[infowar.de] Observer: GCHQ spioniert in UNO China für die NSA aus

[a - schmdt -! - t-online - de (Andreas Schmidt)]

Infowar.de, http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~bendrath/liste.html
-------------------------------------------------------------
Die gute Katherine Gun hat Nerven....
Dass die NSA in NY die Unterstützung des GCHQ braucht, dürfte wohl kaum 
fachliche Gründe haben, oder?

AS
-------------
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1143550,00.html

Britain spied on UN allies over war vote 

Security Council members 'illegally targeted' by GCHQ after plea from US 
security agency 

Martin Bright and Peter Beaumont
Sunday February 8, 2004
The Observer 

Britain helped America to conduct a secret and potentially illegal spying 
operation at the United Nations in the run-up to the Iraq war, The 
Observer can reveal.
The operation, which targeted at least one permanent member of the UN 
Security Council, was almost certainly in breach of the Vienna conventions 
on diplomatic relations, which strictly outlaw espionage at the UN 
missions in New York.

Translators and analysts at the Government's top-secret surveillance 
centre GCHQ were ordered to co-operate with an American espionage 'surge' 
on Security Council delegations after a request from the US National 
Security Agency at the end of January 2003. This was designed to help 
smooth the way for a second UN resolution authorising war in Iraq.

The information was intended for US Secretary of State Colin Powell before 
his presentation on weapons of mass destruction to the Security Council on 
5 February.

Sources close to the intelligence services have now confirmed that the 
request from the security agency was 'acted on' by the British 
authorities. It is also known that the operation caused significant 
disquiet in the intelligence community on both sides of the Atlantic.

An operation of this kind would almost certainly have been authorised by 
the director-general of GCHQ, David Pepper. But the revelation also raises 
serious questions for Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who has overall 
responsibility for GCHQ.

Details of the operation were first revealed in The Observer on the eve of 
war last year, after the leaking of a top-secret memo from the NSA 
requesting British help.

But until today it was not known whether British spy chiefs had agreed to 
participate. The operation was ordered before deliberations over a second 
UN resolution and targeted the so-called 'swing nations' on the Security 
Council - Chile, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Angola, Guinea and Pakistan - whose 
votes were needed to proceed to war.

The first evidence has also emerged that China, a perma nentmember of the 
Security Council, was a likely target of the operation.

The Observer has discovered that a GCHQ translator, Katherine Gun, 29, who 
faces trial after leaking details of the US request, was hired by the 
surveillance centre as a Chinese language specialist. Documents of this 
level of secrecy are circulated on a strict 'need-to-know' basis. Security 
experts have said that it is highly unlikely that someone as junior as Gun 
would have seen the memo had she not been expected to use her language 
expertise in the operation.

She is thought to be an expert translator of Mandarin, the language of 
Chinese officialdom.

The memo, dated 31 January, 2003, stated that the security agency wanted 
to gather 'the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers 
an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off 
surprises'.

It was sent out four days after the UN's chief weapons inspector, Hans 
Blix, produced his interim response on Iraqi compliance with UN 
resolutions.

In the wake of the Hutton report and the establishment of inquiries into 
intelligence failures on both sides of the Atlantic, the Gun case 
represents a further risk to government credibility over the Iraq war, 
showing how far the US and Britain were prepared to go in their ultimately 
unsuccessful attempts to persuade the world of the case for UN support for 
war against Iraq.

The Gun trial will reopen embarrassing questions for the Government over 
the conflicting views on the legality of war which were debated in the 
run-up to the conflict. At the time when the memo was received at GCHQ, 
officials at the Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence and in the 
intelligence services - including senior legal advisers - were expressing 
serious doubts over the legality of any invasion.

At the time, The Observer was told by Foreign Office officials of serious 
doubts that the war was legal.

When the GCHQ revelations were first published in The Observer last March, 
the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, had still not publicly announced his 
final advice to Downing Street.

At the time, it was expected that he would agree with most experts in 
international law that intervention would be unlawful without a second 
resolution.

The legality of the war was a highly sensitive issue for senior military 
officers on the eve of war, who were wary of being accused of war crimes 
in the aftermath of the conflict.

The former assistant chief of defence staff Sir Timothy Garden said that 
the legal basis of the war is all the more important now that Britain has 
signed up to the International Criminal Court.

'We did it on the best advice that was available in a democratic country. 
But following an order is not an excuse in the end.'

martin -
 bright -!
- observer -
 co -
 uk

---------------------------------------------------------------
Liste verlassen: 
Mail an infowar -
 de-request -!
- infopeace -
 de mit "unsubscribe" im Text.