Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines

POLITICS: U.S. Spies at U.N. Raise Bugging to ‘New Level’ – Expert

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 2003 (IPS) - The United States came under fire Monday over news reports that key U.N. diplomats in the Security Council were under high-intensity surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies.

According to a report in the U.K. ‘Observer’ newspaper Sunday, the United States is conducting a secret ”dirty tricks” campaign against diplomats from countries that have remained non-committal on how they would vote on a proposed U.S.-British resolution legitimising 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 U.N. officials and diplomats were under constant surveillance,” Jim Paul of the New York-based Global Policy Forum, told IPS on Monday. ”But the existing surveillance has raised bugging to new levels,” he added.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer refused to offer any comments on the breaking story at a news briefing in Washington.

The newspaper quoted a memo from the National Security Agency (NSA) in Washington advising senior U.S. 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 IPS that delegates have always remained vulnerable to secret U.S. 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 U.S. attempts to invade the privacy of their homes.”

The United States, 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 the revelation is itself not astonishing to U.N. delegates, who have long believed that the United States has the United Nations ”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 U.N. officials have been routinely bugged by U.S. intelligence agencies, said Paul.

When the United Nations was building a cafeteria years ago, there was a joke that the United States had infiltrated the construction company in order to install bugging equipment in the premises, he said.

”The U.S. 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 United Nations 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 Monday recounted the Cold War days of the 1960s and 1970s when the United Nations was a veritable battleground between the United States and the now-defunct Soviet Union.

U.S. and Soviet spies were everywhere in the U.N. building – committee rooms, the press gallery, the Secretariat and even in the U.N. 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 U.N. espionage was laid bare before a U.S. 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 U.S. envoy to the United Nations, 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 U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) in Baghdad to intercept Iraqi security intelligence in an attempt to undermine the government of President Saddam Hussein.

The charges, spread across the front pages of the ‘Washington Post’ and the ‘Boston Globe’, only 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 (WMD) and destroy that country’s ability to produce nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. It was the predecessor to the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), which is currently leading the effort to search for WMD 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.

In an editorial in January 1999, the ‘New York Times’ said that ”using U.N. activities in Iraq as a cover for American spy operations would be a sure way to undermine the international organisation, embarrass the United States and strengthen Mr. Hussein”.

”Washington did cross a line it should not have if it placed American agents on the U.N. team with the intention of gathering information that could be used for military strikes against targets in Baghdad,” the editorial noted.