I WANT TO HEAR THE EXCUSE – AT 11:18 A.M. ET:   Germany complained mightily when it was revealed that US intelligence was regularly tapping Angela Merkel's cell phone.  Well, well, look what has just been revealed.  From AFP:

Germany's foreign intelligence service long spied on numerous official and business targets in the United States, including the White House, Spiegel weekly reported Thursday.

The magazine said it had seen documents showing that the intelligence service, the BND, had a list of some 4,000 so-called selector keywords for surveillance between 1998 and 2006.

These included telephone or fax numbers, as well as email addresses at the White House as well as the US finance and foreign ministries.

Other monitoring targets ranged from military institutions including the US Air Force or the Marine Corps, space agency NASA to civic group Human Rights Watch.

Hundreds of foreign embassies as well as international organisation like the International Monetary Fund were not spared, Spiegel said.

The BND declined comment in the Spiegel report.

Germany had reacted with outrage when information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that US agents were carrying out widespread tapping worldwide, including of Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone.

Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany where state spying on citizens was rampant, declared repeatedly that "spying among friends is not on" while acknowledging Germany's reliance on the US in security matters.

COMMENT:  This hardly shocks me, and really doesn't disturb me all that much.  Of course friends spy on friends.  A friend can be an enemy tomorrow morning.  But now maybe the Europeans will be a little less self righteous when lecturing the United States on these matters.

June 22, 2017