– US hacked top Bolivian officials’ emails: President Morales (PressTV, July 14, 2013):
Bolivian President Evo Morales says US intelligence has hacked into the email accounts of senior Bolivian officials amid growing concerns about Washington’s secret surveillance programs.
“Those US intelligence agents have accessed the emails of our most senior authorities in Bolivia,” Morales said in a Saturday speech.
“It was recommended to me that I not use email, and I’ve followed suit and shut it down,” the Bolivian president added.
Morales further said that he found out about the alleged US hacking at the Mercosur regional summit in Uruguay earlier this week.
He also noted that the US intended to employ the information in the emails to mastermind a future “invasion” of Bolivia.
The remarks came after Morales’s plane was diverted to Austria on July 2 due to false rumors that US surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden was on board.
France, Portugal, Spain, and Italy refused to allow Morales’s plane, which was flying from Moscow back to Bolivia, to cross their airspace.
On July 12, the leaders of Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, and Uruguay decided to recall their ambassadors from the aforementioned countries in reaction to the move.
“We’ve taken a number of actions in order to compel public explanations and apologies from the European nations that assaulted our brother Evo Morales,” Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro said.
Snowden, a former CIA employee, has revealed top secret US government spying programs, under which the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have been spying on a global scale.
Bolivia along with Venezuela and Nicaragua has offered asylum to the 30-year-old intelligence leaker who has been in an airport transit zone in Moscow since June 23.