One day after he said President Barack Obama should stop apologizing for U.S. spying, Rep. Peter King made it clear he means it's OK to listen in on allies' leaders.
"We don't know who the chancellor is going to be, who the president is going to be, who the prime minister is going to be,"
King told CNN's "The Situation Room" on Monday.
When Willy Brandt was chancellor of West Germany, he had Stasi agents in his government, said King, R-N.Y. Gerhard Shroeder and Russia "basically formed an alliance against us as far as Iraq was concerned."
Our friends spy on us, King said: when Madeleine Albright was U.N. chief delegate, she said the French were tapping her phone.
"If we're not going to tap a chancellor, are we going to go to the vice chancellor? Are we going to go to people in the cabinet? Where does this end?" King said.
He also said he wouldn't be surprised if then-Sen. Obama had his Blackberry tapped by the Germans when he visited Berlin in 2008.
King acknowledged that Merkel had to make a show of protest over her
phone being tapped for consumption at home, but he is weary of hearing the griping because the United States shares intelligence about terrorists with Germany.
"The NSA [National Security Agency] has done more to save German lives than the German army has done since World War II," he said.