According to “Zeit” journalist Holger Stark, the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) wiretapped then US President Barack Obama.
Jan 5, 2026, 3:44 amJan 5, 2026, 3:44 am
In the podcast by “Bild” deputy Paul Ronzheimer, Stark said that the secret service had taken advantage of the fact that encrypting conversations from the American government plane was much more difficult than on the ground. “That’s why the Americans repeatedly had conversations that were either poorly encrypted, where there were gaps, or that weren’t encrypted at all,” said Stark.
Barack Obama was apparently also spied on by the Germans…Image: keystone
“And the BND knew that, and he knew the dozen or so frequencies that Air Force One used for this type of communication for telephone calls. And he listened to it.” There was no official espionage order for this. The Obama phone calls were properly written down and only a copy was passed around in the BND. The internal directive was that one copy should be shredded at the end. That’s what happened in most cases.
“The Chancellery didn’t know anything about this for a long time.”
BND says nothing about whether the allegations are true
The BND did not comment specifically on the allegations. At the request of the German Press Agency in Berlin, he said:
“As a general rule, the Federal Intelligence Service does not comment publicly on matters that concern any intelligence findings or activities.”
This does not make any statement as to whether the facts are correct or not. “The Federal Intelligence Service reports on relevant topics, in particular to the Federal Government and the responsible, secretly meeting committees of the German Bundestag,” the message simply said.
Merkel was a victim of wiretapping by the US secret service NSA
The alleged eavesdropping attack on Obama is also interesting because the US secret service NSA had been tapping the cell phone of then Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) for years. This became known in 2013 and led to considerable tension in German-American relations. “Spying on friends is not possible,” Merkel said angrily. Obama was embarrassed at the time – without making it clear how long he had known about the spying. Merkel and Obama then tried to have a better relationship.
According to Stark, the BND did not regularly wiretap Obama. But if the employees had noticed that transmissions were being made on the relevant frequencies, they would have recorded. “It was authorized by the BND president, who could have stopped it,” said the journalist. Conversations of then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and some of American military officers were also intercepted by the BND. “It was simply too tempting for the BND to listen in and thus take a small look into the thoughts of the American leadership,” said Stark.
… how Angela Merkel was spied on by the Americans.Image: keystone
The Chancellery stopped the operation in 2014
The Chancellery stopped monitoring the US presidential machine in 2014 – after the operation against Obama had already been running for several years, the journalist wrote on the online portal “Zeit”. “It is unclear when it began and whether his predecessor George W. Bush had already been selected as a target.” The findings from the interception of Obama’s phone calls were incorporated into general assessments of the US attitude, which were also sent to the Chancellery – without it becoming clear where the information specifically came from, said the journalist.
Stark also published his research results in his new book “The Adult Country. Germany without America – a historic opportunity”, which is published today. It says that the existence of the mysterious folder at the BND with the transcripts of the US operation was first mentioned in the BND investigative committee in 2014 and 2015. The Chancellor’s Office ordered that the operation be stopped and that conversations that were accidentally intercepted be immediately deleted in the future. “However, the BND managed to keep the biggest and most politically sensitive target under cover: Barack Obama.” (sda/dpa)