It all started when Edward Snowden started leaking classified information in June 2013 from the National Security Agency (NSA), revealing that the US surveillance scheme was not only targeting the bad guys. He leaked in October 2013 that the cell phone of Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel was tapped. The German government sharply reacted. Merkel said repeatedly that US espionage against a close ally was unacceptable, but that there was no alternative to close ties with Washington. Yet, Germany expelled the CIA Berlin bureau chief without publicizing his name, making a point that they were not going to put up with everything that the United States does.
With all that tough posturing, though, German weekly Der Spiegel reported Aug. 18 that Germany's foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), had inadvertently spied on US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, and had also deliberately targeted Turkey since 2009. “Turkey is one of the BND focuses included in the BND order profile, making the country an official target for the foreign intelligence agency’s espionage efforts,” Der Spiegel wrote, stressing that the German government, too, has targeted a NATO ally in its espionage.