#CIA #French #Elections #2012 #Frenchelections #WikiLeaks #Spy #Spied
After accusations of intervention and manipulation during the American elections against Russia it is ironic that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) and the United States European Command (USEUCOM) already spied on France in their 2012 elections. Targets have been all parties and their leaders.
Based on the CIA documents published by Wikileaks on February 16, 2017 the
• Parti socialiste (PS - Socialist Party),
• Front National (FN - National Front),
• Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP - Union for a People’s Movement),
• Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK),
• Nicolas Sarkozy,
• Martine Aubry,
• Francois Hollande and
• Marine Le Pen
were the targets of this espionage operation.
The operation began seven months before the elections on November 21, 2011 and lasted until three months after the elections. It ended on September 29, 2012 a total duration of ten months.
The low probability of the re-election of UMP and thus Sarkozy was the main reason behind this operation. Analysts had to assess the situation and prepare to provide a clear picture for the US policymakers. It was important to prepare for the post-election political landscape of France and its potential impact on the US-French relations.
All targets were infiltrated both by human (”HUMINT”) and electronic (”SIGINT”) CIA spies. Specific tasks have been selected for all targets individually.
In the UMP, strategic plans for the election, possible schisms and alliances of the UMP elite, private reactions on Sarkozy’s campaign strategy, perceived vulnerabilities to maintaining power in post-election, possible attempts to change the ideological mission of the party, direct discussions about Sarkozy’s support for the party and the actual value he contributes to the dominance of the party were obtained.
Specific instructions tasked CIA officers to also take note of Sarkozy’s private deliberations about the other candidates as well as interactions with his advisors.
The tasks were similar for the non-ruling parties. They targeted Francois Holland, Marine Le Pen, and other opposition figures and parties to obtain their strategies and information for the elections, on internal party dynamics and rising figures within the parties, efforts to influence and implement political decisions, local officials and governmental as well as business elites who supported certain parties and candidates.
Particular attention was paid to the political decisions about the economic growth opportunities as well as their opinion regarding the German “export-led growth” model.
The operation also weighed on obtaining the candidates and parties attitudes to the E.U.’s economic crisis, centering around their position on the Greek debt crisis and following its effects like the French and German management of the crisis and the vulnerability of French government and French banks to the crisis and a possible Greek default.
This is not the first case of of US intelligence espionage documents released by WikiLeaks. On December 01, 2016 WikiLeaks released 2,420 documents (90 GB) relating to the German parliamentary inquiry into the surveillance activities of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) and its cooperation with the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA).
