NSA Head: Europe Spy Services Collected, Shared Phone Records with US

Local Editor

Head of the National Security Agency declared 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.

"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.

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