President Obama on Wednesday tried to reassure French President Francois Hollande that the U.S. was living up to its pledge to stop spying on him or in any way targeting his official or personal communications.
The leaders spoke by phone Wednesday in the wake of new reports claiming that the U.S. directly listened in on Hollande’s phone, as well as two of his predecessors’ phones.
“The president was very clear about the fact that the United States does not target and will not target the communications of the president of France,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Wednesday.
During the call, Obama reiterated a promise made in 2013 that the U.S. had stopped spying on his French counterpart and wouldn’t do so again in the future.
“We’ve been very clear that foreign intelligence activities are only conducted when there is a specific, validated national security interest involved,” Earnest said. “And that is true both when it comes to the leader of a country, but also when it comes to the citizens of a country.”
It was the second time in a year and a half that Obama talked to Hollande to do damage control, after leaks of reports that the U.S. is spying on international leaders.
During Hollande’s visit to Washington D.C. in February of last year, Obama tried to quell the French president’s concerns about past U.S. spying, evidence of which was leaked by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden.
During that visit, Obama and Hollande held a news conference in which the French president said “mutual trust had been restored,” Earnest recalled.
“So that is mutual trust that was reiterated in the context of a short telephone conversation that occurred between President Obama and President Hollande already today,” Earnest said.
Wikileaks late Tuesday released material claiming that the National Security Agency had bugged the mobile phones of French presidents, and listened to and recorded their conversations.
The leaked communiqué didn’t indicate whether the U.S. has continued to spy on Hollande and other French officials since the Snowden affair.
Earlier Wednesday, the French Foreign Minster Laurent Fabius summoned U.S. Ambassador to France Jane Hartley to demand an explanation for the Wikileaks reports. Hollande also called an emergency defense council meeting to discuss the revelations and deem the surveillance unacceptable.
