United States In 2008, the British newspaper
The Observer published an investigative report revealing that the
National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States was conducting a secret surveillance operation directed at intercepting the telephone and email communications of several
U.N. Security Council diplomats, both in their offices and in their homes. This campaign, the result of a directive by
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, The authenticity of this memo has been called into question by many in the US and it is still unclear as to whether or not it is legitimate. According to documents leaked by
Edward Snowden the NSA successfully cracked the encryption guarding the United Nations' internal videoconferencing system in the summer of 2012.
Allegations of spying by United States diplomats Spying on United Nations leaders by United States diplomats was ordered by a 2009 confidential directive from the
United States Department of State directly instructing US diplomats to
spy on top officials of the
United Nations. The intelligence information to be gathered included biometric information and passwords and other authentication keys used in official communications. The directives were revealed as part of the
United States diplomatic cables leak in late 2010. According to former U.S. officials, the instructions given in these cables may have been largely ignored by American diplomats as ill-advised. The former British ambassador to the United States, said that it would be a "serious misinterpretation" to conclude that the cables were asking diplomats to spy, calling it part of the vast bureaucratic laundry list dumped on diplomats. The disclosed cables on the more aggressive intelligence gathering went back to 2008 when they went out under
Condoleezza Rice's name during
her tenure as Secretary of State and continued to go out under
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's name. US State Department spokesman
Philip J. Crowley stated that Clinton had not drafted the directive and that the Secretary of State's name is systematically attached to the bottom of cables originating from Washington. Further leaked material revealed that the guidance in the cables was actually written by the
Central Intelligence Agency before being sent out under Clinton's name, as the CIA cannot directly instruct State Department personnel. Peter Kemp, Solicitor of the
Supreme Court of New South Wales, and
international-law professor
Ben Saul, publicly asked
Julia Gillard,
Prime Minister of Australia, to complain "to the U.S. about both Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton being in major breach of International law ie UN Covenants, by making orders to spy on UN personnel, including the Secretary General, to include theft of their credit card details and communication passwords. Perhaps the Attorney General should investigate this clear
prima facie evidence of crime (likely against Australian diplomats as well), rather than he attempts to prosecute the messenger of those crimes."
President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez said that Clinton should resign. The practice of the US and the State Department gathering intelligence on the UN was not new. Former UN diplomats commented that UN officials already work under the assumption that they are spied on and are used to getting around it, but that it was the responsibility of intelligence agencies, not other diplomats.
The Guardian wrote that the directive "appears to blur the line between diplomacy and spying". Staff at the UN privately expressed unhappiness at the apparent scale of the intelligence-gathering operation, and the UN sought an official explanation from the US. On 1 December, Clinton and Ban met at a summit of the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in
Astana,
Kazakhstan, where Clinton was doing damage control with world leaders regarding the embarrassing contents of the State Department cables overall. In an attempt to repair the strain for the Humint revelations, Clinton expressed regret for the disclosures, but did not make an apology per se. Former US official
Carl Ford called the order "unprecedented", although "other U.S. diplomats said such headquarters directives were a longtime and routine practice", albeit one which was "not always fully obeyed." Christopher Meyer, a former British ambassador to the United States, said that it would be a "serious misinterpretation" to conclude that the cables were asking diplomats to spy, adding that "In reality this is the usual vast bureaucratic laundry list dumped by the US intelligence establishment on diplomats around the world asking them to do a number of things". On 26 February 2004 Short alleged on the
BBC Today radio programme that
British spies regularly intercept UN communications, including those of
Kofi Annan, its
Secretary-General. The revelation came the day after the unexplained dropping of whistleblowing charges against former
GCHQ translator
Katharine Gun. Reacting to Short's statement,
Tony Blair said "I really do regard what Clare Short has said this morning as totally irresponsible, and entirely consistent [with Short's character]." Blair also claimed that Short had put UK security, particularly the security of its spies, at risk. The same day, on the BBC's
Newsnight programme, Short called Blair's response "pompous" and said that Britain had no need to spy on Kofi Annan. Blair did not explicitly deny the claims but
Robin Cook, former
Foreign Secretary, wrote that in his experience he would be surprised if the claims were true. A few days later (on 29 February 2004) Ms Short appeared on
ITV's
Jonathan Dimbleby programme. She revealed that she had been written to by
Britain's senior civil servant,
Cabinet Secretary Andrew Turnbull. Turnbull's confidential letter (which Short showed to Dimbleby, and which was quoted on the programme) formally admonished her for discussing intelligence matters in the media, and threatened "further action" if she did not desist from giving interviews on the issue. Turnbull wrote that she had made claims "which damage the interests of the United Kingdom", and that he was "extremely disappointed". The "further action" referred to in the letter has been interpreted as threatening either the removal of Short's status as a
Privy Counsellor or to legal action under the Official Secrets Act. Either course of action would be without recent precedent; the last time a Privy Counsellor's status was revoked was in 1921 when Sir
Edgar Speyer was accused of collaborating with the Germans during the
First World War. However, on 1 March 2004, Tony Blair's official spokesman refused to rule out such a step. However, in the same interview on the
Jonathan Dimbleby programme, Short backtracked on her claim about British agents bugging Mr Annan. She admitted that the transcripts she saw of Mr Annan's private conversations might have related to Africa and not to Iraq.
Israel British writer
Gordon Thomas alleges that
Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, sees penetrating all UN diplomatic missions as a task of its New York
katsa.
Cyprus Cypriot intelligence is alleged to have stolen 6,500 UN documents containing sensitive information on its negotiations with
Turkish Cypriot leaders. An internal UN investigation reportedly concluded that the theft was the work of the Cyprus Intelligence Service (CIS). The operation was reportedly headed by a CIS agent who befriended Sonja Bachmann, a senior aide to
Alexander Downer, an Australian politician who served as an adviser to UN Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon and the special rapporteur on the Cyprus negotiations. The agent allegedly obtained Bachmann's email login information, allowing a CIS team to access Downer's email several times while he was away on UN business. Subsequently, stolen documents were leaked to the press, and the UN investigation concluded that the Cypriots leaked the documents in the hope of undermining the role of Downer, who was seen as being too closely aligned to Turkish Cypriots. ==See also==