Photo Gallery 'We Put a Good Friend in a Difficult Position'
Members of the European Parliament hold up portraits of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who is currently living in exile in Russia, during a March 12 vote condemning the US intelligence agency's spying on Europe.
Documents from the NSA trove leaked by Edward Snowden (seen here speaking by remote-controlled robot at a TED conference in Vancouver on March 18), suggest that the NSA spied on the mobile phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The charge embarassed Chancellor Merkel and has created serious tensions in German-American relations. Here, Merkel is seen with US President Barack Obama at the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2013.
Hayden is less apologetic when speaking of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, seen here during a 2005 meeting with former US President George W. Bush. "I would add that the chancellor's predecessor conducted a whole variety of things that were kind of inconsistent with the American view of the world," Hayden told SPIEGEL. Schröder was one of Europe's most outspoken critics of Bush's hawkish policies on Iraq and other areas.
