Greece's intelligence service carried out surveillance on its allies, a former Greek foreign minister has admitted after news reports the US was using its embassy in Athens as a listening station.
"We also snooped in on the American embassy," Theodoros Pangalos said in an interview with the private radio station Vima 99.5 on Tuesday.
"It was very entertaining to listen to the American ambassador in Athens speak with his colleague in Ankara and with the State Department in Washington."
But Pangalos said the surveillance did not yield valuable intelligence.
"We have not learned anything new because we knew everything," he said.
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Pangalos' admission followed the leaking of classified documents by US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden, who is now in Russia. They showed the US had engaged in large-scale surveillance of foreign governments and citizens from rivals such as China and Russia to allies in Europe and South America.
A recent revelation included reports on alleged US surveillance of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone and other snooping.
In a Wall Street Journal story published on Monday, NSA officials for the first time admitted clandestine monitoring of about 35 world leaders. President Barack Obama was unaware of the spying, and the White House only halted the practice a few months ago after an internal review, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed US officials.
Documents leaked by Snowden also showed the US embassy in Athens operated as a wiretapping centre, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported.
The Greek newspaper Ta Nea also reported the charge and said the embassy had specialised equipment for remote surveillance that was typically installed and concealed on roofs.
