NSA Spied On Vatican And Top Cardinals, Says Italian Report
HuffPost, Oct 30 2013
An Italian magazine is reporting that the NSA spied on internal communications at the Vatican and phone calls at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the church residence where cardinals lived during the papal conclave and the pope’s current home. The weekly magazine Panorama reports in an issue that hits the streets on Thursday that the NSA labeled calls in and out of Vatican offices as “leadership intentions,” “threats to the financial system,” “foreign policy objectives” and “human rights.” It says calls regarding this year’s election of the new president of the Vatican Bank, Ernst von Freyberg, were also intercepted. The magazine does not cite a source for the allegations, but it does refer to WikiLeaks to suggest that Francis was being watched as far back as 2005 when he was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi was quick to dismiss the charges on Wednesday. He said in a statement:
We don’t know anything about this, and in any case we don’t have any concerns about it.
The NSA has also denied the magazine’s accusations. Vanee Vines, an NSA spokeswoman, said in a statement:
The NSA does not target the Vatican. Assertions that NSA has targeted the Vatican, published in Italy’s Panorama magazine, are not true.
The article comes not long after an explosive report based on documents released by Edward Snowden that revealed the NSA spied on the calls of German chancellor Angela Merkel. Previous reports have also said the NSA intercepted tens of millions of calls in France and Spain. In June, Italian weekly l’Espresso reported that the NSA had also monitored millions of calls in Italy.
Italian Magazine Says NSA Listened into Vatican and Pope
Edward Pentin, National Catholic Register (US), Oct 30 2013
ROME – The NSA has been listening into telephone calls of the Pope and senior Vatican officials, an Italian magazine has claimed. In an article in Panorama which will appear on newsstands tomorrow, the NSA is reported to have tapped the phone calls of Vatican officials and senior prelates before and during the Conclave, as well as incoming and outgoing calls from the Domus Sanctae Marthae where the Pope is living. Panorama also says there are suspicions that the conversations of the Pope were even monitored before he was elected. The magazine refers to the Wikileaks files which, it says, revealed that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been under surveillance since 2005. According to the Italian weekly, incoming and outgoing calls from the Vatican were classified into four categories: “leadership intentions,” “threats to the financial system,” “foreign policy objectives” and “human rights.” There are also suspicions that calls surrounding the election earlier this year of the new President of the IOR (Vatican Bank), Ernst von Freyberg, were monitored. The IOR has been implementing a number of transparency measures over the past few years, one of which is aimed at eliminating the possibility of terrorist organisations using the Vatican Bank to launder money. Panorama says that an annex of the US Embassy to Italy has a section dedicated to spying made up of NSA and CIA agents. These findings, Panorama says, are backed up by the archives leaked by Edward Snowden that reportedly confirm the presence of an elite spying unit in Rome, part of a network found in 79 locations, including 19 in Europe. Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi has played down the claims, saying:
We don’t know anything about this, and in any case we don’t have any concerns about it.
The US embassies to Italy and the Holy See have so far not publicly commented on the allegations. Today a delegation from the German secret service will be received at the White House to discuss alleged NSA tapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone.
Report says US tapped cardinals’ phones ahead of conclave
Eric Lyman, Religion News Service (US), Oct 30 2013
ROME – The NSA spied on cardinals as they prepared to select the new pope — perhaps including even Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who emerged from last spring’s conclave as Pope Francis, a leading Italian news magazine reported in Wednesday’s (Oct 30) editions. The news magazine Panorama said the same NSA eavesdropping program that angered leaders in Germany, France, Spain and Mexico also listened in on calls to and from the Vatican, including the phones in the Santa Marta guesthouse that housed Bergoglio and the rest of the College of Cardinals. Pope Francis still lives in the guesthouse, but the magazine did not speculate whether the phones there were still tapped. Panorama, which said that Bergoglio had been identified as a “person of interest” by the NSA dating back to the 2005 conclave that selected Pope Benedict XVI, said recorded communications from the Vatican were categorized in one of four sections: leadership, financial system threats, foreign policy objectives and human rights issues. Panorama said:
It is feared that the great US ear tapped prelates’ conversations right up to the conclave.
The Vatican declined to comment at length about the report. The Vatican’s chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, issued only a short statement saying:
We have heard nothing of this and are not worried.
The Vatican remains a highly secretive institution, with many operations conducted through time-honored means that would make spying difficult, communicating with instructions written on paper, often in Latin. The vote to select the new pope was conducted on paper ballots that were burned after each round of voting, and for the last two conclaves the Sistine Chapel was swept for listening devices and cardinals were required to leave electronic devices outside.
