July, 08 2015, 04:30pm EDT
All The Chancellor's Men
WASHINGTON
Today, Wednesday 8 July at 1800 CEST, WikiLeaks publishes three NSA intercepts of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, together with a list of 56 National Security Agency (NSA) target selectors for the Chancellor and the Chancellery. It lists not only confidential numbers for the Chancellor, but also for her top officials, her aides, her chief of staff, her political office and even her fax machine. The combined German NSA target lists released by WikiLeaks so far shows the NSA explicitly targeted for long-term surveillance 125 phone numbers for top German officials and did so for political and economic reasons, according to its own designations.
The intercepts published today show that the most senior levels of the US Executive were appraised of Chancellor Merkel's plans on how to respond to the international financial crisis and the Eurozone bank bailout. Her private views about Obama's engagement with Iran were also intercepted as she spoke to the United Arab Emirates Crown Prince Shaykh Muhammad bin Zayid al-Nuhayyan.
The target list includes almost two dozen targeted telephone numbers at the federal agency (German: Bundeskanzleramt) that serves the executive office of the Chancellor, surrounding the Chancellor in a web of surveillance. The intensive nature of US targeting around the Chancellor explains why the White House could easily commit to not targeting Angela Merkel personally in the future, but continues to refuse to make such a commitment for other members of the German government - the Chancellor cannot run the government by talking to herself.
The list of selectors that are targeted include several cell phone numbers, including the Vodafone number for Chancellor Merkel that was in use through 2013. The Vodafone number for former head of the Chancellery from 2009 to December 2013 (and therefore ultimately in charge of the BND for that time, which was through the start of the Snowden revelations), Ronald Pofalla, is also on the list. Pofalla stated on 12 August 2013 after the Snowden documents first surfaced that "the US side offered us a no-spy agreement"; however, since then it has become clear this is not the case.
Pofalla was questioned on Thursday 2 July, in the most recent German Parliamentary Inquiry session into the BND and NSA, where he stated that there was no proof that Chancellor Merkel had been spied on. This is despite a publication in February 2014 detailing NSA targeting of a number for Merkel which launched an investigation into this surveillance. However, the investigation was dropped on 12 June this year due to lack of evidence. WikiLeaks' publication today provides this evidence through the NSA intercept reports derived from the interceptions provided through these selectors. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange said: "There is now proof enough of NSA surveillance on German soil. It is time to reopen the investigation and for the NSA to stop engaging in its illegal activities against Germany."
The T-Mobile and O2 cell number for Geza Andreas von Geyr, former department head of a unit of Foreign and Security Policy at the Chancellery (responsible for bilateral US relations) was targeted, as was the T-Mobile number for Bernard Kotch. He is current Deputy Head of the Federal Chancellery Office.
The names associated with some of the targets indicate that spying on the Chancellery predates Angela Merkel as it includes staff of former Chancellor Gerhard Schroder (in office 1998-2002), and his predecessor Helmut Kohl. This mirrors the US approach to its targeting of French officials, which showed interceptions extending back to President Sarkozy and President Chirac.
The list has been updated for more than a decade after it was standardised in 2002. However, a close study of the list shows that it has evolved from an earlier target list extending back to the 1990s. Some of the old Chancellery numbers from the Bonn years are targeted and still in use, but redirect callers to Berlin.
Many of the targeted numbers are for top officials and advisors handling the Economic and Financial Policy at the Chancellery (Division 4), Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (Division 2). It is also noteworthy that the list includes targets at Division 6, responsible for co-ordination of the intelligence service of the German Federation.
Today's publication includes three NSA reports based on interceptions. One is from 2009 and details German Chancellor Merkel's views on the international financial crisis, expressed in February of that year. It outlines concerns for the impaired assets of banks and questioning of the approach taken by the US Federal Reserve. The Chancellor expressed support for the principles in the framework of dealing with toxic assets, being discussed at a forthcoming meeting of G-20 nations in London on 2 April 2009. The Chancellor wants banks to share responsibility for toxic assets and expressed that at least Germany would not have an "anonymous garbage bin" where such assets would be dumped. The Chancellor thought that the Federal Reserve was "taking risks", according to the intercept.
