US takes bugging at the UN to 'new levels'
By Thalif Deen
Asia Times Online
NEW YORK - The United States came under fire on Monday over news reports that key United Nations diplomats in the Security Council were under high-intensity surveillance by US intelligence agencies.
According to a report in the British Observer newspaper, the US is conducting a secret "dirty tricks" campaign against diplomats from countries that have remained non-committal on how they will vote on a proposed US-British resolution legitimizing a war on Iraq. The campaign has been directed mostly at delegates from six non-permanent members in the Security Council: Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan.
"We knew all along that senior UN officials and diplomats were under constant surveillance," Jim Paul of the New York-based Global Policy Forum, told Inter Press Service. "But the existing surveillance has raised bugging to new levels," he added.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer refused to offer any comments on the story at a news briefing in Washington. The newspaper quoted a memo from the National Security Agency (NSA) in Washington advising senior US intelligence officials to ferret out information not only on how delegates would vote on a second resolution but to seek out "negotiating positions" and "alliances" among Security Council members. The plan includes interception of email messages and bugging home and office telephones of diplomats whose countries are represented in the Security Council.
"The existence of the surveillance operation, understood to have been requested by President George W Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, is deeply embarrassing to the Americans in the middle of their efforts to win over the undecided delegations," the Observer noted.
A Third World diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Inter Press Service that delegates have always remained vulnerable to secret US surveillance. "The United States is known for its dirty tricks not just in this country but the world over," he said. "But what's happening now is a sign of desperation because the United States is in a relentless search for votes. I wouldn't be surprised if most member states are turned off by the sneaky US attempts to invade the privacy of their homes."
The US, which needs nine votes - and no vetoes - in the Security Council for the adoption of the resolution, has only three certain votes of support so far, besides its own: Britain, Spain and Bulgaria. That leaves Washington needing five more "yeas" out of the six still-undecided countries.
Paul said that the revelation is itself not astonishing to UN delegates, who have long believed that the US has the UN "heavily bugged". "But still, the revelation shows a new, heightened surveillance that is sure to stir further anger and resentment among member states," he added. The telephones of senior UN officials have been routinely bugged by US intelligence agencies, said Paul.
When the UN was building a cafeteria years ago, there was a joke that the US had infiltrated the construction company in order to install bugging equipment in the premises, he said. "The US mission to the United Nations has over 100 staffers," Paul said. "And a good number of them are intelligence agents," he added. In comparison, he said, the next largest foreign mission accredited to the UN has only about 50 employees.
The NSA memo leaked to the Observer is a very good sign, Paul said, "The spies are coming in from the cold. What will we hear next?" An Asian diplomat on Monday recounted the Cold War days of the 1960s and 1970s when the UN was a veritable battleground between the US and the now-defunct Soviet Union.
US and Soviet spies were everywhere in the UN building - committee rooms, the press gallery, the secretariat and even in the UN library, which was a drop-off point for sensitive political documents. The library, it later transpired, was headed by a master Soviet spy, said the diplomat. The extent of Cold War UN espionage was laid bare before a US congressional committee investigating the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1975.
Evidence revealed that the CIA had planted one of its Russian-speaking, lip-reading experts in a press booth overlooking the Security Council chamber so that he could monitor the lip movements of Russian delegates as they consulted each other in low whispers. In his 1978 book A Dangerous Place, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former US envoy to the UN, describes the cat-and-mouse espionage game that went on in the bowels of the world body.
In December 1998, Washington was accused of using the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in Baghdad to intercept Iraqi security intelligence in an attempt to undermine the government of President Saddam Hussein. The charges in major newspapers, confirmed the longstanding Iraqi accusation that UNSCOM was "a den of spies".
Established by the Security Council after the 1991 Gulf War, the body was mandated to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and destroy that country's ability to produce nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. It was the predecessor to the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which is currently leading the effort to search for weapons in Iraq.
UNSCOM head Richard Butler denied reports that the UNSCOM office in Baghdad was wired with eavesdropping equipment to monitor secret communications among military units responsible for Saddam's safety.
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