US Spying on Security Council Members

[a_unique_person]

The means justifies the ends, I suppose. Not very good for a long term relationship based on trust, though.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/02/1046540068572.html



America's top spy agency is reportedly conducting a secret surveillance campaign against UN Security Council delegations as part of its push to gain support for war against Iraq.

The operation, which involves intercepting home and office telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York, has been reported in London's Observer.

The countries targeted are Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan, whose votes will be crucial to the passing of a second British and US-sponsored UN resolution authorising force against Iraq.

The details were in a memo, leaked to the paper, written by Frank Koza, a top official at the National Security Agency, America's key and highly secretive intelligence agency.

[corplinx]

Actually, I had the time to read "Shadow Warriors" by Tom Clancy (nonfiction book) this weekend. According to the book, intel revealed that the Italians and Yugoslavians had under the table deals with the PLO when the PLO was the worst terror threat. This intel proved vital when dealing with the cruise ship hijackers who were flown to an italian airport.

In short, we need to know where other countries' sympathies lie.

PS: I have never read a Tom Clancy book but I had 6 hours to waste in an airport so I got this one. I think this is an essential read for understanding what special forces do and why terrorism is such a problem today (I blame Carter and Reagan for not taking on the PLO/Hezbollah and making an example, yes I realize that the Cold War was still going on and there were many reasons to not take out the PLO).

[Pyrrho]

Looks like good police work to me. Spying keeps the peace.

[crackmonkey]

Crap. Forgery.
The email memo was published in the Observer in the UK. Note that this wasn't a transliterated copy, it was a reproduction of the original...
Oddly, though the writer was purported to be an American, the date was notated in the European fashion at the top of the page of the memo (day, month, year) as opposed to the typical US style. Many words were spelled in the English sense, as opposed to the American - such as 'authorised', 'favourable' and 'emphasise'. The author, supposedly a Frank Kosa, somehow misspells his own name at the top of the memo.
C'mon... you guys are supposed to be skeptics here. Don't fall for this crap.

[a_unique_person]

· Footnote: This email was originally transcribed with English spellings standardised for a British audience. Following enquiries about this, we have reverted to the original US-spelling as in the document leaked to The Observer.



http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,905954,00.html

who reads this site besides the FBI and CIA?

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by pyrrho2000
Looks like good police work to me. Spying keeps the peace.

Is that how you delelop trust? Besides for every good lead, there is a bad one, especially with paid informants. Spying didn't prevent 9/11, but it led to a pharmaceutical factory being blown up in Sudan.

[crackmonkey]

Again, crap. Not only did they change spellings (and why did they change them in the first place?), they changed the date, misspelled the author's name, and messed up the government document number.
Utterly transparent, and obviously the Observer isn't naming its source. Cowardly liars.

[subgenius]

Keep an eye on this story.
"Methinks you doth protestesth too much."

[Agammamon]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
The means justifies the ends, I suppose. Not very good for a long term relationship based on trust, though.




People have friends, nations have allies. In deals with other countries we should keep in mind that many of our best current allies were once our bitterest enemies and many of our new enemies were once our allies.

[Samus]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
Is that how you delelop trust? Besides for every good lead, there is a bad one, especially with paid informants. Spying didn't prevent 9/11, but it led to a pharmaceutical factory being blown up in Sudan. I don't have a problem with us spying on security council members. Other countries spy on us all the time...if we weren't doing what we do and collecting the intelligence we collect, our ability to make sound national security & international policy decisions would be hampered.

To think that other countries don't try just as hard as us to collect intel would be naive.

[Troll]

Originally posted by a_unique_person


Is that how you delelop trust? Besides for every good lead, there is a bad one, especially with paid informants. Spying didn't prevent 9/11, but it led to a pharmaceutical factory being blown up in Sudan.

No it's not how you develop trust. It's how you verify who you can continue to trust. Surely you don't think the US is the only one still engaged in spy tactics, do you?

[rikzilla]

Originally posted by corplinx
Actually, I had the time to read "Shadow Warriors" by Tom Clancy (nonfiction book) this weekend. According to the book, intel revealed that the Italians and Yugoslavians had under the table deals with the PLO when the PLO was the worst terror threat. This intel proved vital when dealing with the cruise ship hijackers who were flown to an italian airport.

In short, we need to know where other countries' sympathies lie.

PS: I have never read a Tom Clancy book but I had 6 hours to waste in an airport so I got this one. I think this is an essential read for understanding what special forces do and why terrorism is such a problem today (I blame Carter and Reagan for not taking on the PLO/Hezbollah and making an example, yes I realize that the Cold War was still going on and there were many reasons to not take out the PLO).

There ya go. Another example of European countries (Italy in this case) giving aid to terrorism. Italy, Germany, France and the UN itself have all made deals with and appeased terrorists for the last 40 years. This appeasement is the real reason terrorism has bloomed. If terrorism were not rewarded,...it would be dead as a political tactic.

-zilla

[headscratcher4]

Just so we understand the whole trust issue...and I actually think it is a valid point...but just who do you think is NOT spying?

Do you think the French security forces have given up trying to gather information on what members of the Security Counsil are thinking?

Iraq?

Britain?

China?

My point is merely that (yawn) every government spies, and the UN is a nest of spies (heck, Saddam's half-brother ran both inteligence and money laundering operations as Ambasador to a UN agency in Switzerland). So, what are you really offended at in this revelation? The issue of spying in general, or US spying in particular? And, is US spying more odious, wrong, bad, intimidating, etc. than the spying by other countries?