Did Obama Apologize to Angela Merkel for Nothing?

In June, when President Obama was in Europe for a visit, Harald Range, Germany’s top public prosecutor, told the German Parliament that he was undertaking an investigation. Former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden had claimed that the United States government had bugged Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone, as part of the country's large-scale electronic espionage, and listened in, for years. In May, Obama said that Snowden’s disclosures about spying on an ally had “created strains” in America’s relationship with Germany. Merkel had called him on the phone—probably on a landline—to seek clarification, and Obama had apologized. Considering the leaders were about to see each other, for a summit in Brussels, the timing of Range's announcement was a little awkward.

But this week, according to Reuters, Range announced that there is no proof that U.S. Intelligence had, in fact, tapped Merkel’s phone. He said, "The document presented in public as proof of an actual tapping of the mobile phone is not an authentic surveillance order by the NSA. It does not come from the NSA database."