J. Kirk Wiebe, who worked for US National Security Agency’s (NSA) for three decades, dragged Britain into the spying scandal, saying the US used its British spy base to intercept Merkel’s phone calls.
According to Wiebe, US spies had been listening to Merkel and 35 other world leaders’ calls from RAF Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, which is the biggest surveillance facility in Europe.
Wiebe told the Daily Mail that the information has been “either directly collected” or “processed” by agents at Menwith Hill before they are sent back to the NSA headquarter in Washington.
“If the information didn’t come from there, it is almost a certainty that it would have been processed there,” he said.
He also noted that the NSA interceptions from this station have been with the full knowledge of British authorities.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD), however, has so far refused to comment on Wiebe’s remarks.
“We do not comment on intelligence matters,” the MoD said.
Classified documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in June disclosed how agents based at Menwith Hill managed to spy on G20 leaders, including the then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, in 2009.
According to the documents, Britain’s eavesdropping agency the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was secretly accessing the network of cables, which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic and has been sharing the data with its American counterpart the NSA.
MOS/HSN/HE
Source Article from http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/10/27/331545/nsa-used-uk-base-to-spy-on-merkel/
Views: 0