In a stunning twist to America’s spying operations overseas, the head of the National Security Agency says that European spy services collected and shared phone records with the United States.
In a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, General Keith Alexander and other senior intelligence officials defended the US government’s surveillance programs as Europe is in uproar over new revelations about widespread NSA eavesdropping on both ordinary citizens and heads of states.
The NSA director was asked about reports in France, Spain and Italy, based on leaks provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, that his agency collected millions of phone records of European leaders and citizens.
Gen. Alexander said the accounts were “completely false,” adding that much of the data was in fact collected by European spy services and then shared with the NSA.
“They cite as evidence screen shots of the results of a web tool used for data management purposes, but both they and the person who stole the classified data did not understand what they were looking at,” he said.
Newspapers in Europe reported that the NSA collected more than 70 million phone records in France late last year and early this year and intercepted more than 60 million phone calls in Spain during the same time frame.
“This is not information that we collected on European citizens,” Alexander said. “It represents information that we and our NATO allies have collected in defense of our countries and in support of military operations.”
Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also said European “papers got it all wrong.”
“This was not the United States collecting on France and Germany. This was France and Germany collecting. And it had nothing to do with their citizens, it had to do with collecting in NATO areas of war, like Afghanistan.”
However, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told lawmakers that learning the intentions of foreign leaders was a key goal of US spying operations overseas.
“Leadership intentions is kind of a basic tenet of what we collect and analyze,” Clapper said during the hearing.
But the spy chief insisted that the United States did not “indiscriminately” spy on foreigners. “We do not spy on anyone except for valid foreign intelligence purposes and we do not violate the law.”
The latest disclosures by Snowden, a former NSA contractor, show that the US monitored phone calls of at least 35 world leaders including that of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of Europe’s most influential leaders.
German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported that Gen. Alexander, had briefed President Barack Obama in 2010 about eavesdropping on Merkel’s phone but let the NSA continue the surveillance.
Faced with mounting pressure at home and abroad, Obama has promised a “complete review” of the controversial surveillance programs and has reportedly apologized to Merkel and the presidents of France and Brazil.
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