American Media
Dodging U.N. Surveillance Story
by
Norman Solomon
Dissident Voice
March 6, 2003
Three
days after a British newspaper revealed a memo about U.S. spying on U.N.
Security Council delegations, I asked Daniel Ellsberg to assess the importance
of the story. "This leak," he replied, "is more timely and
potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers."
The key word is
"timely." Publication of the secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, made
possible by Ellsberg's heroic decision to leak those documents, came after the
Vietnam War had already been underway for many years. But with all-out war on
Iraq still in the future, the leak about spying at the United Nations could erode
the Bush administration's already slim chances of getting a war resolution
through the Security Council.
"As part of its battle
to win votes in favor of war against Iraq," the London-based Observer
reported on March 2, the U.S. government developed an "aggressive
surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones
and the e-mails of U.N. delegates." The smoking gun was "a memorandum
written by a top official at the National Security Agency -- the U.S. body
which intercepts communications around the world -- and circulated to both
senior agents in his organization and to a friendly foreign intelligence
agency."
The Observer added:
"The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened
surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea
and Pakistan at the U.N. headquarters in New York -- the so-called 'Middle Six'
delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the
U.S. and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for U.N. inspections, led
by France, China and Russia."
The
NSA memo, dated Jan. 31, outlines the wide scope of the surveillance
activities, seeking any information useful to push a war resolution through the
Security Council -- "the whole gamut of information that could give U.S.
policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head
off surprises."
Three days after the memo
came to light, the Times of London printed an article noting that the Bush
administration "finds itself isolated" in its zeal for war on Iraq.
"In the most recent setback," the newspaper reported, "a
memorandum by the U.S. National Security Agency, leaked to the Observer,
revealed that American spies were ordered to eavesdrop on the conversations of
the six undecided countries on the United Nations Security Council."
The London Times article
called it an "embarrassing disclosure." And the embarrassment was
nearly worldwide. From Russia to France to Chile to Japan to Australia, the
story was big mainstream news. But not in the United States.
Several days after the
"embarrassing disclosure," not a word about it had appeared in
America's supposed paper of record. The New York Times -- the single most
influential media outlet in the United States -- still had not printed anything
about the story. How could that be?
"Well, it's not that we
haven't been interested," New York Times deputy foreign editor Alison
Smale said on the evening of March 5, nearly 96 hours after the Observer broke
the story. "We could get no confirmation or comment" on the memo from
U.S. officials.
The Times opted not to relay
the Observer's account, Smale told me. "We would normally expect to do our
own intelligence reporting." She added: "We are still definitely
looking into it. It's not that we're not."
Belated coverage would be
better than none at all. But readers should be suspicious of the failure of the
New York Times to cover this story during the crucial first days after it
broke. At some moments in history, when war and peace hang in the balance,
journalism delayed is journalism denied.
Overall, the sparse U.S.
coverage that did take place seemed eager to downplay the significance of the
Observer's revelations. On March 4, the Washington Post ran a back-page 514-word
article headlined "Spying Report No Shock to U.N.," while the Los Angeles
Times published a longer piece that began by emphasizing that U.S. spy
activities at the United Nations are "long-standing."
The U.S. media treatment has
contrasted sharply with coverage on other continents. "While some have
taken a ho-hum attitude in the U.S., many around the world are furious,"
says Ed Vulliamy, one of the Observer reporters who wrote the March 2 article.
"Still, almost all governments are extremely reluctant to speak up against
the espionage. This further illustrates their vulnerability to the U.S.
government."
To Daniel Ellsberg, the
leaking of the NSA memo was a hopeful sign. "Truth-telling like this can
stop a war," he said. Time is short for insiders at intelligence agencies
"to tell the truth and save many many lives." But major news outlets
must stop dodging the information that emerges.
Norman Solomon is Executive
Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy (www.accuracy.org) and a
syndicated columnist. His latest book is Target Iraq: What the News Media
Didn’t Tell You (Context Books, 2003) with Reese Erlich. Email: mediabeat@igc.org
*
Background link: www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR030403.htm
* Target Iraq: What the News Media
Didn't Tell You, by Norman Solomon and Reese Erlich, has just been
published as a paperback original by Context Books. The introduction is by
Howard Zinn and the afterword is by Sean Penn. For the prologue to the book and
other information, go to: http://www.contextbooks.com/newF.html
* Video of the recent C-SPAN
"Washington Journal" one-hour interview with
Norman Solomon: http://video.c-span.org:8080/ramgen/jdrive/wj020703_solomon.rm