The spokeswoman points out that “at the moment” Paz Esteban and Minister Robles have Sánchez’s support, but “every moment has its own desire”
The turn in the Government is total. From stating categorically last week that there would be no dismissals or resignations due to the alleged espionage of more than 60 pro-independence leaders and leaders, to clearly leaving in the air the continuity of the director of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), Peace Stephen. But between one moment and another the story has turned around. It was this weekend when the Executive learned conclusively that the cell phones of the president, Pedro Sánchez, and the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, had suffered intrusions in May and June 2021 with the Israeli Pegasus program. This is confirmed by two reports from the National Cryptologic Centera body dependent on the CNI.
The government spokeswoman, Isabel Rodríguez, was crystal clear this Tuesday when journalists asked her, at the end of the weekly meeting of the Council of Ministers, for the purge of responsibilities, if Sánchez maintained confidence in Robles and Esteban. “Of course They currently have full support. of the President of the Government”, he said in a first response. The precision of “at this time” was already important. But the following responses were even more revealing, as the appearance progressed, which ended up being practically monographic on the espionage to the leader socialist and the Minister of Defense and its political consequences.
In fact, after the second question about the possibility of Esteban leaving the CNI in a few weeks, Rodríguez went a step further, first warning that “given the circumstances and seriousness” of what happened, it had to be “rigorous”. in your answers. “We cannot act not to mention future. At all times and attending to each piece of information, we will be adopting and sharing the information and decisions in this regard,” he told the media. In short, he no longer took the continuity of the head of Spanish intelligence for granted. Everything will depend on what Let it be known in the coming days and weeks.
The message already seemed clear, but there was a third question, whether or not Esteban’s resignation or dismissal was ruled out. “Each moment has its eagerness. We are in the phase of clarify what has happened and to whom has it happened [el espionaje con Pegasus]. And this is decisive to continue advancing in how we correct. We cannot move on to the next moment without knowing what has happened so far,” replied the spokeswoman. In other words: first, that the investigations be continued, and then there will be assumption of responsibilities for what happened. Without ruling out that it falls Consequently, the head of the spies The spokeswoman did solemnize her support for the CNI, a “magnificent” security organization, and for the “daily effort” of its more than 3,000 workers.
“Still in office”
The director of the CNI, then, is alone, and the Moncloa is letting him see. The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, already did it first thing this morning, when he limited himself to expressing, in the BEthat Esteban “is still in office, he is working to clarify the facts and that we know what has happened & rdquor ;. That is, did not come out in his explicit defense. In addition, the Government wants him to first give explanations this Thursday in Congress, in the official secrets commission, a meeting with which the president’s team hoped to calm the spirits of the independence movement. But now everything has become much more complicated.
The spokeswoman stressed throughout the press conference that the Government “has done what it had to do” and what is “expected of a democratic State”, which is to prepare to clarify what happened as soon as it became known, through the Canadian organization Citizen Lab, that at least sixty pro-sovereignty leaders and activists may have been spied on between 2017 and 2020: they opened an internal investigation in the CNI, expressed their willingness to collaborate unreservedly with the Ombudsman, unblocked the official secrets commission of Congress and He offered to declassify documents if requested by the Justice. The State, therefore,works” and the government “fulfills its task“. The Executive, percussed, “It has nothing to hide“, and wants to throw “absolute transparency”.
But the main plot weakness that the Sánchez Cabinet has is the time issue. Because the hacking of the president’s and Robles’ telephones occurred in May and June 2021, but they have met now. Specifically, this past weekend. It was then that the CCN detected the intrusions, already referred to the National High Court. Now the motives of the rest of the current Cabinet are being analyzed, and when the conclusions are known, they will be made known, also if necessary to the Justice, he continued.
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But why now and not a year ago? Because of pressure from the Government and, specifically, from ERC? Because it was in 2021 when a journalistic investigation, coordinated by the French organization Forbidden Stories and with technical assistance from Amnesty International, discovered that one of French President Emmanuel Macron’s cell phones was among the Pegasus targets, targeting Morocco as author, although Rabat denied any involvement, reports EFE.
Rodríguez explained that “the security protocols have been maintained over time, and the systems and resources that we have are being updated”, so “the circumstance may arise that today, those that we have, are more effective than yesterday”. That is the Government’s justification for why the two interventions of the president’s communications, in May 2021, and the one suffered by Robles, in June of that year, were not detected at the time. What has happened is that now a “more exhaustive examination has been carried out as a result of an investigation & rdquor ;, and this is a more “complex” procedure; which carries “the inability to use at that time” the mobile terminal. Media evolve, she said, because threats, too, are “dynamic.” In this sense, he highlighted that Spain is the fourth safest country in the world, according to the Global Cybersecurity Indexand the second in Europe, and that one billion euros of recovery funds will be allocated to strengthening these capacities.