The second NSA intercept report, published today, is based on communications between Chancellor Merkel and Crown Prince Shaykh Muhammad bin Zayid al-Nuhayyan of the United Arab Emirates in March 2009. The two met in person in January of the same year when the Crown Prince was on a public visit to Germany. In the intercepted talk Chancellor Merkel and the Crown Prince exchanged their views of the reaction in Tehran to a recent online New Year's video message by President Obama to the Iranian public. Obama's message was released on 20 March on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian new year. The Chancellor and the Crown Prince exchanged views on the reaction by Iranian leaders to Obama's initiative. The report is labelled Top Secret and Highly Sensitive but shared with the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada (the "Five Eyes").
The third Top Secret report published today by WikiLeaks is based on interception of communication between Chancellor Merkel and two of her advisers, Helge Hassold and Albrecht Morgenstern on 28 August 2011. The topic was the draft of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and certain reservations the advisers had because of lack of references to conditionality and contagion in the outline for the new instruments that they wanted Germany to press. Merkel's advisers also stated concerns that interest expenses were absent in the guarantee amounts, pointing out that those expenses have grown because of debt extension granted to Greece, Portugal and Ireland.
WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit media organisation. Our goal is to bring important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists (our electronic drop box). One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth. We are a young organization that has grown very quickly, relying on a network of dedicated volunteers around the globe. Since 2007, when the organization was officially launched, WikiLeaks has worked to report on and publish important information. We also develop and adapt technologies to support these activities.
LATEST NEWS
'Evil and Cruel': GOP Lawmaker Shamed for Unloading Medicaid-Related Stock Before Voting to Gut Program
"Their bill will gut Medicaid and kill people, and they know it," said Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.).
Jul 03, 2025
Republican Congressman Robert Bresnahan of Pennsylvania got publicly shamed by many of his congressional colleagues on Thursday after it was revealed he unloaded a Medicaid-related stock before voting for a massive budget package that enacted historically devastating cuts to the program.
Quiver Quantitative, an investment data platform that tracks stock trades made by politicians and other prominent public figures, revealed on its X account that Bresnahan recently sold shares he'd owned in Centene Corporation, a for-profit firm that specializes in delivering healthcare exchanges for Medicaid. In the weeks since he sold his shares in the company, their value plunged by more than 40 percent.
Quiver Quantitative added that while Bresnahan claims not to manage his own stock portfolio, he does not appear to have set up a qualified blind trust that would eliminate potential conflicts of interest between his investments and his work as a member of Congress.
Regardless, many of Bresnahan's Democratic colleagues reacted with fury and disgust to revelations that the Centene shares were dropped before he voted for a bill that will slash more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) over the span of a decade.
"This Congressman literally dumped stock in a Medicaid provider company right before this bill came to the floor," wrote Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) on X. "Don't be fooled—these guys know exactly what they're doing."
"Wow," marveled Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.). "So he votes to gut Medicaid and throw 17 million people off of their healthcare and then dumps his Medicaid related stock to cover his own ass? That's just evil and cruel."
"If the Big Ugly Nasty Bill doesn't hurt Medicaid, why are Republicans selling their Medicaid-associated stocks?" asked Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.). "Their words say one thing, their actions another. Their bill will gut Medicaid and kill people, and they know it."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) ripped Bresnahan for "protecting his stock portfolio while ripping away health care from 17 million Americans" with his vote to gut Medicaid.
"This is Washington at its worst," she added. "We need to ban Congressional stock trading."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Climate Change Fueling 'Most Widespread and Damaging' Droughts in History: UN Report
"This is not a dry spell," said the co-author of a new U.N. report. "This is a slow-moving global catastrophe."
Jul 03, 2025
Climate change is driving "some of the most widespread and damaging drought events in recorded history," according to a report published Wednesday on global drought hotspots.
Over the past two years, droughts have fueled increased food insecurity, dehydration, and disease that have heightened poverty and political instability in several regions of the world, according to research by the U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
"This is not a dry spell," says Dr. Mark Svoboda, report co-author and NDMC Director. "This is a slow-moving global catastrophe, the worst I've ever seen. This report underscores the need for systematic monitoring of how drought affects lives, livelihoods, and the health of the ecosystems that we all depend on."
