The Danish secret service FE is said to have helped the USA to spy on Chancellor Angela Merkel. This is reported by several media. Other German politicians were also targeted by the spies.
In a joint search, European television stations and newspapers have accused Denmark’s foreign secret service FE of targeting politicians. The agents are said to have helped colleagues from the USA to wiretap German politicians, among others.
The Danish foreign and military intelligence service Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste (FE) enabled the NSA to use the secret listening station Sandagergardan near Copenhagen, reported the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) and other European media, including the NDR, the WDR and the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” ” On Sunday. According to this, there is an important Internet hub for various submarine cables that is being tapped by secret services.
Allegedly, the Danish government had known about the cooperation with the American authorities since 2015. In the so-called “Dunhammer Report”, the company’s own spies wrote down how far the international cooperation goes. The background was the revelations of the whistleblower Edward Snowden. The Danish Defense Minister Trine Bramsen, who has been in office since June 2019, was informed of this in August 2020, according to the DR. She told the broadcaster that “systematic wiretapping of close allies” was unacceptable.
This report is also said to have set out which politicians were spied on. At the top of the list: Chancellor Angela Merkel, today’s Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the SPD candidate for Chancellor at the time, Peer Steinbrück.
Steinbrück told the Tagesschau that he considered the revelations to be a “political scandal.” They showed that intelligence services “have quite a life of their own.”
The federal government apparently had no idea
An unnamed spokesman for the federal government told the Tagesschau that the facts were only found out through the inquiry. Federal President Steinmeier was also unaware of the actions of the Danish neighbors.
In 2017, Der Spiegel reported that the federal prosecutor’s office had not given any indications of espionage by the American secret services in Germany. Snowden now wrote on Twitter: “Look back at this story and wonder if this decision was free from political influence.”
With the “XKeyscore” software, news services can filter out information from large data streams. This was probably also used by the Danish secret service. Even their own government and Danish companies are said to have been targets. When the relevant information came to the public in 2020, the head of the FE, among others, had to resign. He should actually have been ambassador to Germany.
The fact that the American NSA was spying on German politicians and companies had already come to light a few years ago. However, it was not known that Denmark had helped their American colleagues.
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