BERLIN—German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff
requested a meeting with the U.S. Ambassador here after new leaks
of documents appear to show the U.S. intercepted Ms. Merkel's phone
calls and monitored German government officials.
The documents, which replaced Greece as the top story on some
German newspaper front pages Thursday, included a conversation that
Ms. Merkel had in 2011 about the eurozone crisis with someone
described as her personal assistant.
The documents, published by WikiLeaks, also included a list of
telephone numbers of senior German officials whom the online
disclosure platform described as targets of U.S. National Security
Agency monitoring.
It wasn't immediately possible to authenticate the documents.
WikiLeaks has leaked documents in the past that were later
authenticated. In June, WikiLeaks published documents appearing to
show NSA surveillance of French President Franç ois Holland e.
German news media have played up the leaks, published Wednesday,
resurfacing the issue of U.S. surveillance here at a time when much
of the media attention has been on the crisis in Greece. Bild, the
highest-circulation tabloid, splashed "Here's How the U.S.
Eavesdropped on Merkel!" across its front page.
The leaks prompted the head of Ms. Merkel's chancellery, Peter
Altmaier, to reach out to U.S. Ambassador John Emerson.
"The chief of the chancellery has invited the American
ambassador to a conversation in the chancellery," a German official
said in a statement on Thursday.
In Germany, allegations of U.S. surveillance of Ms. Merkel's
cellphone first surfaced in 2013 and have weighed on bilateral
relations and German attitudes toward the U.S. ever since.
U.S. officials said shortly after those allegations surfaced
that an internal review had revealed Ms. Merkel and more than 30
other world leaders had been monitored by the NSA. The White House
promised the U.S. wouldn't monitor Ms. Merkel's communications in
the future.
A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman in Berlin had no immediate comment on
the WikiLeaks documents or the chancellery meeting.
Write to Anton Troianovski at anton.troianovski@wsj.com
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