NSA Spied on UN Diplomats in Push for Invasion of Iraq
From: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122705Y.shtml
Tuesday 27 December 2005
Despite all the news accounts and punditry since the New York Times published its Dec. 16 bombshell about the National
Security Agency's domestic spying, the media coverage has made virtually no mention of the fact that the Bush
administration used the NSA to spy on UN diplomats in New York before the invasion of Iraq.
That spying had nothing to do with protecting the United States from a terrorist attack. The entire purpose of the NSA
surveillance was to help the White House gain leverage, by whatever means possible, for a resolution in the UN Security
Council to green light an invasion. When that surveillance was exposed nearly three years ago, the mainstream US media
winked at Bush's illegal use of the NSA for his Iraq invasion agenda.
Back then, after news of the NSA's targeted spying at the United Nations broke in the British press, major US media
outlets gave it only perfunctory coverage - or, in the case of the New York Times, no coverage at all. Now, while the
NSA is in the news spotlight with plenty of retrospective facts, the NSA's spying at the UN goes unmentioned: buried in
an Orwellian memory hole.
A rare exception was a paragraph in a Dec. 20 piece by Patrick Radden Keefe in the online magazine Slate, which
pointedly noted that "the eavesdropping took place in Manhattan and violated the General Convention on the Privileges
and Immunities of the United Nations, the Headquarters Agreement for the United Nations, and the Vienna Convention on
Diplomatic Relations, all of which the United States has signed."
But after dodging the story of the NSA's spying at the UN when it mattered most - before the invasion of Iraq - the New
York Times and other major news organizations are hardly apt to examine it now. That's all the more reason for other
media outlets to step into the breach.
In early March 2003, journalists at the London-based Observer reported that the NSA was secretly participating in the
US government's high-pressure campaign for the UN Security Council to approve a pro-war resolution. A few days after the
Observer revealed the text of an NSA memo about US spying on Security Council delegations, I asked Daniel Ellsberg to
assess the importance of the story. "This leak," he replied, "is more timely and potentially more important than the
Pentagon Papers." The key word was "timely."
Publication of the top-secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, made possible by Ellsberg's heroic decision to leak those
documents, came after the Vietnam War had been underway for many years. But with an invasion of Iraq still in the
future, the leak about NSA spying on UN diplomats in New York could erode the Bush administration's already slim chances
of getting a war resolution through the Security Council. (Ultimately, no such resolution passed before the invasion.)
And media scrutiny in the United States could have shed light on how Washington's war push was based on subterfuge and
manipulation.
"As part of its battle to win votes in favor of war against Iraq," the Observer had reported on March 2, 2003, the US
government developed an "aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office
telephones and the e-mails of UN delegates." The smoking gun was "a memorandum written by a top official at the National
Security Agency - the US body which intercepts communications around the world - and circulated to both senior agents in
his organization and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency." The friendly agency was Britain's Government
Communications Headquarters.
The Observer explained: "The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are
the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York - the
so-called 'Middle Six' delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the US and Britain,
and the party arguing for more time for UN inspections, led by France, China and Russia."
The NSA memo, dated Jan. 31, 2003, outlined the wide scope of the surveillance activities, seeking any information
useful to push a war resolution through the Security Council - "the whole gamut of information that could give US
policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises."
Noting that the Bush administration "finds itself isolated" in its zeal for war on Iraq, the Times of London called the
leak of the memo an "embarrassing disclosure." And, in early March 2003, the embarrassment was nearly worldwide. From
Russia to France to Chile to Japan to Australia, the story was big mainstream news. But not in the United States.
Several days after the "embarrassing disclosure," not a word about it had appeared in the New York Times, the USA's
supposed paper of record. "Well, it's not that we haven't been interested," Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale
told me on the evening of March 5, nearly 96 hours after the Observer broke the story. But "we could get no confirmation
or comment" on the memo from US officials. Smale added: "We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting."
Whatever the rationale, the New York Times opted not to cover the story at all.
Except for a high-quality Baltimore Sun article that appeared on March 4, the coverage in major US media outlets
downplayed the significance of the Observer's revelations. The Washington Post printed a 514-word article on a back page
with the headline "Spying Report No Shock to UN" Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times published a longer piece that didn't
only depict US surveillance at the United Nations as old hat; the LA Times story also reported "some experts suspected
that it [the NSA memo] could be a forgery" - and "several former top intelligence officials said they were skeptical of
the memo's authenticity."
But within days, any doubt about the NSA memo's "authenticity" was gone. The British press reported that the UK
government had arrested an unnamed female employee at a British intelligence agency in connection with the leak. By
then, however, the spotty coverage of the top-secret NSA memo in the mainstream US press had disappeared.
As it turned out, the Observer's expose - headlined "Revealed: US Dirty Tricks to Win Vote on Iraq War" - came 18 days
before the invasion of Iraq began.
From the day that the Observer first reported on NSA spying at the United Nations until the moment 51 weeks later when
British prosecutors dropped charges against whistleblower Katharine Gun, major US news outlets provided very little
coverage of the story. The media avoidance continued well past the day in mid-November 2003 when Gun's name became
public as the British press reported that she had been formally charged with violating the draconian Official Secrets
Act.
Facing the possibility of a prison sentence, Katharine Gun said that disclosure of the NSA memo was "necessary to
prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed or maimed." She said:
"I have only ever followed my conscience."
In contrast to the courage of the lone woman who leaked the NSA memo - and in contrast to the journalistic vigor of the
Observer team that exposed it - the most powerful US news outlets gave the revelation the media equivalent of a yawn.
Top officials of the Bush administration, no doubt relieved at the lack of US media concern about the NSA's illicit
spying, must have been very encouraged.
*************
This article is adapted from Norman Solomon's new book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to
Death. For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com