The German press is responding with a mixture of indignation and disgust to a Washington Post report that the former German interior minister, Otto Schily, was informed by the United States in May 2004 about the case of a Lebanese-born German citizen whom the CIA mistook for an al-Qaida terrorist and held for five months before quietly letting him go. Schily obeyed a US request to remain silent on the matter -– the height of hypocrisy, say German newspapers, especially for a government that prided itself on its public, and very popular, opposition to US policies in the war on terror. One of the big questions now is whether the affair will engulf Angela Merkel's new government which took power in November. After all, her foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was chief of staff to the former chancellor, Gerhard Schröder. Commentators are asking how much Steinmeier knew.

Liberal daily Süddeutsche Zeitung says Steinmeier, head of Schröder's chancellery, did know. It cites a letter written in the summer of 2004 by the chancellery assuring the attorney of the kidnapped German citizen, Khaled al-Masri, that it would help investigate his case. Germany's BND foreign intelligence service, ordered to look into the matter, confirmed that he had indeed been abducted, but the government decided to deal with the matter quietly and did not provide any assistance to the Munich state prosecutor's office which had launched its own investigation. The government then instructed Schily to tell the United States never to make such a mistake again, says Süddeutsche.

The paper says the case has opened up an "abyss" because it associates Berlin with torture, personal injury and obstruction of justice. "There's the official, clean side of German policy that condemns the American war on Iraq, refuses to take part in what is an illegal war of aggression, condemns torture, holds a dialogue on human rights (but only with China, unfortunately not with the US)," writes Süddeutsche. The "unofficial, dirty side" of German policy includes "tolerating US practices on German and European soil of which everyone knows that they shouldn't really be tolerated," writes Süddeutsche.

Leftist paper Die Tageszeitung pokes fun at the former German government's silence on the al-Masri case with a picture of three monkeys on its front page, the traditional symbol for the motto "Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil." "The affair over the kidnapping of al-Masri is part of the wider question of whether the old German government's exhortations directed at Washington were genuine, or nothing more than rhetoric aimed at boosting its domestic popularity," writes the newspaper. "We need clarification if relations with the US are ever to return to normal on a non-criminal basis."

But the new government is more likely to want to cover the matter up, it adds. Neither Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, himself in the firing line as former head of chancellery, nor Chancellor Angela Merkel, who supported Bush over the Iraq war, can have an interest in prolonging the debate about al-Masri's case, writes Tageszeitung. It also has sarcastic praise for the US government's propaganda skills: "You can think what you like about the American government and its secret service, but they know a thing or two about the dirty business of counter-propaganda. A day ahead of the sensitive Europe visit of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, high ranking government officials put out little nuggets of information via the Washington Post that have got the European allies, especially Germany, into hot water."

The left-wing Berliner Zeitung points out that, in a way, the Americans have behaved more properly than the Germans, if you ignore the fact that they kidnapped al-Masri in the first place. When the CIA realized it had made a mistake it released him and informed the German government. "The al-Masri case isn't just a CIA thriller. It's mainly a German political affair which needs to be properly cleared up," writes the paper.

Conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung doesn't see what all the fuss is about. The outrage across Europe stems from alarmist media reports about CIA flights, abductions and torture chambers that have the veneer of being based on serious research but almost appear to be part of a campaign, especially in Germany where Merkel is trying to repair relations with the United States, writes the paper. Everyone knows that America is waging a "robust" war on terror, and it's absurd to think that European intelligence services haven't been aware of CIA flights criss-crossing the continent, says FAZ. "One may also assume, that they usually knew what the purpose of those flights was, just as the Italian authorities are likely to have known about the abduction of an Islamist by dozens of CIA agents," it concludes. "The excitement stems from growing disagreement about whether the means being used in the fight against terrorism are appropriate and legally acceptable." The Bush administration has entered a gray zone in which its Guantanamo Bay prison and the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib has cast doubt on its methods, writes the paper. "That's why every "normal" flight movement can be blown up into a scandal – and people believe it."