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23Jun15
François Hollande calls emergency meeting after WikiLeaks reveals US spied on three French presidents
The French president, François Hollande, has called an emergency meeting of his country's defence council for Wednesday morning after revelations that American agents spied on three successive French presidents between 2006 and 2012. According to WikiLeaks documents published late on Tuesday, even the French leaders' mobile phone conversations were listened to and recorded.
The leaked US documents, marked "top secret", were based on phone taps and filed in an NSA document labelled "Espionnage Elysée" (Elysée Spy), according to the newspaper Libération and investigative news website Mediapart. The US was listening to the conversations of centre-right president Jacques Chirac, his successor Nicolas Sarkozy, and the current French leader, Socialist François Hollande, elected in 2012.
The recorded conversations, which were handled by the summary services unit at the NSA, were said to reveal few state secrets but show clear evidence of the extent of American spying on countries considered allies. WikiLeaks documents suggest that other US spy targets included French cabinet ministers and the French ambassador to the United States.
"The documents contain the 'selectors' from the target list, detailing the cell phone numbers of numerous officials in the Elysée up to and including the direct cell phone of the president," a report of the taps published in the French media revealed.
The revelations come as France gives its domestic intelligence and surveillance services controversial greater powers to combat jihadist networks, with more permissions to bug phones and licences to carry out mass surveillance on the internet.
In an article co-authored by Julian Assange, the French newspaper Libération pointed out that in matters of spying, there are no friends. "Spying abroad is the ultimate 'grey zone' in surveillance - it is also, in France, the real blind spot of the planned law on surveillance, expected to be adopted this Wednesday," said the WikiLeaks report.
Mediapart said: "For almost ten years, the United States has listened into French presidents … it was all classed top secret or 'special intelligence'. In the five documents that we are publishing, four were marked with a G, kept for the most 'highly sensitive material', others were labelled 'NF', stipulating that they must not be communicated to foreign countries in any circumstances. Most were marked 'unconventional', meaning they had been got through hacking.
The documents published by Mediapart suggest that the Americans were tapping into François Hollande's conversations from the moment he was elected in 2012.
The Elysée has not commented on the revelations except to say it is looking at the leaks to see "what is involved". Sources close to Nicolas Sarkozy told journalists the spying was "unacceptable as a general rule and even more so among allies".
Ned Price, spokesperson for the NSA, said: "We are not going to comment on specific intelligence allegations. As a general matter, we do not conduct any foreign intelligence surveillance activities unless there is a specific and national security purpose. This applies to ordinary citizens and world leaders alike."
[Source: Kim Willsher in Paris, The Guardian, London, 23Jun15]
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 | This document has been published on 24Jun15 by the Equipo Nizkor and Derechos Human Rights. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. |