An independent journalist with a record of leaked-FBI scoops has documented that the Vatican is being targeted by US intelligence services.
Ken Klippenstein has published a report confirming that U.S. intelligence agencies have, for years, been spying on the Vatican — and that President Donald Trump’s April 12 broadside against Pope Leo XIV has now turned that surveillance into an operational priority.
According to Klippenstein’s reporting, when Trump declared Leo “terrible for foreign policy,” “the U.S. intelligence community took the president’s remarks as a directive to prioritize spying on the Vatican.”
The CIA, he writes, “has human spies working inside the Holy See bureaucracy.” The NSA and CIA seek to intercept Vatican telecommunications, emails, and texts. The State Department circulates a daily Vatican news digest. The U.S. military maintains a distinct linguistic capability code — “QLE” — for Ecclesiastical Latin.
Klippenstein’s record makes the report difficult to dismiss.
He left The Intercept in April 2024 to build one of the most influential independent newsrooms in American journalism, with more than 200,000 subscribers and a deep bench of national security sources.
His prior reporting includes the leaked FBI report admitting the Bureau had “no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement” in the May 2020 George Floyd protests, the hacked JD Vance opposition dossier the corporate press refused to publish in September 2024, and a steady stream of disclosures about the U.S. national security state that no one else is consistently breaking.
When he writes that “sources tell me” the United States has been spying on the Vatican “for years,” the sentence carries the weight of a journalist whose bombshells routinely survive scrutiny.
The trigger for the new prioritization is now part of the public record. On April 12, in a Truth Social post I covered at the time, Trump called Leo “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” citing the pope’s criticism of the Iran war.
The first American pope, a U.S. citizen by birth, responded the next day with three words: “I am not afraid.” (more...)
Report: Trump Administration Is Spying on Pope Leo XIV’s Vatican
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