MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The United States appears to have taken over control of some parts of the German government, a former state secretary in the German Defense Ministry told Sputnik Thursday, after it was revealed that Germany’s domestic security agency (BfV) had received spy software from the US National Security Agency (NSA) on terms of data exchange.
"The impression since years in Germany is, that US spy agencies have taken over branches of the German government with or without the knowledge of the German government when it comes to the cooperation between the German security apparatus and US-British agencies," Willy Wimmer said.
According to the newspaper, German security agents were put under "high internal pressure," as the NSA was seeking "working results" from the software. BfV also argued that the information obtained from the software could have been transferred to the United States without violating the law.
Wimmer underlined that all those developments pursue one goal – "to strengthen to worldwide intelligence control of the Anglo-Saxon intelligence network of the United States, Canada, Britain, Afghanistan and New Zealand."
Wimmer also added that, despite the exchange of intelligence information among all countries worldwide, the US-German case is different. German intelligence was used by that of the United States to spy against the companies and the political and economic elite of Germany and other countries in the European Union.
In early July, WikiLeaks uncovered secret documents revealing that the United States spied on three German chancellors — Helmut Kohl, Gerhard Schroeder and Angela Merkel — as well as a number of other federal government officials since the 1990s.
In April, German media revealed that the country’s intelligence service BND was spying on residents in the European Union, including in Germany, at the behest of the NSA.
