Still nothing on the US air waves...Still nothing on
the front pages of the big city US newspapers...It is
a major scandal story all over the world...Your
country is in dire straits...They can ignore if they
dare, but the LNS promises you, the woods are coming
to the castle walls...
Kim Sengupta and Kathy Marks, Independent/UK: In an
interview published today, Dr Blix said he suspected
his UN office and New York home had been bugged by the
United States in the run-up to war. He said bugging
was to be expected between enemies, but "heit is
between people who co-operate and it is an unpleasant
feeling".
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=495963
'Britain and US shared transcripts after bugging Blix's mobile phone'
By Kim Sengupta and Kathy Marks in Sydney
28 February 2004
The controversy over alleged British and American
"dirty tricks" at the United Nations deepened
yesterday with claims that two chiefs of Iraq arms
inspection missions had been victims of spying.
Hans Blix and Richard Butler were said to have been
subjected to routine bugging while they led teams
searching for Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of
mass destruction.
In an interview published today, Dr Blix said he
suspected his UN office and New York home had been
bugged by the United States in the run-up to war. He
said bugging was to be expected between enemies, but
"here it is between people who co-operate and it is an
unpleasant feeling".
The new charges came within 24 hours of the former
cabinet minister Clare Short stating British
intelligence had taped the telephone calls of the UN
secretary general, Kofi Annan.
As demands grew at home and abroad for Tony Blair to
confirm or deny Ms Short's allegations, the British
ambassador to the UN, Emyr Jones-Parry, telephoned Mr
Annan on Thursday evening. The UN said Mr
Jones-Parry's call has not shed any fresh light on the
matter. Edward Mortimer, Mr Annan's director of
communications, said: "There was a telephone call
which was apologetic in tone but did not really amount
to an admission of substance. Basically, the answer we
got was the same as the Prime Minister gave at his
press conference [on Thursday]. We are not complete
innocents, we do realise these things happen but it
was rather a shock to hear that the British government
had been spying on the secretary general."
Charles Kennedy, the leader of the Liberal Democrats,
said Mr Blair should make a statement to MPs on the
affair.He will table a Commons motion next week
demanding to know if there was an "eavesdropping
operation", and if so, how extensive it was. Mr
Kennedy said: "We need to know whether British
intelligence took part in spying on the United Nations
secretary general. This is a serious allegation, made
by a member of Mr Blair's Cabinet, which cannot go
unanswered. The United Kingdom was one of the founding
members of the UN ... the suggestion that our security
services were involved in some kind of illegal
operation damages our national standing."
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Mr Annan's predecessor as
secretary general, said: "This is a violation of the
United Nations charter. It complicates the work of the
secretary general, of the diplomats, because they need
a minimum of secrecy to reach a solution." Mr Butler,
who led the UN disarmament team in Iraq in the 1990s,
Unscom, said he was "well aware" that he was being
bugged. But he said spying on the UN was illegal and
harmed the peace-making process. "What if Kofi Annan
had been bringing people together last February in a
genuine attempt to prevent the invasion of Iraq, and
the people bugging him did not want that to happen,
what do you think they would do with that
information?" he said.
The alleged bugging of Dr Blix, in charge of the last
UN mission before the war, seen as the last chance to
avoid war, is being viewed in diplomatic circles as
part of a concerted effort to sabotage attempts at a
peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis. Dr Blix, who
retired in June, is highly critical of George Bush and
Tony Blair for the claims they made about Iraq's
supposed weapons of mass destruction. Washington and
London, he said, had aborted the search for weapons to
pave the way for an invasion.
In an interview that appears in The Guardian today, he
said he had expected to be bugged by the Iraqis, but
the possibility that he was spied on by someone "on
the same side" was "disgusting". Dr Blix said his
suspicions were aroused by repeated trouble with his
telephone at his New York home. His fears worsened
when a member of the US administration showed him
photographs that could only have come from the UN
weapons office. He met John Wolf, the US assistant
secretary of state for non-proliferation, two weeks
before war started and was shown two pictures of Iraqi
weapons. "He should not have had them. I asked him how
he got them and he would not tell me and I said I
resented that," he said.
