German intelligence services eavesdropped on calls made by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and predecessor Hillary Clinton, according to German magazine Der Spiegel.

The Guardian reports:

The German foreign intelligence agency, BND, tapped a satellite phone conversation Kerry made in 2013 and also recorded a conversation between Clinton and former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan a year earlier, according to the magazine.

The three officials were not directly targeted with phone calls collected by accident within the context of other operations, according to the report. In Clinton’s case, the call reportedly took place on the same “frequency” as a terror suspect.

The tapping of Clinton’s call was reported on Friday by German public broadcaster ARD and Munich daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Berlin and the State Department in Washington would not comment on the latest reports. A BND spokeswoman told Reuters that German officials were not tapping the phones of allied countries and the United States was not a target.

“Any accidental recordings are deleted immediately,” she added.

Read more here.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly

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#angela merkel#germany#hillary clinton#john kerry#secretary of state