NSA spied on French presidents, WikiLeaks says

PanARMENIAN.Net - The United States National Security Agency spied on French presidents Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande, WikiLeaks said in a press statement published on Tuesday, June 23 citing top secret intelligence reports and technical documents, Reuters reports.

The revelations were first reported in French daily Liberation and on news website Mediapart, which said the NSA spied on the presidents during a period of at least 2006 until May 2012, the month Hollande took over from Sarkozy.

WikiLeaks said the documents derived from directly targeted NSA surveillance of the communications of Hollande (2012–present), Sarkozy (2007–2012) and Chirac (1995–2007), as well as French cabinet ministers and the French ambassador to the U.S.

According to the documents, Sarkozy is said to have considered restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks without U.S. involvement and Hollande feared a Greek euro zone exit back in 2012.

These latest revelations regarding spying among allied Western countries come after it emerged that the NSA had spied on Germany and Germany's own BND intelligence agency had cooperated with the NSA to spy on officials and companies elsewhere in Europe.

"The French people have a right to know that their elected government is subject to hostile surveillance from a supposed ally," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in the statement, adding that more "important revelations" would soon follow.

The documents include summaries of conversations between French government officials on the global financial crisis, the future of the European Union, the relationship between Hollande's administration and Merkel's government, French efforts to determine the make-up of the executive staff of the United Nations, and a dispute between the French and U.S. governments over U.S. spying on France.

The documents also contained the cell phone numbers of numerous officials in the Elysee presidential palace including the direct cell phone of the president, WikiLeaks said.

Last week, WikiLeaks published more than 60,000 diplomatic cables from Saudi Arabia and said on its website it would release half a million more in the coming weeks.