Israel has refused to issue an official reaction to the revelations made public by The Guardian on Friday regarding American and British surveillance of former prime minister Ehud Olmert and ex-defense minister Ehud Barak in 2009.
Unnamed officials in Jerusalem, however, told Channel 2 on Friday that they “did not fall off their chairs” when hearing the news, which was first reported by The Guardian and The New York Times, that British and American intelligence agents were tracking the emails of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former defense minister Ehud Barak.
The British and American newspapers reported that the Government Communications Headquarters, working in concert with the US National Security Agency, kept track of electronic mail records belonging to Olmert in addition to an email account used to send messages between Barak and one of his top aides.
The Guardian and the Times cited a top-secret document produced by the GCHQ in January 2009. It is one of a slew of documents leaked by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden. If the allegations are true, it would be the latest in a string of embarrassments for Washington, which was caught conducting espionage on allies like German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
According to the GCHQ document cited by The Guardian, the British and US agencies also conducted surveillance of the head of the European Union’s competition commission, a number of German government buildings in Berlin and abroad, and the heads of humanitarian institutions devoted to easing poverty in Africa.
According to The New York Times, which shared information revealed by Snowden with The Guardian as well as the prestigious Germany daily Der Spiegel, two Israeli embassies were also targeted for spying.
Olmert told The New York Times that the email which was hacked into just after Operation Cast Lead “was an unimpressive target.”
The former prime minister told the newspaper that the most sensitive information that he shared with the Americans was revealed in private, face-to-face conversations with then-president George W. Bush.
“I would be surprised if there was any attempt by American intelligence in Israel to listen to the prime minister’s lines,” Olmert told the Times.