I suppose if you’re only going to read one more news piece in 2005, this article [and the ones it references] is where to go:
- N.S.A. Spied on U.N. Diplomats in Push for Invasion of Iraq
- Revealed: US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war
- US plan to bug Security Council:
It’s old news, but even its age is part of the story.
It’s a story about an employee in a British Intelligence Agency, Katherine Gun, who leaked a story in the days before the War in Iraq. There’s a post about it on The Huffington Post by Norman Solomon from his book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. Here’s a piece of the Huffington Post article:
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… As it turned out, the Observer’s expose — headlined “Revealed: U.S. Dirty Tricks to Win Vote on Iraq War” — came 18 days before the invasion of Iraq began. From the day that the Observer first reported on NSA spying at the United Nations until the moment 51 weeks later when British prosecutors dropped charges against whistleblower Katharine Gun, major U.S. news outlets provided very little coverage of the story. The media avoidance continued well past the day in mid-November 2003 when Gun’s name became public as the British press reported that she been formally charged with violating the draconian Official Secrets Act. Facing the possibility of a prison sentence, Katharine Gun said that disclosure of the NSA memo was “necessary to prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed or maimed.” She said: “I have only ever followed my conscience.” In contrast to the courage of the lone woman who leaked the NSA memo — and in contrast to the journalistic vigor of the Observer team that exposed it — the most powerful U.S. news outlets gave the revelation the media equivalent of a yawn. Top officials of the Bush administration, no doubt relieved at the lack of U.S. media concern about the NSA’s illicit spying, must have been very encouraged. |
The story is about the N.S.A. spying on the U.N. in an attempt to get U.N. support for the Iraqi War. Of all the dirty tricks, this one is the most telling to me. Nevermind that the U.S. government doesn’t tell the U.S. citizens that it’s spying on them; nevermind that the U.S. government lies to the U.S. Congress about the Intelligence to get war power; nevermind that the U.S. government manipulates the U.S. Press directly; now we find out two things – that the U.S. breaks its pact with the U.N. to not spy on their activities AND that the U.S. Press doesn’t even cover the story. It’s a double whammy story of deceit and betrayal, and, on its own value, demands Congressional Investigation and punishment – all the other breaches of trust aside. .
Sooo. Maybe the NSA will accomplish what Jesse Helms and John Bolton have been on about from the beginning…namely getting the US (thrown) out of the UN.