The wiretapping, a pitiful spectacle

I am ashamed and disgusted because the spectacle that the political class is putting on regarding the wiretapping issue is anything but edifying. Accusations have been made without evidence that have found an echo in a weak and divided government where some ministers are calling for the resignation of other ministers, while other ministers fight among themselves to shake off responsibilities, and a president suddenly remembers that his mobile phone was also attacked a year ago and offers to declassify secret documents to try to save what is left of his battered image without caring about the damage that this could do to the National Intelligence Centre (CNI), once again a convenient scapegoat for the government. Pedro Sánchez is now acting like José María Aznar in 2004, when he declassified classified information from the CNI in an unsuccessful attempt to cover up his unfortunate management of the 11-M terrorist attack. To our shame, history is repeating itself with other protagonists and with the CNI once again being scorned.

I am not surprised by the attitude of the pro-independence parties because they are in their role and nothing else is to be expected of them. They do their dirty work with pleasure because in the case of the Catalans they had run out of gas and this scandal has refilled their tank for a while... until they are deflated again. Their aim is to break up Spain and to do so, nothing better than destroying the Constitution and the Monarchy and weakening the main institutions of the State, such as the CNI. They could not expect anything better and that is why they do not care about what really happened. They want resignations, they want blood, and the more the better. For Aznar it was ETA that was to blame for 11-M and for the independentists it is the CNI that is responsible for the illegal wiretapping, although the director of the Centre explained in Congress, apparently supported by irrefutable documentation, that the CNI's wiretapping was authorised by a judge, as required by its 2002 regulatory law. And that intelligence goes to the government. No one seems to stop to think, apparently not even in the government, that since territorial integrity and the defence of our sovereignty are objectives to be preserved in article 1 of the same law, if the CNI did not monitor (with judicial supervision) those who have been convicted of trying to break them and they say they will do it again, apparently seeking undesirable support in distant geographies, in that case it would have to be abolished as useless.

And that is without taking into account that things may be much more complex because the origin of much of what is happening may be outside our borders. I'm not saying that it is, I'm just pointing out that it could be because there are countries interested in knowing what our rulers think and there are others that want to weaken us and create as many problems as possible, which is why it seems to me a plausible hypothesis. But instead of investigating seriously, the aim here is to obtain petty short-term partisan political gain, and if that means damaging the reputation of the state and its intelligence services, so much the better. And for me, who I have had the honour of directing the CNI, I am outraged because several thousand highly competent and patriotic professionals work there in a hard, solitary and publicly unrecognised job, and they deserve respect. A lot of respect. That is why I am convinced that whatever the CNI has done, which I do not know, it has done it following the instructions given to it by the Government in the National Intelligence Directive and with scrupulous respect for the law, since it is not in vain that it is subject to strict political, judicial, legislative and also administrative controls over the use of its reserved funds. The doubts that the government frivolously allows about its actions damage its reputation, complicate its work in defence of our security and hinder its relations with other services of friendly countries. I understand that the pro-independence supporters applaud this sorry spectacle and, emboldened, call for more.

Doubtless I am very naïve, but I would have liked the government to have nipped the accusations in the bud by announcing an investigation and at the same time making a staunch defence of the Centre. Only the Minister of Defence, who was unjustly attacked for doing so and whom I humbly applaud, dared to do so.

Jorge Dezcallar, Ambassador of Spain

Text published in the Diario de Mallorca, el Periódico de Catalunya and Cadena de Prensa Ibérica on Sunday 8 May 2022