Ex-CIA agent: Spying began before 9/11

Former CIA agent Susan Lindauer says the United States began spying on foreign officials and even the UN Security Council members before the 9/11 attacks.

The Guardian reported on Thursday that the US National Security Agency monitored the telephone conversations of 35 world leaders.
Officials from the White House, the US Department of Defense, and the State Department gave the world leaders’ numbers to the NSA.
Lindauer said: “What is very interesting to me as a former CIA asset is I know very well that at the United Nations… we frequently targeted Security Council members. This was very normal behavior for the past 10 years. I’d say even before the 9/11 we were doing this.”
The anti-war activist argued that the United States is no longer the dominant source of power and the world is no longer tolerant of US abuses.
Lindauer said Washington’s strategy in pursuing foreign civilians does not have a rational basis.
She explained: “We are hunting down citizens of foreign countries whose activities might very well be legal within their own country, but which violates our own US policies and then we are sabotaging them or even arresting them and extraditing them to the United States for prosecution and this goes well beyond terrorism cases.”