French newspaper LeMonde is reporting today that NSA officials were not lying when they said the recent stories about NSA data collection in France and Spain were “completely false:” Surveillance: DGSE transmitted the data to the American NSA (Google Translate).

According to our information, collected from a senior official of the intelligence community in France, the direction of the French foreign service, the DGSE, has, in fact, established in from late 2011 and early 2012, a Memorandum of data exchange with the United States.

France has a strategic position for transportation of electronic data. The submarine cables by which most data from transit Africa and Afghanistan landed at Marseilles and Penmarc in Britain . These strategic areas are within the reach of the French DGSE, which intercepts and stores much of what flows between France and abroad.

[…]

So it seems, a priori, partly true, that some of the data transmitted over the telephone French soil is transmitted in accordance with cooperation agreements, and without sorting, the DGSE to the NSA. It is therefore data concerning French citizens receiving these communications as foreign geographic areas using these channels as well.

That’s right — this is confirmation that the axis of Greenwald totally screwed up this story and jumped to a conclusion that was exactly opposite of the truth. (And it’s very noticeable that LeMonde doesn’t actually apologize for getting this so very wrong.)

Should we start a countdown for Glenn Greenwald to retract his now-debunked story? I’m kidding, of course. He hasn’t corrected any of the other egregious errors he’s made since he started reporting the NSA leaks; why would he start now?

The Mighty Greenwald was last seen digging in and defending his story by insinuating that the NSA was lying:

How to know if you’re an authoritarian: if you equate “officials claim” with “The Unassailable Truth”

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 30, 2013

On NSA claims about misreporting of two slides http://t.co/ymSMsmVtit

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 30, 2013

Of course, it would be pretty dumb for the NSA to lie about something like this, when it could easily be denied by France or Spain. But Greenwald’s obviously counting on his audience not thinking it through.