Word: germanize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...intelligence that first detected an increased "intensity" in telephone and electronic communications between Europe and tribal areas of Pakistan starting a year ago, according to the German official. Then, last October, a U.S. agency spotted coded communications between the aliases "Muaz," "Zafer" and "Abdul Malik," apparently based in Germany, and sources in Pakistan. U.S. officials passed on copies of those messages, apparently gleaned from private Internet chat rooms, to German officials. The messages were in code, but contained some decipherable details including a discussion of hydrogen peroxide, which can be used to make a bomb in high enough concentrations...
American assistance in uncovering the terrorist plot last week to attack U.S. and German targets in Germany was "vital," according to a German official familiar with the investigation. It was National Security Agency surveillance of communications between Germany and Pakistan, along with some help from Pakistani intelligence, that first uncovered the plot last October and "set the ball rolling," the German official told TIME. The investigation culminated last week in the arrests in central Germany of three ringleaders, two German nationals and a Turk, and the revelation that the cell was plotting a "massive" attack, possibly on U.S. targets...
...collaboration is the latest example of how German-U.S. ties have improved since the falling-out over the Iraq War. But the closeness of the collaboration has also reignited another debate, both in Germany and the U.S., over how to balance the need for effective eavesdropping of suspected terrorists with the privacy of ordinary citizens. Both U.S. and German security officials are citing the German bust as Exhibit A in an effort to introduce more sweeping electronic eavesdropping powers in their respective countries. But the case may serve just as well as an illustration of how old-fashioned sleuthing...
...According to a report in the German magazine Der Spiegel, the results of the surveillance, codenamed "Operation Alberich," were discussed at the highest levels. President George Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were updated on its progress over the past year, and the two leaders discussed the operation during the meeting of G8 leaders of industrialized countries in Heiligendamm, Germany, in June. The U.S. ambassador to Germany and Michael Hayden, the CIA director, brought it up regularly with German counterparts...
...Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff repeatedly raised the case with Germany's Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, who reassured his counterpart that German authorities were taking the case seriously. The two, German officials say, have a close personal chemistry. Chertoff and his wife visited the Schaeubles at their country home and in the German capital, Berlin. "There is a level of understanding and trust on the important issues," one said...