A private conversation between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a top aide concerning plans to urge the US to support a financial transaction tax was intercepted by the National Security Agency and its British partner, GCHQ, according to a batch of top secret documents released by Wikileaks.
The organization released a cache of intelligence records on Wednesday, providing more details about US and British surveillance on the German government—a practice first confirmed thanks to information provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The intercepts gave Washington and London insight into her concerns about the Greek financial situation, and her interest in taxing bank trades on a global level—an initiative that Merkel hoped (perhaps, naively) that she could get the Americans and the British to sign on to.
“Merkel believed that action must be taken to enact a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT); doing so next year, she assessed, would be a major step toward achieving some balance in relief for banks,” an intelligence memo dated Oct. 11, 2011 reads. “In that regard, the Germans thought that pressure could be brought to bear on the US and British governments to help bring about an FTT.”
Wikileaks also released a list of 69 German government telephone numbers that the NSA had deemed to be high-priority targets. It said the database proved that the United States has been engaged in “economic and political espionage against Germany for almost two decades.”
Another document, based on intelligence intercepted by GCHQ and handed to the NSA in 2011, showed that the German government was considering a proposal to assist Greece with financial support from BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China).
“[T]he UK is assisting the US to spy on issues central to Europe,” Wikileaks founder Julian Assange sais in a statement with the document release. “Would France and Germany have proceeded with the BRICS bailout plan for Greece if this intelligence was not collected and passed to the United States – who must have been horrified at the geopolitical implications?” he asked, noting that the “United States’ economic espionage” extended to the “crisis in Greece.”
Last month, documents released by Wikileaks provided details on NSA surveillance of three successive French presidents over the course of more than a decade.
