WikiLeaks Latest Documents: CIA Spied On French Presidents, Political Parties In 2012

Seven documents allegedly show the Central Intelligence Agency spied on all of France’s major political parties in the months leading up to the country’s 2012 presidential election, WikiLeaks revealed Wednesday.

That the United States spied on French and other world leaders is nothing new, but WikiLeaks latest document dump asserts the CIA employed three “tasking orders” to target France’s Union for a Popular Movement, the Socialist Party and the National Front parties.

The report also said current President Francois Hollande, ex-President Nicholas Sarkozy, leading candidate Marine Le Pen, and former candidates Dominique Strauss-Khan and Martine Aubry were each targeted by one of the main U.S. intelligence arms.

The alleged operation took place from November 2011 to September 2012, or 10 months.

The documents, WikiLeaks said, state the CIA allegedly wanted to gather intelligence on seemingly every possible inner-working of France’s political process, even its contacts with other countries like Germany, the United Kingdom and Israel.

“The espionage order for ‘Nonruling Political Parties and Candidates Strategic Election Plans,’ which targeted Francois Holland, Marine Le Pen and other opposition figures, requires obtaining opposition parties' strategies for the election,” WikiLeaks said in a press release, “information on internal party dynamics and rising leaders; efforts to influence and implement political decisions; support from local government officials, government elites or business elites; views of the United States; efforts to reach out to other countries, including Germany, U.K., Libya, Israel, Palestine, Syria and Cote d'Ivoire [Ivory Coast]; as well as information about party and candidate funding."

The CIA has yet to respond to a request for comment by International Business Times.

WikiLeaks has previously exposed the overseas actions of U.S. intelligence services. In June 2016, Hollande said his government would not tolerate a threat to its security and its interests after WikiLeaks published other documents that credited the National Security Agency with spying on Sarkozy, Hollande and Jacques Chirac.

Germany’s Angela Merkel was also a target of U.S. spying, a revelation made through documents leaked in 2013 by NSA contractor Edward Snowden.