Merkel faces dilemma over revelations about double-agent

A thunder storm caused a power outage in parts of Berlin yesterday, but the outrage over a German double agent has generated enough heat and light to power the capital for days.

News that a 31-year-old foreign intelligence employee (BND) reportedly sold more than 200 classified files to the CIA, at just €115 a go, has revived a feeling of betrayal in Germany towards the US that, after last summer's Edward Snowden allegations, had only just gone into abeyance.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, just back from a trip to China, now faces two challenges: to demand political clarification and intelligence concessions from president Barack Obama in Washington, and to bring under control a domestic political chorus that, in her absence, has built to a shrill crescendo.

Leading the chorus yesterday was Bundestag interior committee head Wolfgang Bosbach, who demanded the US decide whether the BND was a "partner or an espionage target".

Interior minister Thomas de Maizière, meanwhile, has suggested the lesson of the scandal may be to end Berlin’s practice of not spying on its allies, particularly the US.

If anything, the double agent affair indicates why that might be a good idea: after two years selling secrets to the CIA via the US embassy in Berlin – reportedly not on Germany’s surveillance radar – intelligence caught wind of the mole only when he contacted the Russian embassy.

Empty-handed

Merkel has been cautious in her only public remarks to date on the affair. She has little to show for last year’s outrage over Snowden revelations, including an NSA tap on her mobile phone. Her officials came back empty-handed from Washington with neither the hoped-for no-spy agreement nor even details of US intelligence activity in Germany.

Too much public outrage from Berlin, Merkel knows, brings a real risk of blowback. Snowden documents have already demonstrated that German intelligence agencies were the most prolific users of the NSA spying software condemned by German politicians.

Any political progress will require breaking the Berlin- Washington dialogue of the deaf on espionage matters. German officials say their US counterparts continually underestimate the poisonous legacy of state surveillance on the German psyche. US officials, meanwhile, accuse the Germans of failing to draw a line between current intelligence gathering and the vulnerability left in the US psyche left by the September 11th attacks.

Asked by Berlin why Germany is a target, they point to how unwitting German intelligence agencies allowed the 9/11 cell to devise its plane hijack plans undisturbed in Hamburg.

Hillary Clinton's current tour through Germany to promote her memoirs has turned into a damage limitation exercise on behalf of the White House. She suggested yesterday that the best Germany could hope for from the latest scandal was new rules of engagement with the US intelligence services.

"These people went further than they should," she told the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily of the reported CIA spying.

“I hope the result will be a dialogue between our governments, making sure what is appropriate and what isn’t.”

German security analysts agree that this the most likely direct outcome, if Merkel can use the political embarrassment as leverage in talks with Obama.

"Either he has to admit he knew about this, and accept blame for the political damage caused, or he admits the intelligence service acted without his knowledge," said Marcel Dickow, analyst with the SWP.

Latest scandal

Other Berlin analysts predict the latest espionage scandal will catalyse an ongoing maturing in Germany’s relationship with the US, for decades polarised between Germans grateful for US post-war assistance and those critical of perceived US hegemony.

"Now most Germans realise that international relationships are cost-benefit analyses and that we work with the US only when it serves our interests," said Olaf Boehnke, Berlin head of the ECFR think-tank. "If anything these scandals are a reality check for our political and media elites, to catch up with the German public."

Already the US has fallen to fifth place in the league table of popular German partners. A survey last May for the Körber Foundation found Germans wished to see more co-operation with France, Poland, the UK and China before the US.