When Will USA Media Report On USA Illegal Spying On UN To Start Iraq War

Tony Blair and George W. Bush want the issue of spying at the United 
Nations to go away.

the journalistic evasion on the subject of U.N. spying has been so 
extreme that we can have no confidence in the mainstream media's 
inclination to adequately cover this new bombshell.

For 51 weeks -- from the day that the Observer newspaper in London broke 
the news about spying at the United Nations until the moment that 
British prosecutors dropped charges against Gun on Wednesday -- major 
news outlets in the United States almost completely ignored the story.

U.S. Dirty Tricks to Win Vote on Iraq War," came 18 days before the 
invasion of Iraq began.

Daniel Ellsberg responded: "This leak is more timely and potentially 
more important than the Pentagon Papers. ... Truth-telling like this can 
stop a war."

the memo ... showed that Washington was spying on U.N. diplomats, the 
big American media showed scant interest. The coverage was either shoddy 
or non-existent.

the issue of U.N. spying has not [ended].

At stake is the integrity of a world body that should not tolerate 
intrusive abuses by the government of its host country.

"They are violating the U.N. headquarters covenant." He was referring to 
officials of the U.S. government.

British and American intelligence agencies working closely together, 
both have been locked in a shamefully duplicitous embrace.

In the interests of war, their nefarious activities served as direct 
counterpoints to the deceptions coming from 10 Downing Street and the 
White House.

In the interests of journalism, reporters should now pursue truth 
wherever it might lead.
+++



U.N. Spying and Evasions of American Journalism
By Norman Solomon
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-02/27solomon.cfm
 
February 27, 2004
ZNet Commentary -a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet. To learn 
more folks can consult ZNet at http://www.zmag.org


Tony Blair and George W. Bush want the issue of spying at the United 
Nations to go away. That's one of the reasons the Blair government ended 
its prosecution of whistleblower Katharine Gun on Wednesday (Feb. 25). 
But within 24 hours, the scandal of U.N. spying exploded further when 
one of Blair's former cabinet ministers said that British spies closely 
monitored conversations of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan during the 
lead-up to the invasion of Iraq last year.

The new allegations, which have the ring of truth, are now coming from 
ex-secretary of international development Clare Short. "I have seen 
transcripts of Kofi Annan's conversations," she said in an interview 
with BBC Radio. "In fact I have had conversations with Kofi in the 
run-up to war thinking 'Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and 
people will see what he and I are saying.'" Short added that British 
intelligence had been explicitly directed to spy on Annan and other top 
U.N. officials.

Few can doubt that some major British news outlets will thoroughly dig 
below the surface of Short's charges. But on the other side of the 
Atlantic, the journalistic evasion on the subject of U.N. spying has 
been so extreme that we can have no confidence in the mainstream media's 
inclination to adequately cover this new bombshell.

For 51 weeks -- from the day that the Observer newspaper in London broke 
the news about spying at the United Nations until the moment that 
British prosecutors dropped charges against Gun on Wednesday -- major 
news outlets in the United States almost completely ignored the story.

The Observer's expose, under the headline "Revealed: U.S. Dirty Tricks 
to Win Vote on Iraq War," came 18 days before the invasion of Iraq 
began. By unveiling a top secret U.S. National Security Agency memo, the 
newspaper provided key information when it counted most: before the war 
started.

That NSA memo outlined surveillance of a half-dozen delegations with 
swing votes on the U.N. Security Council, noting a focus on "the whole 
gamut of information that could give U.S. policy-makers an edge in 
obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals" -- support for war on Iraq. 
The memo said that the agency had started a "surge" of spying on U.N. 
diplomats, including wiretaps of home and office telephones along with 
reading of e-mails.

Three days after the story came out, I asked for an assessment from the 
man who gave the Pentagon Papers to journalists in 1971. Daniel Ellsberg 
responded: "This leak is more timely and potentially more important than 
the Pentagon Papers. ... Truth-telling like this can stop a war."

