In less than an hour, Wikileaks will publish a set of TOP-SECRET/COMINT-GAMMA documents — "the most highly classified documents ever published by a media organization" — that document NSA spying on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, former French leader Nicolas Sarkozy, and key Japanese and EU trade reps in an attempt to gain an advantage in negotiations regarding climate change and global trade.
The leak echoes revelations that the NSA bugged world leaders at G20, G8 and climate summits gone past. These revelations have triggered major international incidents, especially with Chancellor Merkel, whose girlhood in the former East Germany has left her with an ideological skepticism of surveillance (at least where she is personally concerned).
WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange said "Today we showed that UN Secretary General Ban KiMoon's private meetings over how to save the planet from climate change were bugged by a country intent on protecting its largest oil companies. We previously published Hillary Clinton orders that US diplomats were to steal the Secretary General's DNA. The US government has signed agreements with the UN that it will not engage in such conduct against the UN–let alone its Secretary General. It will be interesting to see the UN's reaction, because if the Secretary General can be targetted without consequence then everyone from world leader to street sweeper is at risk."
NSA Targets World Leaders for US Geopolitical Interests
[Wikileaks]
(Image: Angela Merkel, Armin Kübelbeck, CC-BY-SA)
