Report: Sweden Helped the United States Spy on Russia

Sweden has helped the U.S. gov­ern­ment spy on Rus­sia and Rus­si­an of­fi­cials, ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments leaked by former Na­tion­al Se­cur­ity Agency con­tract­or Ed­ward Snowden, Sweden’s Sveriges Tele­vi­sion re­por­ted Thursday.

It quoted a doc­u­ment from earli­er this year, which al­leges that Sweden’s Na­tion­al De­fense Ra­dio Es­tab­lish­ment (FRA), re­spons­ible for con­duct­ing sur­veil­lance, has giv­en the NSA “a unique col­lec­tion on high-pri­or­ity Rus­si­an tar­gets, such as lead­er­ship, in­tern­al polit­ics.”

Anni Boleni­us, who over­sees com­mu­nic­a­tions at the FRA, told Re­u­ters that the or­gan­iz­a­tion has “in­ter­na­tion­al co­oper­a­tion with a num­ber of coun­tries” but would not com­ment on spe­cif­ics.

In an­oth­er doc­u­ment, some NSA em­ploy­ees were in­struc­ted to “thank Sweden for its con­tin­ued work on the Rus­si­an tar­get, and un­der­score the primary role that FRA plays as a lead­ing part­ner to work the Rus­si­an tar­get, in­clud­ing Rus­si­an lead­er­ship “¦ and “¦ coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence.”