying on us. We don't spy on them but apparently are spying on other allies like Turkey. So the new normal might be that allies spy on each other."



According to Riecke, the German government's attempt to convince Washington to sign a no-spy agreement is not realistic.



"It will not only be Germany. Other allies would ask for the same kind of treatment from the Americans… the French, Poles, Italians will also ask for such agreements… and the Turks of course.



"This is why Americans don't want to do it."



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