Solomon / U.N. Spying and Evasions of American Journalism / Feb 27

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ZNet Commentary
U.N. Spying and Evasions of American Journalism February 27, 2004
By Norman Solomon


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."

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