Prime Ministers of Australia and NZ are Not Very Happy

An excerpt from a confidential US Government memorandum which was quoted by the British newspaper Guardian states that the USA and its National Security Agency (NSA)  have access to 200 phone numbers to 35 world leaders.

Australian and New Zealand governments have obtained a copy of the list. Governments of both countries are dismayed to find that the list has no numbers for the Prime Ministers of Australia or New Zealand. When an Australian journalist asked the White House spokesman why the leaders of the two countries were not on the list the spokesman said that “we are not going to comment publicly on every specific intelligence activity, and as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations”.

The revelations come after the European leaders demanded answers from Washington over allegations that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone was bugged, the worst spat between the two countries in a decade.

A meeting of  the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand, their deputies and the intelligence chiefs met in a secret location in Melbourne. One of the Garlic reporters has managed to obtain a copy of their discussions.

It has been reported that the chief of the Australian intelligence body ASIO asserted that the reason the telephone numbers were not on the list was primarily because the Australian and NZ security is so good that NSA could not penetrate it.

The Deputy Prime Minister Julie Bishop has been reported to have talked to her counterpart in the USA and has discovered that some people in the NSA believe that the Australian PM does not have a mobile phone given his tendency to go for a swim in the ocean every day.

Finally the NZ Prime Minister suggested that perhaps Australia and NZ should provide their Prime Ministers’  telephone numbers to NSA requesting that they be put on the NSA list. The Australian Prime Minister agreed to contact the Australian Ambassador in Washington Kim Beazley asking him to assist in transmitting the information to the NSA.