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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Alleged U.S. spying at the U.N. -- huge news in the rest of the world, ignored here -- provides fodder to festering anti-Americanism.
Mar 4, 2003 | Just when you thought the United States' worldwide unpopularity couldn't plunge to greater depths, a story in Sunday's London Observer reported that in preparation for another possible United Nations vote on military intervention against Iraq, the U.S. government was engaging in "dirty tricks" by conducting surveillance on members of the U.N. Security Council.
The story was based on a memo allegedly sent by a National Security Agency official seeking surveillance information on the thoughts of U.N. Security Council delegates for countries that remain either opposed to or undecided on the war against Iraq.
"We have no statement to issue," a spokesman for the NSA told Salon. The White House similarly refused comment. "As a matter of long-standing policy, the administration never comments on anything involving any people involved in intelligence," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said in a Monday afternoon briefing. According to the LexisNexis news database, the only U.S. media outlet to bring the memo up by Monday was Fox News Sunday anchor Brit Hume. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., a member of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, told Hume that he hadn't seen the memo, but theoretically such surveillance "would be very aggressive" and might be "a topic of a hearing on the Intelligence Committee which probably would take place in the very immediate future." But no major American newspaper had run with the story.
That wasn't the case overseas. "It's a big story in Russia and it led the French news today," said Martin Bright, the Observer's home affairs editor. Bright, who helped write the story, was reached on his cellphone as he drove home from an interview with Canadian TV. Bright said that he had agreed to interviews with NBC, CNN, and Fox News Channel -- and that all three had called and canceled. But the report that the U.S. is spying on U.N. Security Council members -- and seeking allied intelligence agencies to do the same -- has quickly spread throughout the world. "U.S. Spying on U.N. Delegates to Win Vote on Iraq War: Paper," headlined a newswire in Japan; "Uncle Sam Spies on U.N. Delegations," said the Australian; "U.S. in 'Dirty Tricks' Battle to Win Vote on Iraq War: Report," said Agence France Presse.
What might be most telling about the episode, however, is not that the U.S. is spying on U.N. Security Council members in search of information "that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises," as the memo states. Spying at the United Nations is nothing new, nor is it necessarily nefarious. Rather, the story is significant in that it reveals much about the way that the Bush administration has handled its foreign policy: clumsy or arrogant or righteous, depending upon your point of view, but indisputably alienating to most of the rest of the world. The media maelstrom the memo has set off as far away as Sydney and Moscow is indicative of how much the U.S.'s reservoir of goodwill has dried up.
"As you've likely heard by now," the Jan. 31 memo, from Frank Koza -- chief of staff in the Regional Targets section of the NSA -- reads, "the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed" at Security Council members -- with the exception of the U.S. and the United Kingdom -- "for insights as to how the membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc."
In the memo, Koza says that his division will be reviving and creating efforts "against" Security Council members "Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea" as well as putting an "extra focus on Pakistan U.N. matters."
All six countries are members of the U.N. Security Council who are being lobbied by the U.S. and British in favor of military action against Iraq, and by the French and Germans in opposition.
When the story broke Sunday there were initially questions about the legitimacy of the memo by the Drudge Report and the Washington Times, which noted that the memo used British spelling of several words. But the Observer subsequently fixed the memo and added a clarification, noting that it had "reverted to the original US-spelling as in the document leaked to The Observer." Questions about its credibility seemed to vanish when no one in the government disputed it.
Many in the media took the White House's non-denial as an confirmation. "If you're a Cameroonian diplomat or a French diplomat at the United Nations, because of what you just said, you're going to have to operate on the assumption that the United States is bugging" your office, one reporter said to Fleischer.
"No, no," Fleischer responded. "It's a blanket matter of policy that we do not answer questions of that nature."
