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European spies have been spying on the U.S. for years, according to two former intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss espionage programs. They said such spying includes tracking senior U.S. officials to see what they are doing in countries like France and Germany, which have both complained bitterly about the EU reports.

But European spying efforts haven’t been exposed the way American exploits have recently with the explosive release of secret documents by Snowden, the former U.S. intelligence systems analyst.

“The intelligence services in France and Germany and across Europe are guffawing into their respective national drinks today, at the ‘shock’ that international meetings are a target for U.S. spies,” said former intelligence official Joel Brenner, who served in senior roles at the Director of National Intelligence and other agencies. “And if anyone thinks the Europeans don’t do it too, they’re nuts,” he added.

Nor is France innocent when it comes to espionage and spying on Americans, said former CIA officer Bob Baer, who was stationed in Paris for three years. “The French intelligence service used to break in regularly when I was in Paris into rooms of U.S. businessmen to image their computers,” he said.

Israel and the U.S., two ardent allies, also have a long history of mistrust. The CIA considers Israel its No. 1 counterintelligence threat in the agency’s Near East Division, the group that oversees spying across the Middle East, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials. Counterintelligence is the art of protecting national secrets from spies. This means the CIA believes that U.S. national secrets are safer from other Middle Eastern governments than from Israel.

Russia and the U.S. have a storied history of spying on each other, immortalized in print, film and cartoon, and sometimes still veering into the ridiculous.

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