The newspaper said on Thursday that Spain recently expelled two American spies who secretly infiltrated the Spanish intelligence services by recruiting two agents from the National Intelligence Center (CNI). El Pais.
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The El Confidencial news website announced on Monday that these Spanish agents recruited by Washington have been accused of passing classified information to the United States and have been arrested. The Spanish leftist government simply confirmed the existence of the case, without providing details.
On Tuesday, during an informal conversation with a group of foreign journalists, Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez admitted that this incident had caused tensions between Madrid and Washington, but he stressed that these tensions had now disappeared, again without the slightest accuracy.
According to the daily El País, “At least two American agents assigned to the US Embassy in Madrid, directly involved in recruiting CNI spies, have been expelled from Spain.”
In response to a question from Agence France-Presse, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated that it had “no comment” on the matter and did not wish to confirm or deny the newspaper’s information.
For its part, the Ministry of Defense, transmitted by the National Intelligence Center, did not respond to Agence France-Presse until midday.
The extreme discretion of the authorities, usual in espionage cases, was increased by the unprecedented and sensitive nature of the case, with the United States being a close ally of Spain.
According to the newspaper “El Pais”, citing government sources, the Spanish Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, summoned the US Ambassador, Julissa Reynoso, to demand clarifications, and her colleague in the Foreign Ministry, Jose Manuel Albarez, also called the diplomat. To express the annoyance of the Spanish government.
The two Spanish agents were reportedly arrested in September, after the CIA discovered that they had accessed secret documents for which they did not have the necessary authorization.
The nature of the information sent to US intelligence services is unknown.
The American authorities also refused to make any comment.