Dr Blix said it was unlikely one of his staff had
handed over the pictures and thought it might be that
spies broke into a secure fax. In his reports to the
UN, Dr Blix, and his fellow inspection team leader, Dr
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, had asked for more time to
investigate Iraq's arsenal, a plea rejected by
Washington and London.
The claims of espionage against Dr Blix emerged in the
Australian media, sourced to a member of the country's
intelligence service. Yesterday a senior UN source
confirmed to The Independent that the Iraq mission,
Unmovic, were convinced they were victims of spying
operations. Reports say Dr Blix's mobile telephone was
monitored every time he went to Iraq, and the
transcripts shared between the US, Britain and their
allies, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
Yesterday, a UN official said: "While in the Canal
Hotel in Baghdad [the Unmovic headquarters at the
time], we never used to talk about anything sensitive
in our rooms because we thought the Iraqis might be
bugging us. We used to go outside to the garden.
"It is one of the ironies of life that back in New
York we would sometimes take similar measures, discuss
things we thought should be confidential, out of the
office, in public places, sometimes the sidewalk.
"The only saving grace is that neither Dr Blix or
anyone else among us would speak about sensitive
matters on mobile telephones, so they would not have
heard anything earth-shattering just by that. But I
suspect there were other, more widespread
interceptions. There were plenty of attempts to
undermine us."
Dr Blix's predecessor, Mr Butler, now the governor of
Tasmania, said he was shown transcripts of bugged
conversations. "Those who did it would come to me and
show me the recordings that they made on others. 'To
try to help me to do my job in disarming Iraq', they
would say. 'We're just here to help you'," Mr Butler
said. But the former UN chief inspector maintained
that it was not only Britain which was spying. He
said: "I was utterly confident that in my attempts to
have private conversations, trying to solve the
problem of disarmament of Iraq, I was being listened
to by the Americans, British, the French and the
Russians. They also had people on my staff reporting
what I was trying to do privately. Do you think that
was paranoia? Absolutely not. There was abundant
evidence that we were being constantly monitored."
Mr Butler said that he too had to hold sensitive
conversations in the noisy cafeteria in the basement
of the UN building in New York or in Central Park.
"We were brought to a situation where it was plain
silly to think we could have any serious conversation
in our office. No one was being paranoid, everyone had
a black sense of humour about it.
"I would take a walk with the person in the park and
speak in a low voice and keep moving so we could avoid
directional microphones and maybe just have a private
conversation."
Mr Boutros-Ghali also described the vulnerability of
the organisation to espionage. "From the first day I
entered my office they said, 'Beware, your office is
bugged, your residence is bugged, and it is a
tradition that the member states who have the
technical capacity to bug will do it without any
hesitation.' That would involve members of the
Security Council," he said. "The perception is that
you must know in advance that your office, your
residence, your car, your phone is bugged."
The targets
Richard Butler Former UN chief weapons inspector/p>
He said he was "well aware" that he was being bugged
at the UN. "How did I know? Because those who did it
would come to me and show me the recordings that they
had made on others to help me do my job disarming
Iraq." He asked: "What if Kofi Annan had been bringing
people together last February in a genuine attempt to
prevent the invasion of Iraq, and the people bugging
him did not want that to happen, what do you think
they would do with that information?"
Boutros Boutros-Ghali Former UN secretary general
He said he was warned that he was likely to be bugged
as soon as he started the job. "From the first day I
entered my office, they said: 'Beware; your office is
bugged, your residence is bugged, and it is a
tradition that the member states who have the
technical capacity to bug will do it without any
hesitation.' That would involve members of the
Security Council. The perception is that you must know
in advance that your office, your residence, your car,
your phone is bugged."
28 February 2004 10:07
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