Wikileak documents reveal that US Diplomats were ordered by Hillary Clinton to gather intelligence on Ban Ki-moon and other UN officials. It seems Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.
In secret directives sent to more than 30 US embassies, there was a call to gather DNA data, computer passwords and terrorist links. A classified directive, which appears to blur the line between diplomacy and spying, was issued to US diplomats under Hillary Clinton’s name in July 2009. The memo demanded forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications. The operation targeted at the UN appears to have involved all of Washington’s main intelligence agencies including: the CIA, US Secret Service and the FBI.
UN was not the only target. The cables reveal that since 2008 the state department has issued at least nine directives to embassies around the world which set forth “a list of priorities intended to guide participating US government agencies as they allocate resources and update plans to collect information”.
They are packed with detailed orders in which embassy staff are encouraged to assist in compiling biographic information,. The directive on the mineral and oil-rich Great Lakes region of Africa requested detailed military intelligence, including weapons markings and plans of army bases. A directive on “Palestinian issues” sent to Cairo, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Amman, Damascus and Riyadh demanded the exact travel plans and vehicles used by leading members of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
Sometimes the directives appear linked to forthcoming diplomatic obligations of the secretary of state. In a cable to the embassy in Sofia last June, five months before Clinton hosted Bulgaria’s foreign minister in Washington, the first request was about government corruption and the links between organized crime groups and “government and foreign entities, drug and human trafficking, credit card fraud, and computer-related crimes, including child pornography”.
Title: US Diplomats Spied on UN leadership
Source: uruknet.info: November 28, 2010
Author: Robert Booth and Julian Borger,
URL: http://uruknet.info/?p=m72286&hd=&size=1&l=e
Student Researcher: Hallie Boldt, Sonoma State University
Faculty Evaluator: Sheila Katz, Sonoma State University