WASHINGTON — The effort to remake the intelligence relationship between the United States and Germany after it was disclosed last year that the National Security Agency was tapping Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone has collapsed, according to German officials, who say there will be no broad intelligence sharing or “no-spy” agreement between the two countries when Ms. Merkel arrives at the White House on Friday.
The failure to reach a broader accord has led to some bitter recriminations on both sides, with sharply diverging accounts from officials in Berlin and Washington about who was responsible for what was supposed to be a political solution to an embarrassing disclosure. But it also raises broader questions at a moment that President Obama and Ms. Merkel will attempt to show that they are in general accord on a strategy for both punishing Russia for its actions in Ukraine and containing President Vladimir V. Putin in the years ahead.
The effort to remain in step, at a time of significant disagreements within the European alliance about how to respond to Russia, is “going to put our intelligence relationships to the kind of test we haven’t seen since the end of the Cold War,” a senior administration official said this week.
Just before she left Berlin for Washington on Thursday, Ms. Merkel talked by phone with Mr. Putin, urging the release of a German-led team of military observers — four Germans, a Pole, a Czech and a Dane — who have been held almost a week in the Ukrainian town of Slovyansk, one of a dozen or so east Ukrainian cities where pro-Russian militants have assumed control.
The fact that the observers are still being held — to growing consternation in Berlin — has suggested to some in the West and in Ukraine that Mr. Putin, who in general values relations with Germany, is either unable or unwilling to intervene.
While the disclosure that the N.S.A. had listened to Ms. Merkel’s conversations for more than a decade was a passing story in the United States — one of many from the files that Edward J. Snowden took with him when he left Hawaii with the agency’s crown jewels — it has remained an issue in Germany. After the disclosure, Mr. Obama said the United States would not monitor Ms. Merkel’s communications, but he made no such commitment for any other German officials. And he said nothing about the future of the N.S.A.’s operations in Germany, including whether a listening station based in the American Embassy in Berlin, would stay intact.
For a number of months, German officials said the chancellor could not visit Washington until there was a resolution, including what they called a “restoration of trust” between the allies.
But the talks hit the rocks as soon as they began. Germany demanded a no-spy agreement that would ban the United States from conducting espionage activities on its soil. That led to a series of tough exchanges between the president’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, and her German counterpart, Christoph Heusgen.
Ms. Rice, according to American officials, said that the United States did not have no-spy agreements with any of its close allies, even with the other members of the so-called Five Eyes — the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — which share virtually all of their intelligence. She said any such agreement with Germany would set a precedent that every other major European ally, along with the Japanese, the South Koreans and others, would soon demand to replicate.
By the American account of events, German officials decided to proceed with an agreement for enhanced intelligence sharing, a process that consumed the intelligence agencies in both countries, and was presided over by Ms. Rice and Mr. Heusgen. American officials said that in January, the Germans terminated those talks, saying that if an accord could not include a no-spy agreement — a political necessity for Ms. Merkel — it was not worth signing.
“We were ready to conclude an agreement about intelligence cooperation that reiterated key principles about our collection activities around the time of the president’s January speech” that put new limits on the N.S.A.’s activities, a senior administration official said. “But it was the German government who told us they no longer wanted to proceed, not the other way around.”
“They pulled the plug,” another official said. “What the Germans want, and wanted, is that we would never do anything against their laws on their territory.” That is an agreement the United States “has with no country,” the official said.
Any monitoring from German soil — including from the United States Embassy — would constitute a violation of German law.
“Our positions and those of the U.S. lie quite far apart, that is quite obvious,” Ms. Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said Wednesday. He added that Germany stood by “the demand that on German soil the German laws must be respected, and by everybody.” Then, he added: “But it is a long political process.”
Mr. Seibert’s explanation to the German press was that a no-spy agreement and enhanced cooperation between the two country’s intelligence agencies was first proposed as “an offer which came in last year from the U.S.” He said that is “not being followed up on” by the Obama administration.
American officials say the concept originated with German officials in an effort to respond to the political uproar caused by the Snowden disclosure. “There is huge hypocrisy here,” said one senior intelligence official, who would not talk on the record about intelligence issues. “Allies spy on each other — that’s not exactly news. And Germany makes huge use of what we provide them from our infrastructure in Europe and around the world. Yet they had to respond to the outrage.”
It is unclear how the disagreement may figure in talks between Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel. But Mr. Obama is intent on closing the chapter that involved the revelation of N.S.A. spying on the chancellor — something Obama and Bush administration officials insist they did not know about — and focusing on Ukraine.
Ms. Merkel’s government will also report Friday to a parliamentary commission on the Snowden disclosures. Its report is expected to say that Mr. Snowden will not be called to testify in Germany about the conclusions he reached. A German newspaper, The Süddeutsche Zeitung, quoted a document from German officials as saying that inviting Mr. Snowden, who is wanted on criminal charges in the United States, to Germany would put a “permanent strain” on relations with Washington.
