The U.S.’s dirty tricks to push for Iraq war

With the explosive domestic surveillance report recently published in The New York Times, a closer examination of pre-war spying may determine whether the Bush administration has used the National Security Agency for its own political goals.

In an editorial on CommonDreams.com, media critic Norman Solomon notes that, despite all the media attention given to the domestic spying report, the U.S. media ignored previous reports that the Bush administration authorized the NSA to secretly spy on the UN officials before the 2003 INVASION of Iraq.

The London-based Observer newspaper revealed on March 2, 2003, that President GEORGE W. BUSH ordered the NSA, the U.S.’s body which intercepts communications around the world, to spy on UN officials in early 2003 as part of the administration’s secret "aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the e-mails of UN delegates to win votes in favor of war against IRAQ.” Obviously, the NSA surveillance had nothing to do with the U.S.’s security, rather, its main purpose was to determine how UN diplomats would vote on a resolution in the Security Council that set the ground for the U.S.-led war in IRAQ. (Ultimately, no such resolution was passed before the war.)

In its report, the Observer cited an NSA memorandum, dated Jan. 31, that was circulated to both senior agents in the agency and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency." (The friendly agency was the British Government Communications Headquarters.) The NSA memo 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 U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises."

The British newspaper explained that "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 U.S. and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for UN inspections, led by France, China and Russia."

The Times of London noted at the time that the U.S. was “isolated” in its zeal for war on IRAQ, describing the leak of the NSA memo as an "embarrassing disclosure." In early March 2003, the scandal was reported worldwide. From Russia to France to Chile to Japan to Australia, the story was big mainstream news. But not in the United States.

The “embarrassing disclosure” of the NSA spying on the UN received scant coverage in U.S. newspapers at the time. When contacted by Norman Soloman almost 96 hours after the Observer reported the story, the New York Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale said: "'We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting,” adding that they didn’t get any comment from top U.S. officials. In other words, intelligence officials refused to confirm or discuss the memo, so the Times didn’t not see fit to report on it.

Only the Baltimore Sun took the story seriously when it published a high-quality article. Another is a Dec. 20 article on the online magazine Slate which stated 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."

The Washington Post published a very short article on a back page with the headline "Spying Report No Shock to UN”. In fact, a U.S. intelligence official admitted that the U.S. spying on the UN isn't new. “It's part of the job," he said. "Everyone knows it's being done."

The Los Angeles also tried to show that the NSA’s spying on UN officials is common. It further claimed that "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 authenticity of the NSA’s memo’s was gone. The British media reported that the UK government arrested a female official at a British intelligence agency in connection with the leak. By then, the spotty coverage of the top-secret NSA memo in the mainstream U.S. press had disappeared.

As it turned out, the Observer's report was published 18 days before the INVASION. From that day until British prosecutors dropped charges against whistleblower Katharine Tersea Gun, major U.S. news outlets continued to ignore the story. Katharine Gun, who faced the possibility of a prison sentence, defended her position by sating that the 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.... I have only ever followed my conscience."

In contrast to the courage of a woman who admitted leaking the NSA memo, the most powerful U.S. news agencies continued to ignore the illegal spying. Top American officials, who were relieved at the lack of the media’s concern, must have been very encouraged.

After ignoring the NSA’s spying on the UN when it mattered most - before the INVASION of Iraq - The NY Times and other major news agencies are hardly apt to report on it now. The leak about NSA spying on UN diplomats could have eliminated the Bush administration's already slim chances of getting a pro-war resolution through the Security Council. Media coverage in the United States could have shed light on how the case for war was based on deception and manipulation.