Three French presidents were spied on by the US
(Baonghean.vn) - According to documents recently released by WikiLeaks, Mediapart and Libération on June 23, all three French presidents, Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande, were monitored by the NSA - a US electronic intelligence agency - from 2006 to 2012.
It is likely that the surveillance continued at least until Francois Hollande entered the Elysée Palace. An NSA document dated May 22, 2012, just three days after Hollande took office, said that Hollande intended to meet with his counterpart Angela Merkel to discuss Greece’s exit from the eurozone. The NSA intercepted the conversation between Hollande and French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault. About a month later, the meeting between the French and German leaders did indeed take place.
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| Former President Nicolas Sarkozy in Belgium in 2009. Photo: AFP |
During the time of Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency, the NSA's secret conversations were widely known, such as when Sarkozy considered himself "the only one capable of solving the financial crisis" or when he said that "America is no longer capable of leading the world out of the crisis and France will seize this opportunity". Not only did the NSA have Sarkozy's phone number, it also had the numbers of people close to the president, such as Foreign Affairs Adviser Jean David Levitte and Elysée Palace Secretary General Claude Gueant.
In addition, the NSA's phone list also includes the spokespeople for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Trade, and the Ministry of Europe. More worryingly, the NSA also knows the phone lists of officials in the Elysée Palace responsible for internal operational information.
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| Part of the NSA document recording the conversation between President Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Jean Marc Ayrault on May 22, 2012 |
A question that many people are interested in right now is: How was the NSA able to install surveillance devices to listen in on the conversations of the French president and other high-ranking officials? The documents released on June 23 did not reveal the answer to that question.
Chu Thanh
(according to Le Monde)
