New documents published by WikiLeaks on Tuesday reveal more of the U.S. National Security Agency’s (NSA) spying operations on foreign leaders, including its interception of climate talks between UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The cables, some of which are marked “Top Secret” and which WikiLeaks says are the most highly classified documents ever released by a news organization, show that the NSA spied on Ban’s strategizing on climate change with Merkel ahead of the 2009 Copenhagen Conference, where an attempt to negotiate a climate accord ultimately failed.

“Today we showed that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s private meetings over how to save the planet from climate change were bugged by a country intent on protecting its largest oil companies,” said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

“The U.S. government has signed agreements with the UN that it will not engage in such conduct against the UN—let alone its Secretary General,” he said. “It will be interesting to see the UN’s reaction, because if the Secretary General can be targeted without consequence then everyone from world leader to street sweeper is at risk.”

The 2008 intelligence reports show that Ban was confident the new U.S. administration under President Barack Obama would “have a very engaging and proactive attitude on the issue” of climate change and that “the time is right for the EU and the whole world to create conditions necessary for reaching a meaningful deal at the 2009 UN Climate Talks.”

That endeavor ultimately failed when world leaders were unable to strike an accord following U.S.-led negotiations.

Additional documents show the NSA also spied on a conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi; a meeting between Merkel, Berlusconi, and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy; and diplomatic talks between Japanese and European Union (EU) ministers ahead of global trade negotiations.

The cables show Netanyahu asking Italy for help in repairing Israel’s fractured relationship with the U.S. in 2010.

“Netanyahu insisted that the trigger for the dispute—Israel’s decision to build 1,600 homes in contested East Jerusalem—was totally in keeping with national policy dating back to the administration of Golda Meir, and blamed this mishandling on a government official with poor political sensitivity,” the NSA cable reads. “Berlusconi promised to put Italy at Israel’s disposal in helping mend the latter’s ties with Washington.”

In 2006, the NSA spied on Japanese and EU ministers discussing U.S. and EU participation in the Japanese economy, and the EU’s commitment to avoid “under-the-table” deals with the U.S. at the upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) talks in Doha, Qatar.

“There was a conviction in both Brussels and Tokyo, according to Japanese reporting, that great care must be taken to avoid falling prey to U.S. moves designed to extort concessions through exaggerated initial demands,” the cable states.

“[EU Agriculture Commissioner deputy cabinet chief Klaus-Dieter] Borchardt also tried to allay Japanese fears that the EU might try again to enter into a bilateral, under-the-table deal with the U.S. (as had happened in Cancun in 2003), saying that Brussels had learned its lesson with respect to such back-door actions,” it reads.

And in 2011, Merkel and Sarkozy held a “tense and very harsh” meeting with Berlusconi to hold the Italian prime minister accountable for his country’s debt problem, during which Sarkozy warned Berlusconi that the Italian banking system “could soon ‘pop’ like a cork in a champagne bottle.”

The report is stamped “REL TO USA, FVEY,” which indicates that the NSA could release the information to other U.S. agencies and to its “Five Eyes” intelligence allies—Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Between 2007 and 2011, the NSA targeted 13 phone numbers belonging to officials in Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, and Switzerland. As the Intercept notes, all but one of those phone numbers are still in use today.


ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.

Donate
Donate
Leave A Reply

Subscribe

All the latest from Z, directly to your inbox.

Institute for Social and Cultural Communications, Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit.

Our EIN# is #22-2959506. Your donation is tax-deductible to the extent allowable by law.

We do not accept funding from advertising or corporate sponsors.  We rely on donors like you to do our work.

ZNetwork: Left News, Analysis, Vision & Strategy

Subscribe

All the latest from Z, directly to your inbox.

THE WIND CRIES FREEDOM

The Wind Cries Freedom, the new book from Z co-founder Michael Albert, is a sweeping oral history of a future American revolution.

Through thirty interconnected chapters, it draws out the strategies, failures, turning points, and hard-won wisdom of a movement that called itself the Revolutionary Participatory Society. These are not the polished memoirs of politicians: they are the unfiltered accounts of people who organized in neighborhoods, hospitals, universities, stadiums, courthouses, and places of worship, and kept a shared vision alive through cynicism and exhaustion.

The result is speculative political fiction that reads like history: messy, human, and quietly hopeful in the way that only real experience and long thought can produce.

Get your copy and peruse more features on the book’s website below.

“Read it, argue with it, but don’t look away. The future it recalls is one we must still fight to deserve.”

Yanis Varoufakis

“The most unusual and intriguing combination of prophecy, manifesto, and movement building manual that I have ever encountered.”

Bill Fletcher Junior

“This work fills a huge gap in our social movement literature.”

Cynthia Peters

You've just read your article on Z this month.

DOES Z'S SURVIVAL MATTER?

You keep coming back for a reason: serious political analysis, movement reporting, and debate beyond the priorities of corporate media. Today, Z is in a precarious financial position. If Z is part of how you understand the world, help keep it going. The readers who give monthly are the reason this work survives between fundraisers.

Z is in a precarious financial position. If it’s part of how you understand the world, help keep it going.

Number of donors718
Our goal1,000

Sustainers at $9/month or more receive the digital Z Magazine.

Already a sustainer? Click here and we won’t ask again. Thank you!

Your reading count is stored only in your browser and is never sent to us.

Sound is muted by default.  Tap 🔊 for the full experience

CRITICAL ACTION

Critical Action is a longtime friend of Z and a music and storytelling project grounded in liberation, solidarity, and resistance to authoritarian power. Through music, narrative, and multimedia, the project engages the same political realities and movement traditions that guide and motivate Z’s work.

If this project resonates with you, you can learn more about it and find ways to support the work using the link below.

Z is in the most precarious financial position in its history.

Z is a place to think beyond the limits of the present.

For decades, Z has brought together political analysis, movement reporting, debate, and visions of a different future from writers and activists around the world. That work is more than journalism. It is movement infrastructure: movements need places to develop ideas, test arguments, learn from experience, and imagine what comes next.

In the first two days of this fundraiser, 19 donors and 8 new monthly sustainers stepped up. Help us reach 1,000 donors who keep Z independent, for everyone.

For decades, Z has published the analysis, debate, and visions movements need, free of paywalls, ads, and billionaire owners. If that work should continue, Z needs your support now.

Number of donors718
Our goal1,000

Sustainers at $9/month or more receive the digital Z Magazine.

Subscribe

Join the Z Community – receive event invites, announcements, a Weekly Digest, and opportunities to engage.

Exit mobile version