The report examined conditions in some of the globe's most drought-prone regions. They found that the economic disruption caused by droughts today is twice as high as in 2000.
In Eastern and Southern Africa, which have been blighted with dangerously low levels of rainfall, more than 90 million people face acute hunger.
Somalia has been hit particularly hard, with 4.4 million, more than a quarter of the population, facing "crisis level" food insecurity in early 2025. Zambia, meanwhile, faced one of the world's worst energy crises last year when the Zambezi River dried up, causing its hydroelectric dams to run critically low.
Other drought-plagued regions have seen wide ranges of ecological and economic disruptions.
In Spain, low levels of rainfall in 2023 devastated olive crops, causing olive oil prices to double. In the Amazon Basin, low water levels caused a mass death of fish and endangered dolphins. The Panama Canal became so depleted that trade vessels were forced to re-route, causing multi-week shipping delays. And in Morocco, Eid celebrations had to be cancelled due to a shortage of sheep.
Recent studies of drought have found that they are increasingly caused not by lack of rainfall, but by aggressive heat, which speeds up evaporation. The areas hit the hardest over the past two years were ones already suffering from the most severe temperature increases. It was also exacerbated by a particularly severe El Niño weather cycle in 2023-24.
"This was a perfect storm," says report co-author Dr. Kelly Helm Smith, NDMC Assistant Director and drought impacts researcher. "El Niño added fuel to the fire of climate change, compounding the effects for many vulnerable societies and ecosystems past their limits."
Though the effects of droughts are often felt most acutely in areas already suffering from poverty and instability, the researchers predict that as they get worse, the effects will be felt worldwide.
In 2024, then the hottest year on record, 48 of the 50 U.S. states faced drought conditions, the highest proportion ever seen. Drought in the U.S. has coincided with a dramatic increase in wildfire frequency and severity over the past 50 years.
"Ripple effects can turn regional droughts into global economic shocks," Smith said. "No country is immune when critical water-dependent systems start to collapse."
The researchers advocated for investments in global drought prevention, but also for broader measures to address the existing inequalities that make droughts more severe.
"Drought has a disproportionate effect on those with few resources," Smith said. "We can act now to reduce the effects of future droughts by working to ensure that everyone has access to food, water, education, health care and economic opportunity."
The researchers also emphasized the urgency of coordinated action to confront the climate crisis.
"The struggles...to secure water, food, and energy under persistent drought offer a preview of water futures under unchecked global warming," said Svoboda. "No country, regardless of wealth or capacity, can afford to be complacent."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump-GOP Budget Bill Will Give Top 1% Over $1 Trillion in Tax Breaks: Analysis
The amount set to flow to a "tiny sliver of affluent families" over the next decade is roughly equal to the Medicaid cuts included in the Republican bill, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Jul 03, 2025
An analysis released Thursday estimates that the Republican legislation on the brink of final passage in Congress would deliver over $1 trillion in combined tax breaks to the richest 1% of Americans over the next decade—an amount roughly equal to the bill's unprecedented cuts to Medicaid.
The new analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), which utilizes data from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation and other sources, finds that the "tiny sliver of affluent families" in the top 1% of the U.S. income distribution will "receive tax cuts totaling $1.02 trillion over the next decade."
The centerpiece of Trump's megabill is a trillion-dollar tax cut to the wealthy, paid for by increasing the national debt and cutting public services. pic.twitter.com/ISr2XuIdJQ
— ITEP (@iteptweets) July 3, 2025
ITEP has previously shown that the Republican bill's tax cuts—largely extensions of expiring provisions of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law—would be highly skewed to the wealthy, with the small percentage of households at the very top receiving significantly more in total tax breaks than middle- and lower-income Americans.
"Sixty-nine percent of the net tax cuts would go to the richest fifth of Americans in 2026, only 11% would go to the middle fifth of Americans, and less than 1% would go to the poorest fifth," the group found. "The $107 billion in net tax cuts going to the richest 1% next year would exceed the amount going to the entire bottom 60% of taxpayers."
ITEP's new analysis was released as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) wrapped up a record-breaking, eight-hour-plus speech against the GOP legislation, which delayed a final vote on the measure. Republicans are expected to pass the unpopular bill on Thursday.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular