Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: The long history of UN espionage

Observer Comment Extra: The dirty tricks memo
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 The long history of UN espionage 
Spying at the United Nations helped to shape the UN Charter itself.
But if spying is an inevitable part of global diplomacy, it won't
necessarily help the Bush administration to win friends and influence
people at a time of global crisis.
Ian Davis and David Isenberg
Sunday March 9, 2003
The Observer
Last Sunday's revelation, published in The Observer, of a 'top secret'
US memo, supposedly showing that the NSA has eavesdropped on members
of the UN Security Council in recent weeks for insights into their
negotiating positions on Iraq, is shocking. But perhaps not for the
reasons that might first come to mind.
While the US administration has refused to confirm or deny the
authenticity of the memo, it is a sad truth that spying at the United
Nations, both at the headquarters and among its various agencies and
field missions is as old as the UN itself. The real significance of
this story is what this rare public disclosure of such aggressive
dipomatic tactics, whether seen as fair or foul, tells us about the
atmosphere at the United Nations at a time when the world's diplomats
stand starkly divided over the prospect of war on Iraq.
First, the story is clearly embarrassing for the US Administration
coming as it does at a crucial moment in its joint efforts with the
British Government to secure a second resolution in the Security
Council. It will be seen by detractors as heavy-handed and confirm
deep-rooted suspicions among many Europeans and others about the
direction of US foreign policy under the Bush Administration. It has
also upset some of the key undecided UN delegations in the current
debate. The Chileans in particular have been vocal about this. 
However, the media maelstrom the memo has set off as far away as
Sydney and Moscow - but significantly not in Washington - is
indicative of a wider malaise in the transatlantic arms control and
foreign policy relationship. It says a great deal about the current
differences between Bush and Blair's position on Iraq and that of
France, Germany and Russia, and why these erstwhile allies have been
unable to find a compromise position in Iraq. 
To these countries the memo is just the latest example of the Bush
Administration's disdain for their concerns. To them, the fact that
the US is spying on their diplomats instead of talking with them is
proof that the United States does not take them seriously.
Clearly this case also raises complex moral issues on the role of
spying by governments. While some people will be hearing about spying
at the UN for the first time, there is a long history of it going
right back to the founding of the UN Charter. 
US academic Stephen Schlesinger has written about how that the United
States successfully manipulated the form and content of the United
Nations by spying on the signatories to the UN Charter. Washington was
able to shape the Charter to its own liking because US officials
intercepted coded cable traffic from various capitals to embassies in
Washington, DC, London and Paris. When delegates arrived in San
Francisco, Washington had advance knowledge of the negotiation
positions of all 49 countries. As a result, said Schlesinger in a 1995
article in 'Cryptologia', a scholarly magazine on the science of
making and breaking secret codes, the United States was able to "write
the UN Charter mostly according to its own blueprint".
Or consider some past examples during the Cold War. Arkady Shevchenko,
the highest ranking Soviet diplomat ever to defect to the United
States was an Under Secretary-General of the United Nations. The head
of the Department of Political and Security Council Affairs,
Shevchenko was accused of being a double agent working for US
intelligence while spying for the Soviets inside the United Nations in
the 1970s. And as recently as 1999 a Russian intelligence officer
working undercover at the United Nations was caught spying on the
United States and was allowed to leave the country quietly.
At one time, US and Soviet spooks were crawling all over the United
Nations - in committee rooms, in the press gallery, in the Secretariat
and even in the UN library, which was known as a drop-off point for
sensitive political documents.
In 1975 the Church Committee revealed that the CIA had planted one of
its Russian-speaking, lip-reading experts in a press booth overlooking
the Security Council chamber. His assignment: to monitor the lip
movements of Russian delegates as they consulted each other in low
whispers at some of the open meetings of the Council.
In relation to Iraq, there have been a number of revelations that the
UN weapons inspections were infiltrated by US and UK spies during the
1990s, with a remit that went far beyond the search for banned arms
and was carried out without the knowledge of the UN leadership. Last
June the United States ordered the expulsion of Abdul Rahman Saad, an
Iraqi diplomat to the United Nations over espionage allegations.
Reportedly, he had been caught by US authorities trying to recruit
American citizens to work for him.
The truth is that intelligence officers from most of the world's
nations have used the United Nations as a base of operations. One of
the main reasons is accessibility. While a nation can refuse
accreditation to a foreign diplomat suspected of being an intelligence
agent, the United Nations cannot. The doors of the United Nations are
open to all, including spies posing as diplomats, secretariat
officials or even journalists. 
Is spying a legitimate form of statecraft today? In some limited
circumstances, such as to infiltrate terrorist networks, the answer is
probably yes. As a general principle all nations ought to be moving
away from this reliance on espionage. Greater use of open information
would help, as well as improved parliamentary oversight of
intelligence agencies. And it would be useful, especially in terms of
verifying arms control and disarmament agreements, to promote what
Alva Myrdal, Sweden's former Minister of Disarmament in the 1970s,
described as "the construction of universal confidence based upon the
cumulative process of shared information".
So, while spying is commonplace, sometimes reprehensible, but
ultimately necessary on some occasions, the fact that this issue is
driving a further wedge between western nations at a crucial time is
the real shocking story behind the news. Finding ways to repair the
damage to transatlantic relations will be one of the most important
issues to deal with long after this latest spying scandal has been
forgotten.
Ian Davis and David Isenberg are, respectively, Director and Senior
Analyst of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC).
For more information, see 
www.basicint.org
Send us your views
Email Observer site editor Sunder Katwala at
obse...@guardianunlimited.co.uk
 with comments on articles or ideas
for future pieces. You can write to the author of this piece at
ida...@basicint.org
 . 
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 whispers at some of the open meetings of the Council.
Doveva avere una vista da falco o degli occhi bionici! :))
*LOL*
-Stefano

