Edward Snowden (photo: Wikimedia Commons)
The New York Times revealed on Sunday that in 2007 Venezuela entered a group of six “priority targets” for espionage by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States.
The documents are based on official communication leaked by the former CIA analyst, Edward Snowden, which was passed on to the New York Times by the Guardian.
Primarily concerned with the influence of Hugo Chávez’s government on the interests of the US in Latin America, the espionage sought to “evaluate” the progress of Chávez and his leadership in the region.
The agency tracked official emails and personal correspondence of ten high-ranking officers from the Venezuelan Ministry of Planning and Financing, according to the Times. NSA officers tracked private messages on a daily basis, “searching for anything, which could provide political advantage.”
The strategic mission was to “enable policymakers in preventing Venezuela from achieving its regional leadership objectives and pursuing policies that would negatively impact the global interests of the US,” according to the official 2007 document.
Moreover the NSA ordered the study of the “breadth and depth of Venezuelan relations with countries of strategic concern to the US, particularly Iran, Cuba, China and Russia.” A PowerPoint presentation of August 2010, during Barrack Obama’s administration, revealed that the agency closely followed the loans of billions of dollars from China, Russia, and Iran, to Venezuela – for radar systems and oil drilling systems, missiles and combat planes, and the construction of an unmanned aircraft factory.
Other leaked documents also revealed that the NSA spied on the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Columbia (FARC). The operation, called ‘Operación Orlandocard’, created an information system intercepting thousands of emails they signalled as “potential future interest”.
The post Venezuela: New Documents Reveal NSA Targeting of Chávez Government appeared first on The Argentina Independent.
