National Intelligence Centre
 National Intelligence Centre  (Intelligence agency)    | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Predecessor | • SECED • CESID |
| Formation | 6 May 2002 |
| Headquarters | Madrid, Spain |
| Budget | 300 million euros |
| The Spanish combined foreign and domestic intelligence agency. | |
The National Intelligence Centre (Spanish: Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, CNI) is the Spanish official intelligence agency, acting as both its foreign and domestic intelligence agency.
Activities
In 2013, thanks to the Global Surveillance Leaks by Edward Snowden, it was learned that the CNI has been collaborating with the NSA in the massive espionage of millions of Spaniards, directly intercepting or helping to intercept millions of metadata of call logs, text messages and emails.[1]
US infiltration
In December 2023, two agents from Spain’s CNI intelligence service were bribed to provide classified information to the United States. The internal investigation confirmed that at least one of the agents, a middle-ranking official at the secret service, had been recruited by U.S. spies to obtain secret information in exchange for a large sum of money. According to sources close to the CNI, the agent was an area chief, one of the sections that are part of the intelligence division, while the other was his assistant.
Sources from the Spanish intelligence service did not fully understand what happened. "What do Americans have to pay for if we give them everything they ask for?" they noted. These sources insist that Spain openly collaborates with the United States; according to these sources, the number of times in which Spain has refused to share information of interest to Washington is "between one and zero."[2]
At least two U.S. agents stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, who were directly involved in recruiting the CNI spies, were discreetly expelled from Spain.[2]
