Photo Gallery The NSA's German Presence
A general view of the former National Security Agency monitoring site in Bad Aibling. Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, has since taken over much of the site. But an NSA unit remained behind when most of the US personnel stationed there left in 2004. Documents from the archive of whistleblower Edward Snowden show that German and American intelligence agents cooperated closely at the site in the years that followed.
This slide is from a presentation prepared by the NSA site in Griesheim and refers to the comprehensive surveillance of suspected terrorists in Europe.
The roof of the US Embassy in Berlin, with the top of the Reichstag, the German parliament building, in the background. According to Snowden documents to which SPIEGEL has been given access, the NSA maintains a spy station on the roof of the embassy. The German government has sent lists of questions to the US government on several occasions, and a parliamentary investigative committee has begun looking into the subject in Berlin. Germany's chief public prosecutor has also initiated an investigation into the NSA.
This slide is also from the presentation prepared by the NSA site in Griesheim. It indicates that the US intelligence agency stores metadata for up to 90 days.
The entrance to the US Consulate General in Frankfurt. The site is home to another American listening post, one of several in Germany. The documents in Snowden's archive reveal the depth of the US-German intelligence partnership over the years.
The documents indicate that the Special Collection Service (SCS) maintains two sites in Germany: in the US Consulate General in Frankfurt, pictured here in 2011, and the US Embassy in Berlin, just a few hundred meters away from the Chancellery.
Satellite dishes at the US Army's European headquarters, Lucius D. Clay Kaserne in Wiesbaden's Erbenheim district. This is where the Consolidated Intelligence Center is under construction. The project in southern Hesse comes with a price tag of $124 million (91 million). When finished, the US government will be even better equipped to satisfy its vast hunger for data.
Germanys Chancellor Angela Merkel uses her mobile phone before a meeting at a European Union summit in Brussels in 2011. A database entry relating to Merkels cell phone, which SPIEGEL first reported on in October 2013, shows that the SCS was responsible for its surveillance.
On June 11, August 26 and October 24 of last year, Berlin sent a catalogue of questions to the US government. No answers have been forthcoming. American President Barack Obama is shown here, on the phone in the White House.
Hans-Georg Maassen, of the domestic intelligence agency BfV, left, and Gerhard Schindler, the president of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND, walking to a meeting in the German parliament. Maassen will soon have to explain to the parliamentary investigative committee what he has learned about US spying in Germany and how he intends to fulfill his legally mandated task of preventing espionage.
