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US takes bugging at the UN to 'new
levels'
By Thalif Deen
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.
(Inter Press
Service)
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