Leaked Spiegel Report – English Summary

Today, two scanned pages of the next Spiegel issue appeared on the Internet. Here is a summary of the first page (the second does not contain any surprising revelations):
http://twitgoo.com/1r6ots

The person in charge of taking minutes for the FDP (the liberal democrat party) at the German coalition talks collaborates with the US. He is being described as young and ambitious. He has showed up repeatedly at the US embassy, typically carrying a stash of documents.

According to his statement (see cable 229153 from 09th of October 2009), the FDP is very much opposed to Wolfgang Schäuble, CDU (conservative party), describing him as a neurotic grumpy old man who is trying to control his party.

In a discussion about US nuclear weapons on German territory, Guido Westerwelle, FDP, stated that the US should withdraw their nuclear weapons, Schäuble maintained that they would be needed to deter Iran, to which Westerwelle replied that Iran was out of reach of these weapons. Merkel, CDU, put an end to the discussion stating that it would be useless for Germany to engage in such an initiative on its own.

Finally, the informant handed over a file with the complete transcripts of the coalition talks. Ambassador Murphy concluded that he intended to conduct further talks with the source.

See also: Murphy reaches out to German public in tabloid http://wlcentral.org/node/363

Update: The leak was apparently caused by a newspaper vendor at Basel train station, who sold the embargoed Spiegel issues by accident. http://is.gd/hVtLK