Did Germany Spy on Obama? A New Book Details Intercepted Calls

A newly published book has revealed that Germany’s foreign intelligence service monitored some phone calls made by former U.S. President Barack Obama while he was traveling aboard Air Force One.

According to The Grown-Up Country: Germany Without America — A Historic Opportunity by journalist Holger Stark, Germany’s intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), discovered that certain in-flight calls were unencrypted and accessible via radio frequencies.

The alleged interceptions occurred around 2013, the same period when revelations emerged that U.S. intelligence had been spying on then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The book reports that transcripts of intercepted calls were compiled in a secret file and shown to senior intelligence officials, though the documents were later destroyed.

A former senior German official confirmed that reports of the surveillance circulated within the chancellor’s office at the time but described the intelligence as “incidental bycatch” rather than a deliberate operation targeting the U.S. president.

German officials have said the BND does not comment publicly on intelligence activities and reports such matters only to government and parliamentary oversight bodies.

The allegations add a new dimension to long-standing debates over surveillance among close allies and revisit a period of strained trust between Washington and Berlin following disclosures of widespread intelligence monitoring.