Article content

President Barack Obama was dragged into the trans-Atlantic spying row Sunday after it was claimed he personally authorized the monitoring of Angela Merkel’s telephone three years ago.

Scrambling to contain the growing diplomatic fallout, the National Security Agency (NSA) was forced to deny reports that the president allegedly allowed U.S. intelligence to listen to calls from the German Chancellor’s mobile telephone after he was briefed on the operation by NSA director Keith Alexander in 2010.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or NSA denies Barack Obama personally authorized wiretap on German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2010 Back to video

The latest claim, reported in the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, followed reports in Der Spiegel that the surveillance of Ms. Merkel’s telephone began as long ago as 2002 when she was still the opposition leader, three years before being elected Chancellor. That monitoring only ended in the weeks before Mr. Obama visited Berlin in June this year, the magazine added.

The magnitude of the eavesdropping shocked us

Citing leaked U.S. intelligence documents, it also reported that America conducted eavesdropping operations on the German government from a listening post at its embassy beside the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, one of more than 80 such centres worldwide.