BERLIN — A German politician who’s been pushing his government for months to offer asylum or even witness protection to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said Friday that Snowden was willing “in principle” to assist any German investigation into NSA spying practices.
That offer would be accepted, the country’s interior minister later said, in another sign of the deep damage done to German-U.S. relations by news that the NSA had eavesdropped on a cellphone belonging to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“If the message is that Snowden wants to give us information, then we would gladly accept,” Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said.
The offer from Snowden came through Hans-Christian Stroebele, a member of the opposition Green party who’s the longest-serving member of the Bundestag’s intelligence committee. Stroebele met with Snowden for almost three hours in Moscow on Thursday.
Stroebele, who said his trip to Moscow was specifically to ask Snowden whether he’d testify before the Bundestag about NSA activities in Germany, returned with a letter from Snowden in which the 30-year-old computer specialist defends his leaking of secret NSA documents.
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