Oval Office Secrets Memo Erodes America's Trust in Germany

In America, the nation's top-ranked television show, "West Wing" starring Martin Sheen, regularly shows the actor-U.S. President struggling with a myriad of odd domestic and international dramas. American viewers 'feel' as if they are hearing and witnessing the President's most personal thoughts and concerns; it's great political voyeurism. However, there is a profound difference between fiction and reality when it comes to reporting what 'really' goes on in the inner sanctum of the Oval Office. This is where heads of state meet for candid discussions and it is where President Bush discusses the most sensitive issues of his tenure with trusted staff. Even with Washington's long legacy of leaks to the press, secret presidential discussions and meetings are rarely, if ever, the subject of immediate public inquiry. The Germans, however, have managed to generate a breach of the Oval Office and of trust in the privacy of communication between heads of state that could easily be a riveting episode in West Wing's next season, but which, more seriously, will have a profound impact on the overall tenor of US-German relations.

In politics, as in Hollywood, gossip is the currency of the powerful and can help built great empires or utterly destroy careers and reputations. In this latest transatlantic drama, Schroeder national security advisor Michael Steiner shared some fascinating information at a meeting of the heads of state of the U.S. and Germany. In order to keep track of commentary and political gossip, one of the roles of the foreign service is to 'take notes,' which German Ambassador to the U.S. Juergen Chrobog did. Steiner apparently approved, or at least did not disapprove of, the minutes of this extremely important meeting between Schroeder and Bush, which also included White House National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Such meetings between heads of state take place frequently, and most of them lack the sizzle of this session, or at least they appear more boring than the Schroeder-Bush meeting. But then again, we wouldn't know. Americans really have no idea what President Bush and Japan Prime Minister Mori really discussed all morning on March 19th of this year. They emerged with an oddly assembled communique at lunch that day -- but we don't know whether the two leaders talked about their golf swing, or whether they discussed secret plans to deal with a potential North Korean conflict. Somehow, the Japanese managed their note-taking and cable dispatch process differently than the Germans.

Steiner now disputes what Chrobog's notes reported, namely that Steiner told Bush and Schroeder that Moamer Gaddafi had personally confided to Steiner that the Libyan leader was weary of killing innocent people in discotheques and airplanes and wanted to become more Western-like. In other words, Gaddafi implicated himself in the terrorist incidents that killed Germans and Americans. Since Steiner has been trying to lay the groundwork for an easing of American sanctions against Libya, he no doubt thought that Gaddafi's personal mea culpa would be just the news the new Bush foreign policy team would want to hear.

The implications of Steiner's comments are enormous and could impact the legal cases of victims suing the Government of Libya for state sponsored terrorism. Because Steiner himself is disavowing the notes prepared by the German Ambassador, several important questions arise -- whether Steiner was embellishing his story about Gaddafi for Bush's new foreign policy team; or was being completely truthful at the meeting but was embarrassed by the public reporting of the conversation and now wants to lie about what he said; or lastly, that Chrobog himself somehow invented the substance of Steiner's commentary. But what is most disconcerting is that the notes drafted by Chrobog were dispatched to those "with a need to know" at German diplomatic institutions all around the world. A member of the Bundestag commented on Monday that more than 400 sites received this sensitive cable. What were they thinking?!

One question that comes to mind for American observers is who in the German diplomatic corps would not want to know the private discussions between Germany's leader and the leader of the nation that considers itself the reigning hegemon of this century. Everyone would want to read this cable -- and thus it is important for the managers of classified information and sensitive intelligence to be disciplined and impose very limited access to notes like these of Chrobog's. These notes were broadly distributed -- and this mismanagement of such sensitive material, breached not only the sanctity of Oval Office discussions between heads of state -- but raises fundamental doubts about US-German trust. During the Cold War, there was always some degree of suspicion in the U.S. about some of the staff who surrounded various German Chancellors, and some who served in the Foreign Ministry because of the potential that they were spies for East Germany, and by design, then, the Soviet Union. America and Germany managed to build a largely constructive relationship despite the lack of full trust of the Germans by the U.S. -- yet this kind of apprehension is unfortunate.

There are secrets in the world -- and then there are "real secrets." One can be certain that President Bush and Condi Rice will not disclose much at their future meetings with German leaders, and that is probably the least harmful thing that will come from this incident. But given the many complicated tasks ahead for the countries -- including discussing technology transfer controls for missile defense technology; the management of intelligence within NATO with more and more members joining the defense alliance; or even discussing what Steiner wanted to discuss -- easing sanctions against nations that America has defined as terrorist-sponsor states -- lack of confidence in the Germans will not make these policy challenges easy to manage.

Let's face it, there is great angst lately about the German-American partnership, and about Transatlantic relations in general. The bottom line is eroding trust -- and this latest episode, while intriguing on many levels -- does little to take German-American relations in a positive direction