By Mark Hosenball 
 
 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Central Intelligence Agency was involved in a spying operation against Germany that led to the alleged recruitment of a German intelligence official and has prompted renewed outrage in Berlin, two U.S. officials familiar with the matter said on Monday. 
 
 CIA Director John Brennan has asked to brief key members of the U.S. Congress on the matter, which threatens a new rupture between Washington and a close European ally, one of the officials said. 
 
 It was unclear if and when Brennan's briefing to U.S. lawmakers would take place. The CIA declined any comment on the matter. 
 
 The office of Germany's Federal Prosecutor, based in the western city of Karlsruhe, late last week issued a statement saying that a 31-year old man had been arrested on suspicion of being a foreign spy, and that investigations were continuing. The statement offered no further details. 
 
 German politicians have said that the suspect, an employee of the country's foreign intelligence service, admitted passing to an American contact details concerning a German parliamentary committee's investigation of alleged U.S. eavesdropping disclosed by Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency. 
 
 The U.S. officials who confirmed the CIA's role spoke on condition of anonymity, and offered no further details. 
 
 White House press secretary Josh Earnest declined comment on the dispute. ||||| A suspected double agent under arrest in Germany has been spying for the CIA for two years, German intelligence officials investigating the case now believe. 
 
 “All the evidence suggests that he was working for the Americans,” an unnamed senior security official has told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. 
 
 The country's top security official has demanded a full American response to German investigations. "I expect everyone now to assist quickly in clearing up the accusations - and quick and clear statements, from the USA too," Thomas de Maiziere, the Interior minister said. 
 
 Germany's Foreign Ministry summoned the America ambassador on Friday but German authorities have confirmed only that a 31-year-old man is under arrest. 
 
 The first indications that investigators believe a confession by the arrested man is true. If the suspicions against him are confirmed, the case could cause grave damage to US-German relations. 
 
 The arrested man, who is severely disabled, worked in the Foreign Relations department of Germany’s BND intelligence service, where he had access to classified documents and information about agents abroad. 
 
 For the last two years, he has been sending documents to the Americans electronically once a week, according to Bild newspaper. 
 
 In a damning piece of evidence, investigators said they had found an encrypted communication programme hidden on his computer. 
 
 The hidden programme was disguised as a weather app, and activated by searching for a weather forecast for New York. 
 
 The arrested man was able to carry on most communications electronically, but met with an American contact in Austria on two or three occasions, when he received payments of €25,000 in cash. 
 
 Other reports said German intelligence asked their American counterparts for help unmasking their own mole – and the Americans remained silent. 
 
 The man was caught after an anonymous email he sent offering to sell classified information to the Russians was intercepted. 
 
 German intelligence officials posing as Russians tried to entice the man to a meeting, but he refused. 
 
 The Germans then requested American help tracing the sender of the email, but they got not reply. In the meantime, German intelligence successfully identified the man. 
 
 Convinced they were hunting down a Russian agent, they were astonished when he confessed he to spying for the Americans. 
 
 News of the arrest has been greeted with fury in a Germany still reeling from the revelation that the NSA spied on Chancellor Angela 
 
 Merkel’s phone calls, and American officials have conceded that it threatens to undo all their efforts to repair relations. 
 
 Mrs Merkel has yet to comment publicly on the case, but business leaders accomanying her on a trip to China told Spiegel she was “surprised and stunned”. 
 
 Germany’s president, Joachim Gauck, has given an angry TV interview in which he accuses the US of “playing games with our friendship” and says if it is proved the arrested man spied for the Americans, Germany must “say enough is enough, for once”. 
 
 Germany is to demand all joint intelligence staff at the US embassy in Berlin be replaced, according to Bild, and has not ruled out insisting on a change of ambassador.
– The CIA is owning up to involvement in a spying operation that threatens to rankle US-German relations yet again, two US officials tell Reuters. The CIA apparently recruited the German intelligence staffer who was caught last week, and CIA director John Brennan plans to tell key US congress members about the details. Two other new factoids from the Telegraph: The suspected spy is "severely disabled," and he allegedly used an encrypted communication program on his computer disguised as a weather app. Sources say he activated the program by opening the app and searching for New York's weather forecast.