Analyst and former journalist Alain Jourdan said that whistleblowers, who moved heaven and earth to denounce the alleged Pegasus spyware use by some countries as Morocco, are often clueless and spreading ready-to-consume information without checking the source or the motives behind such media campaigns.
Jourdan explained that, amid the economic crisis, newspapers are short of money to finance their own investigation cells and resort to secondhand information.
Jourdan, also author of “L’affaire Pegasus: les dessous d’une guerre de l’information” (The Pegasus Affair: waging information war), said that international consortiums of journalists process documents provided by anonymous sources and sometimes these scandals are real, such as Wikileaks, Pandora Papers, Offshore Leaks and Panama Papers.
However, by exposing some parties, investigative journalists seem to be selective. Panama tax evasion haven was uncovered while competition in Monaco, Hong-Kong and Singapore was not.
Jourdan, who heads the Geneva Geostrategic Observatory, questions the real motives behind such happenings that turn the globe upside down.
Jourdan spoke to “Monafrique” about the exaggerated number of Pegasus-infected phones. “When the scandal broke out, bugged phones were thought to be 50,000 and belonging to head of states. The number then shrunk to 1,000, and currently there seems to be only 30 infected phones,” he said.
The international relations consultant noted that counter-investigations by specialists, reported by the Washington Post and the Guardian, revealed the existence of fixed-line phones in the list of tapped phones which is ridiculous since Pegasus infiltrates only cell phones.
Another foolish mistake was the inclusion of American phone numbers in the list while the USA had imposed on Israeli NSO group to exclude them from Pegasus range of operations, he added.
Up to now, nobody knows who made that list or how come the name of president Emmanuel Macron was included in it, he said, echoing the legitimate question by Runia Sandwik, former IT security official in the New York Times, who wondered how this made-up list was assembled to target Morocco in particular.
In his book, Jourdan quotes Alain Juillet, former director at French Intelligence Agency (DGSE), who said that behind the Pegasus masquerade, the real target was Morocco.
Jourdan went on to say that 14 out of 27 EU member states cooperated with NSO, so why singling out Morocco? Moreover, spying on 10,000 phones is simply a hyperbole. Even with Artificial Intelligence, it would be a tremendous undertaking: four agents for each infected phone.
“Morocco has excellent intelligence services. I am not defending the country, I am just saying that several entities are looking to destabilize the country and some NGOs are playing the part very well,” he concluded.