Glenn Greenwald | U.S. Spying on Allies Shows "Institutional Obsession" With Surveillance, October 28, 2013

Source: democracynow.org



The spat over U.S. spying on Germany grew over the weekend following reports the National Security Agency has monitored the phone calls of Chancellor Angela Merkel since as early as 2002, before she even came to office.

The NSA also spied on Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, after he refused to support the Iraq war. NSA staffers working out of the U.S. embassy in Berlin reportedly sent their findings directly to the White House. The German tabloid Bild also reports President Obama was made aware of Merkel's phone tap in 2010, contradicting his apparent claim to her last week that he would have stopped the spying had he known.

In another new disclosure, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reports today the NSA tracked some 60 million calls in Spain over the course of a month last year. A delegation of German and French lawmakers are now in Washington to press for answers on the allegations of U.S. spying in their home countries. We discuss the latest revelations with Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first reported Edward Snowden's leaks. -democracynow.org
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