News that an Agency of the government of the United States of America has been spying on the heads of state of a nation to which the US has been formally aligned for over half a century has not come as a surprise. The three French presidents whose conversations were scooped up by the techno-dweebs of the National Security Agency are only a few of the world leaders who have been subjected to such insulting indignity; and they won’t be the last.
The French say they “find it hard to understand or imagine what motivates an ally to spy on allies who are often on the same strategic positions in world affairs,” but they know very well what goes on. There are many reasons for spying on trusted allies, and it would be ingenuous to imagine that items of foreign commercial information are not passed on to US enterprises. That’s the free market.
In the bigger picture of Intelligence the world of espionage is complex and the people involved in mega-surveillance are intent and content that their intrigues should remain a mystery to all of us ordinary citizens who are considered too unworldly to be permitted to know the extent – the all-embracing clutch – of the multi-tentacled intelligence empire.
Spying is an ancient trade devoid of moral principles and the present psychological operations’ campaign to counter evidence of irresponsibility and proven criminality on the part of British and American intelligence agencies is understandable reaction to recent revelations. The campaign is also repulsive, malevolent and based on warped deception, but that doesn’t worry the spooks who will continue to operate with the complete although necessarily furtive backing of their governments.