Report: White House stopped phone tapping of foreign leaders this summer

(CNN) -- The White House learned this summer that the National Security Agency had tapped the phones of world leaders and ordered a halt to some of the eavesdropping, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

From a European point of view:

The bitter truth is that you Americans are going to pay a high price. We understood that except of the UK, NZ, Australia and Canada (maybe you spy on them too) the US obviously has no friends. Therefore it might be reasonable to rethink our relationship to America. Nothing fast but relevant in the long term.

Fact is, that US influence and power on this planet reached its maximum two decades ago and is now declining in a breathtaking way. Therefore America is not that important to us Europeans as it was in the past. Not so far from now we can do perfectly without the US.

Between friends it is not important if one is strong or not. Your actual weakness (espechially in economic terms) was never a big question on our side of the Atlantic. To my (German) generation (I am 45) the US were the Berlin airlift and JFK saying “I am a Berliner”. As most of my German fellows I visited your country a few times. Therefore we feel very sorry now about the experience that friendship and personal relations obiously count that little in the US. It is a new face of America. A nation that betrays its “friends” and steals the secrets of its partners. Please do not bring forward the argument of your ridiculous “war on terror”. Nobody believes in this BS anymore.

We observe the contemporary discussion quite closely. To us the problem is not Obama and his helpless handling of this affair, the real problem is the widespread ignorance in your country. The bitter fact that normal Americans obviously do not care about the treason of allies.

After all it is sad.

Regards from Europe

BERLIN: US President Barack Obama was personally informed of mobile phone tapping against German Chancellor Angela Merkel, which may have begun as early as 2002, German media reported on Sunday as a damaging espionage scandal widened.

Bild am Sonntag newspaper quoted US intelligence sources as saying that National Security Agency chief Keith Alexander had briefed Obama on the operation against Merkel in 2010.

“Obama did not halt the operation but rather let it continue,” the newspaper quoted a high-ranking NSA official as saying.

News weekly Der Spiegel reported that leaked NSA documents showed that Merkel’s phone had appeared on a list of spying targets since 2002, and was still under surveillance shortly before Obama visited Berlin in June.

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