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Ryan Budish
Let’s hear it for Wayne Madsen:
NSA Whistleblower Wayne Madsen Exposed NSA’s International Spying Back in June
Adan Salazar, Infowars, Oct 30 2013
Long before Edward Snowden’s revelations regarding Angela Merkel emerged, former NSA technician Wayne Madsen had relayed key intel based on information obtained through confidential sources outlining the NSA’s secret backroom deals with several European countries. For 12 years, Madsen worked with the NSA and witnessed firsthand how USAians’ private data got pilfered, sifted through and logged on a daily basis. He has since taken up post as one of the most influential muckraker journalists of our time, working to shed light on the surveillance state’s piecemeal deconstruction of the Constitution, as well as expose corruption of the beltway elite. More recently, Madsen’s name was in the news, ironically, when it was cut from the news.
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Following the hailstorm of media attention generated by Snowden’s PRISM leaks, Madsen said he felt obliged to speak out after seeing world leader after world leader feign incredulity at the NSA spying news. In a 2013 Guardian article published in late June, Madsen revealed to Observer writer Jamie Doward, that, according to his research and sources, the US was engaged in secret backroom deals with at least six EU member states, including Germany, and that leaders such as Angela Merkel would have been well aware of this.
According to Business Insider, Doward wrote:
Madsen said the countries had “formal second and third party status” under signal intelligence (sigint) agreements that compels them to hand over data, including mobile phone and internet information to the NSA if requested. Under international intelligence agreements, confirmed by declassified documents, nations are categorised by the US according to their trust level. The US is first party while the UK+ANZAC enjoy second party relationships. Germany and France have third party relationships. Madsen told Privacy Surgeon’s Simon Davies back in June: “I can’t understand how Angela Merkel can keep a straight face, demanding assurances from Obama and the UK, while Germany has entered into those exact relationships. She’s acting like inspector Reynaud in Casablanca: I’m shocked – shocked – to find gambling going on here.”
The Graun drummed out an online, a cache and a print version of the scoop, both of which underwent cutting room floor executions, but not before dozens of news outlets had already latched onto the story and either reprinted or reported on it. Now, reports that the German Chancellor’s phone may have been tapped have once again surfaced, and right on cue Germany is pretending they know nothing. But exposing collusion on international spy networks is just a run-of-the-mill occurrence for Madsen, who’s been at it for longer than two decades. In 1999, Madsen announced:
This may be the greatest intelligence scam of the century. For decades, the US has routinely intercepted and deciphered top secret encrypted messages of 120 countries.
In 2009, he shed light on the NSA’s “Q group,” a counter-intelligence security group comprised of about 1,000 agents working with the FBI and local law enforcement to prosecute and harass journalists and federal whistleblowers, especially those working to tie the federal government to the attacks of 9/11. His information came from leaked documents uncovered in 2005 regarding a program known as “Firstfruits,” which detailed how, during the Bush administration, the NSA “eavesdropped on the private conversations and e-mail of its own employees, employees of other US intelligence agencies, including the CIA and DIA, and their contacts in the media, Congress, and oversight agencies and offices.” In 2008, sources told Madsen that one of the alleged customers of “DC Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who ran an upscale escort service in Washington DC for thirty years, was possibly former Vice President Dick Cheney, a statement Palfrey could neither deny nor confirm. Following Madsen’s bombshell, Palfrey “committed suicide,” mere months after telling the Alex Jones Show, and others, that she would never kill herself. But all his muckraking may have caught up to him. In 2011, Madsen received credible intel that his reporting had landed him square in the sights of the Obama administration, who many believe has no moral qualms over dispatching journalists challenging the status quo. Click to see all four parts of his Apr 25 2011 Alex Jones interview. In an article published at the time, Madsen highlighted the case of investigative journalist Jack Anderson, whose reportage was a detrimental nuisance to the Nixon administration. In describing discussions over how the pesky columnist could be assassinated, Madsen mentioned that “Staging an automobile accident in which Anderson would be incinerated was also an option,” a scenario mirroring what we may have seen played out earlier this year when Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings’ Mercedes burst into flames after crashing into a tree. On yesterday’s Alex Jones Show, Alex asked what the next big NSA spying revelation would be. Madsen answered that we should soon learn that the phones of high profile figures, such as the Pope, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, were also tapped, further leading the public to feel helpless under the barrage of assaults against their privacy rights. Indeed, the suppression of Madsen’s information, only to have it surface months later, shows the extent to which the establishment watches independent media and carefully controls much of what goes out in print. In other words, Madsen’s the real deal. Update: Yesterday Madsen predicted that the next big NSA spying revelation would be that they spied on the pope. Now the following story appears on the Drudge Report:
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