Ken Klippenstein has published a report confirming that U.S. intelligence agencies have, for years, been spying on the Vatican — and that Trump’s recent attack on Pope Leo XIV has now made that surveillance 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.
Since leaving The Intercept in April 2024, he has built one of the most influential independent newsrooms in American journalism, with a deep bench of national security sources.
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