MICHAEL SAUGA, JORG SCHINDLER and PETER MULLER interviews PETER ALTMAIER
German intelligence coordinator Peter Altmaier: “The public has a right to learn about mistakes and legal violations.” PHOTO/HC Plambeck / DER SPIEGEL
In a SPIEGEL interview, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Chief of Staff Peter Altmaier speaks of mistakes made by German intelligence, leaks of confidential information in Berlin and German timidity in the face of US spying.
SPIEGEL: When SPIEGEL presented documents in October 2013 suggesting that Merkel’s mobile phone had been tapped for years, the government played down the issue. Now WikiLeaks has even published transcripts of the chancellor’s conversations and you are still acting as if nothing happened.
Altmaier: The chancellor already made her position clear at the time. “In Germany, it is German law which applies.” And: “Spying between friends, that’s just not done.” That continues to apply. Besides, there are more astute ways for obtaining needed information, in private conversation, for example.
SPIEGEL: We now know that the NSA not only spied on German and European targets, but that the BND even helped it do so. The Americans delivered search terms — so-called selectors — which the BND then fed into its monitoring systems. Do you know who, exactly, was spied on with the help of the Germans?
Altmaier: Of course the Chancellery has known since April what is in these selector lists. That is the reason I informed members of the NSA investigative committee in parliament and the leaders of the parliamentary groups of the parties represented in the Bundestag early on about these lists. But a distinction must be made between this and the question as to whether the selectors included in the lists should be released. It would badly damage our security interests because we only receive sensitive information from other intelligence services when we can guarantee absolute trust. The same holds true, incidentally, for the BND. Anything else would violate the principles of cooperation between intelligence agencies.
SPIEGEL: Isn’t it more the case that the NSA is violating all the principles of the rule of law?
Altmaier: Thus far, it is clear that, among the selectors, there were also some that violate German and European interests. That is why what both services were doing was not OK. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it was an unlawful act. Kurt Graulich, a former justice with the Federal Administrative Court, is currently addressing this issue as an ombudsman for the NSA investigative committee in parliament.
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