The German BND and American NSA Cooperate More Closely than Thought – SPIEGEL ONLINE.
Three months before Edward Snowden shocked the world with his revelations, members of NSA’s “Special Source Operations department” sat down for a weekly meeting at their headquarters in the US state of Maryland. The group, considered internally to be particularly efficient, has several tasks, one of which is overseeing the intelligence agency’s delicate relationship with large telecommunications firms. It is the department that Snowden referred to as the “crown jewels” of the NSA.
At this particular meeting, one significant slip-up was on the meeting agenda. On March 14, 2013, an SSO member had reported a potentially damaging incident. “Commercial consortium personnel” had apparently discovered the program “Wharpdrive,” for which SSO had tapped a fiber-optic cable. “Witting partner personnel have removed the evidence,” he explained further, “and a plausible cover story was provided.” According to an internal NSA document to which SPIEGEL has access, a team was quietly put together to to reinstall the program.
The NSA, apparently, did not perform the highly sensitive operation on its own. All signs indicate that the agency had help from Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the country’s foreign intelligence agency. The code name Wharpdrive appears in a paper drafted in preparation for a BND delegation’s visit to NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, and which instructs NSA leaders to “thank the BND for their assistance with the trilateral program.” It also makes clear that the German agency plays a leadership role in the Wharpdrive program, with the NSA providing only technical assistance.
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