But even though -- or perhaps especially because -- the memo was from 
the U.S. government and showed that Washington was spying on U.N. 
diplomats, the big American media showed scant interest. The coverage 
was either shoddy or non-existent.

A year ago, at the brink of war, the New York Times did not cover the 
U.N. spying revelation. Nearly 96 hours after the Observer had reported 
it, I called Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale and asked why not. 
"We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting," Smale 
replied. She added that "we could get no confirmation or comment." In 
other words, U.S. intelligence officials refused to confirm or discuss 
the memo -- so the Times did not see fit to report on it.

The Washington Post didn't do much better. It printed a 514-word article 
on a back page with the headline "Spying Report No Shock to U.N." 
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times published a longer piece emphasizing 
from the outset that U.S. spy activities at the United Nations are 
"long-standing." For good measure, the piece reported "some experts 
suspected that it could be a forgery" -- and "several former top 
intelligence officials said they were skeptical of the memo's authenticity."

Within days, any doubt about the memo's "authenticity" was gone. The 
British media reported that the U.K. government had arrested an unnamed 
female employee at a British intelligence agency in connection with the 
leak.

By then, however, the spotty coverage in the mainstream U.S. press had 
disappeared. In fact -- except for a high-quality detailed news story by 
a pair of Baltimore Sun reporters that appeared in that newspaper on 
March 4 -- there isn't an example of mainstream U.S. news reporting on 
the story last year that's worthy of any pride.

In mid-November, for the first time, Katharine Gun's name became public 
when the British press reported that she'd been formally charged with 
violating the draconian Official Secrets Act. Appearing briefly at court 
proceedings, she was a beacon of moral clarity. Disclosure of the NSA 
memo, Gun said, was "necessary to prevent an illegal war in which 
thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed or 
maimed." And: "I have only ever followed my conscience."

A search of the comprehensive LexisNexis database finds that for nearly 
three months after Katharine Gun's name first appeared in the British 
media, U.S. news stories mentioning her scarcely existed. When Gun's 
name did appear in U.S. dailies it was almost always on an opinion page. 
News sections were oblivious: Again with the notable exception of the 
Baltimore Sun (which ran an in-depth news article about Gun and Ellsberg 
on Feb. 1), mainstream U.S. news departments proceeded as though 
Katharine Gun were a non-person. She only became "newsworthy" after 
charges were dropped.

"Mr. Blair's spokesmen were conspicuously silent on Wednesday, 
apparently hopeful that the case would disappear from the public 
agenda," the New York Times reported in Thursday's paper. But the case 
had never been on the public agenda as far as the Times news department 
was concerned.

(Background about the Gun case has been posted at www.accuracy.org/gun, 
a web page of the Institute for Public Accuracy, where my colleagues and 
I have worked to make information available about the U.N. spying story.)

Overall, the matter of Washington's spying at the United Nations has 
been off the American media map until February. Whether the major U.S. 
news outlets will do a better job on the subject this spring remains to 
be seen. But it would be a mistake to assume that they will.

Although the prosecution of Gun has ended, the issue of U.N. spying has 
not. At stake is the integrity of a world body that should not tolerate 
intrusive abuses by the government of its host country.

We can assume that Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, a former Mexican ambassador to 
the United Nations, did not speak lightly when he made a strong 
statement that appeared in an Associated Press dispatch from Mexico City 
on Feb. 12: "They are violating the U.N. headquarters covenant." He was 
referring to officials of the U.S. government.

That statement now resonates more loudly than ever. With British and 
American intelligence agencies working closely together, both have been 
locked in a shamefully duplicitous embrace. In the interests of war, 
their nefarious activities served as direct counterpoints to the 
deceptions coming from 10 Downing Street and the White House. In the 
interests of journalism, reporters should now pursue truth wherever it 
might lead.

_______________________________

Norman Solomon is co-author of "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't 
Tell You."











[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



"[C]apital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and 
dirt."
--Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Chapter 31

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