 *LOL*
E dove si parla di "giornaletto scolastico" ?????
k.

E dove si parla di "giornaletto scolastico" ?????
Li sopra :) Te l'ho sottolineato cosi' lo vedi meglio :)
-Stefano

 wrote in message
3E6DB2BC...@interfree.it...

Quindi NON SAI che in inglese "scholar" vuole dire studioso, ricercatore,
accademico e non "scolaro". Per esempio uno studioso di storia può essere
definito un "history scholar". Quindi la levatura del giornale di cui si
parla è quella di un magazine di studiosi (come lo è x i ricercatori Nature
, per esempio), sentendo quel che dice l'articolo (non conosco il magazine,
ma  nemmeno tu, e nemmeno conosci l'inglese).
Quindi ancora una volta ti stai arrampicando sugli specchi. Sul NIENTE.
k

Sul NIENTE.
*STRA-ROTFL*
Lamentati con il Merriam-Wevster allora :)
-Stefano

 Vuoi rivedere le tue conoscenze di inglese oppure no?
Direi proprio di no.
k.

Direi proprio di no.
Spetta...
---
Quindi NON SAI che in inglese "scholar" vuole dire studioso,
                   ========================================
ricercatore, accademico e non "scolaro".
                        ===============
Merriam-Webster
Main Entry: schol·ar 
Pronunciation: 'skä-l&r
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English scoler, from Old English scolere & Old French
escoler, from Medieval Latin scholaris, from Late Latin, of a school,
from Latin schola school
Date: before 12th century
1 : one who attends a school or studies under a teacher : PUPIL
    ===================================================
Ripeto la domanda: vuoi rivedere le tue conoscenze di inglese? :)
*ROTFL*
-Stefano

 Ripeto la domanda: vuoi rivedere le tue conoscenze di inglese? :)
no, ovviamente.
sai che ogni parola è inserita in un CONTESTO ?
k.

sai che ogni parola è inserita in un CONTESTO ?
Ma va! :)
-Stefano