The failure to reach a broader accord has led to some bitter recriminations on both sides, with sharply diverging accounts from officials in Berlin and Washington about who was responsible for what was supposed to be a political solution to an embarrassing disclosure. But it also raises broader questions at a moment that President Obama and Ms. Merkel will attempt to show that they are in general accord on a strategy for both punishing Russia for its actions in Ukraine and containing President Vladimir V. Putin in the years ahead.
The effort to remain in step, at a time of significant disagreements within the European alliance about how to respond to Russia, is “going to put our intelligence relationships to the kind of test we haven’t seen since the end of the Cold War,” a senior administration official said this week.
Just before she left Berlin for Washington on Thursday, Ms. Merkel talked by phone with Mr. Putin, urging the release of a German-led team of military observers — four Germans, a Pole, a Czech and a Dane — who have been held almost a week in the Ukrainian town of Slovyansk, one of a dozen or so east Ukrainian cities where pro-Russian militants have assumed control.
The fact that the observers are still being held — to growing consternation in Berlin — has suggested to some in the West and in Ukraine that Mr. Putin, who in general values relations with Germany, is either unable or unwilling to intervene.
While the disclosure that the N.S.A. had listened to Ms. Merkel’s conversations for more than a decade was a passing story in the United States — one of many from the files that Edward J. Snowden took with him when he left Hawaii with the agency’s crown jewels — it has remained an issue in Germany. After the disclosure, Mr. Obama said the United States would not monitor Ms. Merkel’s communications, but he made no such commitment for any other German officials. And he said nothing about the future of the N.S.A.’s operations in Germany, including whether a listening station based in the American Embassy in Berlin, would stay intact.
For a number of months, German officials said the chancellor could not visit Washington until there was a resolution, including what they called a “restoration of trust” between the allies.
But the talks hit the rocks as soon as they began. Germany demanded a no-spy agreement that would ban the United States from conducting espionage activities on its soil. That led to a series of tough exchanges between the president’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, and her German counterpart, Christoph Heusgen.
Ms. Rice, according to American officials, said that the United States did not have no-spy agreements with any of its close allies, even with the other members of the so-called Five Eyes — the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — which share virtually all of their intelligence. She said any such agreement with Germany would set a precedent that every other major European ally, along with the Japanese, the South Koreans and others, would soon demand to replicate.
By the American account of events, German officials decided to proceed with an agreement for enhanced intelligence sharing, a process that consumed the intelligence agencies in both countries, and was presided over by Ms. Rice and Mr. Heusgen. American officials said that in January, the Germans terminated those talks, saying that if an accord could not include a no-spy agreement — a political necessity for Ms. Merkel — it was not worth signing.
“We were ready to conclude an agreement about intelligence cooperation that reiterated key principles about our collection activities around the time of the president’s January speech” that put new limits on the N.S.A.’s activities, a senior administration official said. “But it was the German government who told us they no longer wanted to proceed, not the other way around.”
“They pulled the plug,” another official said. “What the Germans want, and wanted, is that we would never do anything against their laws on their territory.” That is an agreement the United States “has with no country,” the official said.
Any monitoring from German soil — including from the United States Embassy — would constitute a violation of German law.
“Our positions and those of the U.S. lie quite far apart, that is quite obvious,” Ms. Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said Wednesday. He added that Germany stood by “the demand that on German soil the German laws must be respected, and by everybody.” Then, he added: “But it is a long political process.”
Mr. Seibert’s explanation to the German press was that a no-spy agreement and enhanced cooperation between the two country’s intelligence agencies was first proposed as “an offer which came in last year from the U.S.” He said that is “not being followed up on” by the Obama administration.
American officials say the concept originated with German officials in an effort to respond to the political uproar caused by the Snowden disclosure. “There is huge hypocrisy here,” said one senior intelligence official, who would not talk on the record about intelligence issues. “Allies spy on each other — that’s not exactly news. And Germany makes huge use of what we provide them from our infrastructure in Europe and around the world. Yet they had to respond to the outrage.”
It is unclear how the disagreement may figure in talks between Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel. But Mr. Obama is intent on closing the chapter that involved the revelation of N.S.A. spying on the chancellor — something Obama and Bush administration officials insist they did not know about — and focusing on Ukraine.
Ms. Merkel’s government will also report Friday to a parliamentary commission on the Snowden disclosures. Its report is expected to say that Mr. Snowden will not be called to testify in Germany about the conclusions he reached. A German newspaper, The Süddeutsche Zeitung, quoted a document from German officials as saying that inviting Mr. Snowden, who is wanted on criminal charges in the United States, to Germany would put a “permanent strain” on relations with Washington.
