Espionnage Élysée: NSA targeting of French presidents

On 23 June 2015 I began publishing 'Espionnage Élysée', a set of top-secret US National Security Agency documents concerning the interception of senior French officials' communications. The first release comprised five intelligence summaries taken from editions of the NSA's 'Global SIGINT Highlights' executive briefings, dated between 2006 and 2012, together with telephone 'selectors' from an NSA target list that we said included the President's direct mobile number.

The summaries reported conversations involving Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande and their officials: Chirac's instructions on a senior UN appointment in 2006, Sarkozy's plans on the financial crisis and on Israeli–Palestinian peace talks, and Hollande's approval in May 2012 of secret meetings to discuss the consequences of a possible Greek exit from the eurozone. A further instalment on 29 June 2015 published documents that we said showed NSA economic-intelligence tasking against France, including on French contracts and negotiations worth more than $200 million.

The disclosures followed the 2013 Snowden revelations and came as the French parliament prepared to adopt a new intelligence law. President Hollande convened an emergency meeting of the defence council, the foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, summoned the US ambassador, Jane Hartley, and Hollande raised the matter with President Barack Obama by telephone (The Guardian).

I did not identify our source. The BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera said it was unclear whether the material came from data taken by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The documents were first reported by the French daily Libération and the investigative website Mediapart, which co-published them with us; our release page also lists L'Espresso, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Ethnos as partners.

The French government did not dispute the documents: a statement after the defence council described the conduct as 'unacceptable' and recalled commitments made by the United States after the 2013 revelations. A spokesman for the US National Security Council declined to comment on specific allegations, saying the United States did not conduct foreign intelligence surveillance without a specific national-security purpose (The Guardian; BBC News).