Subverting diplomacy

To my recollection, most of the talk of moving the U.N. away from its current U.S. base comes from neo-cons ranting about how nothing should place a limit on the U.S.' power. But yet another ridiculous application of U.S. power may offer plenty of reason for the U.N. itself to pack up and move elsewhere:

Disclosure of the wiretaps and the monitoring of U.N. members' email came on the eve of the Iraq war in the British-based Observer. The leak -- which the paper acquired in the form of an email via a British translator -- came amid a U.S. push urging U.N. members to vote in favor of a resolution that said Iraq was in violation of U.N. resolution 1441, asserting that it had failed to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction.

News of the NSA spying on the U.N. received scant coverage in U.S. newspapers at the time. But with the explosive domestic spying report published in the New York Times last week, a closer examination of pre-war spying may shed light on whether the Bush administration has used the NSA for its own political purposes, as opposed to tracking down communications regarding potential terrorist threats against the U.S.

The leaked NSA email detailing the agency's spy tactics against the U.N. was written Jan. 31, 2003 by Chief of Staff for Regional Targets Frank Koza. In the email, Koza asked an undisclosed number of NSA and British intelligence officials to "pay attention to existing non-UN Security Council Member UN-related and domestic comms (home and office telephones) for anything useful related to Security Council deliberations."

It's surprising that the North American media hadn't paid much attention to the story yet, since the spying on the U.N. would obviously be an early example of spying for purely political purposes. But it never hurts to be reminded of Bushco's complete disregard for the interests of anybody but itself - particularly when the effect is to show that neither the world's top diplomats nor any ordinary American can trust that their communications are free of interference.

(Via Canadian Cynic.)