The NSA and the Snowden Saga

As revealed by journalist Glenn Greenwald, keeper of the National Security Agency (NSA)’s secret documents that were filtered by former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, Washington’s spying on Mexico has nothing to do with terrorism, drugs or weapons, but rather oil, energy and strategic interests.

On Sept. 2, Greenwald, who was then working for The Guardian, made it known on the program Fantastico on the Brazilian TV channel Globo that the espionage involving President Dilma Rousseff and Mexico’s current President Enrique Peña extended to both of their advisers’ equipment and included the interception of private messages, as witnessed in an internal document by the NSA classified as top secret which was brought to light.

Among the images shown were two text messages between the then Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party’s presidential candidate and one of his aides, which were intercepted by the so-called Mexican leadership team of the NSA — S2C41 — through the Mainway and Association surveillance programs, used to intercept and collect information passing through social networks and phone text messages.

According to the document, for two weeks — presumably in June 2012, the month before the presidential elections — the eavesdroppers at the NSA carried out an intensive spying effort on the leading candidate, Peña, and nine of his close associates. The intelligence report leaked by Snowden, now exiled in Russia, explained step-by-step and in a graphic way how to penetrate the information of major politicians and their equipment from seed data — monitored email addresses and phone numbers — and based on a systematic observation of telephone networks, emails, Internet and servers.

The leaks showed a serious violation of Mexico’s security and sovereignty, which estranged the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from U.S. Ambassador Anthony Wayne and provoked the demand for an investigation in Washington, which was followed by a brief meeting between Barack Obama and Enrique Peña in St. Petersburg, Russia, during the G-20 summit. Obama said the alliance between the two countries is strategic and that the issue of espionage should not tarnish their relationship — traditional imperial rhetoric — and the lukewarm, submissive and fearful attitude of Peña is the weakest link in their asymmetrical relationship.

Six weeks later, while Mexico’s Ambassador Eduardo Medina Mora was in Washington, still waiting eagerly for America’s response regarding the alleged acts of espionage, new files leaked to the German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that since at least May 2010, NSA director General Keith Alexander had hacked the Mexican president’s server and received sensitive information about Felipe Calderon and his cabinet members.

The structural surveillance of Calderon and his team was supervised from the NSA office in San Antonio, Texas and secret electronic intervention stations in the American embassy in Mexico, in conjunction with the CIA. The monitoring was carried out by Tailored Access Operations, who, after snooping around, managed to decipher communications passwords and enter the president’s server.

According to a top secret classified report, the operation, called Flatliquid, allowed them to access valuable diplomatic, governmental leadership and economic data — Pemex included. The NSA considered their harvest to be profitable. Another leak allowed them to find about a document from August 2009, with internal password White-Tamale, according to which the agency had spied on internal communications of Mexican Secretary of Public Security Genaro Garcia Luna’s employees.

For Der Spiegel, the espionage on computer and telephone networks of Brazilian and Mexican politicians did not involve isolated events. Mexico and Brazil were at the top of a list of high priority targets dated April 2013. Classified as secret, the list was approved by the White House, or rather, Obama.

Interviewed by La Jornada, former director of Petrobras Ildo Luis Sauer said that the espionage on Dilma Rousseff and the Brazilian semi-public company was not to steal secrets, but to identify the weak links in the chain, to know where to penetrate, with whom to negotiate, who to promote, who to take out of the political process. For Mexico, the moral is clear — especially when Sauer said the oil in the Gulf of Mexico is a major target of Washington’s geopolitical war.

As a distraction from the media’s new exhibits from Snowden and Greenwald in Der Spiegel, Mexican Secretary of the Interior Miguel Angel Osorio Chong announced an investigation into the espionage of Peña and Calderon which, according to him, would be carried out by the cybernetic division of the Federal Police and the Center for Research and National Security. In turn, Chancellor Joseph A. Meade demanded that Washington urgently increase its investigations. For the fourth time, Ambassador Wayne has been summoned for consultation.

To cover the basics, Secretary of Defense General Salvador Cienfuegos, military officer in charge of internal and external security, demanded a brief yet thorough investigation into the espionage, with outcomes. But Anthony Wayne reduced their demands. He told reporters that Obama is taking the allegations seriously. Peña and Obama are already looking ahead. Well into November, things remain without incident. In Washington, Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson said, offhandedly, that before the end of the year, something may happen.