Tuesday September 12 6:36 PM ET
EU Echelon To Probe U.S. Chiefs
By CONSTANT BRAND, Associated Press Writer
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Senior members of a European Union committee said Tuesday they want U.S. intelligence chiefs to testify on whether an alleged American-led eavesdropping network monitors the businesses of its European allies.
European Parliament Vice President Gerhard Schmid, a German who is a senior member on the committee investigating the alleged Echelon spy network, said he would like to see the U.S. National Security Agency head, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, come before the committee.
Schmid said he wants the American intelligence chiefs to discuss how the NSA gathers intelligence.
``If it's up to me, we will have American representatives, perhaps even U.S. senators and the director of the NSA,'' Schmid told reporters.
In testimony before the U.S. House Intelligence Committee in April, Hayden and CIA Director George Tenet denied reports the United States was involved in spying on Europeans and Americans as part of a satellite surveillance network.
Committee chairman Carlos Coelho of Portugal said that a list of industry experts, politicians, U.S. and EU officials would be called before the committee.
The Echelon issue surfaced in February when a European Parliament report outline what it said were Echelon's practices.
It said Echelon intercepts ``billions of messages per hour,'' including telephone calls, fax transmissions and private e-mails.
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dailynews.yahoo.com
You know what, the more I think about that Echelon fuss the more, in hindsight, I suspect that the real target of the European bureaucracy is the NSA itself! The NSA's pristine integrity as regards the White House and the primacy of the US executive branch over other constituent powers is not to please the Bilderbergers and other transatlantic profiteers who, so far, have relied on the CIA to oil the wheels of the Euro-American coupledom....
After all, compared to the highly secretive, Spartan NSA, the CIA is basically a wildcat outfit crawling with MOSSAD moles, British double agents, and Europhile intelligencers eager to tip off the French or the Germans about the latest twists and turns of the US President's foreign policy --especially if the White House's current tenant is some Afreakan Democrat resolved to "save the world"!
That's what really pisses Europeans off: they just don't have any NSA insider on their grass payroll.... The CIA, on the other hand, is such a glasshouse: even its former top dog was actually an Israeli, Bilderberger mole (John Deutch) and at field level, most CIA roughnecks, mobsters and mercenaries share the same values and prejudices as their French, British, or even Belgian counterparts --that is, basically, the Third World as one big, life-sized, wog-shooting gallery.... But the NSA.... Good gracious! Here we're dealing with a whole new ballgame: computer geeks headed by some Colonel Blimp!
So, if you ask me, the undercurrent message from Europe is crystal-clear: let not the jingo NSA take over the CIA in outlining the intelligence policy of the USA. The Echelon grievance? Gimme a break: the French have developed their own Frenchelon, after all:
"Frenchelon": France's Alleged Global Surveillance Network And its Implications on International Intelligence Cooperation
Kenneth Neil Cukier
Communications Week International
24.03.1999
"In Europe, we talk about the four freedoms of the Union -- freedom for the flow of information, of the mobility of people, freedom of goods and freedom of services -- but there is a fifth freedom: Intelligence. Nations want to retain the freedom to spy." -- A European Commission official, October 1998.
* * *
While ECHELON, the United States- and United Kingdom-led global surveillance program gains widespread notoriety, there is evidence that European countries are also carrying out international surveillance activities.
France reportedly has developed its own "Frenchelon" -- a worldwide network of spy satellites and listening stations that systematically eavesdrop on communications in the United States and elsewhere. Monitoring stations are said to exist in French Guiana, in the city of Domme in the Dordogne region of southwestern France, in New Caledonia, and in the United Arab Emirates.
The information gleaned is reportedly used for both political and commercial ends. Additionally, some speculate that the French project may mark the first step in a pan-European effort to counterbalance the U.S.'s global spying capabilities. Germany is said to partially fund France's initiative in return for access to the information it collects.
The French project is said to be run under the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, an organization similar to the U.S.'s Central Intelligence Agency, and that commercial information is sent directly to the presidents of large French companies as well as government officials.
[snip]
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