WASHINGTON (AFP) – US and British officials clashed over the use of a Cyprus air base for US spying missions in 2008, with London worried about complicity in potential rights abuses, leaked cables showed.
The government was particularly concerned about U2 spy plane missions to track militants in Lebanon, Turkey and northern Iraq that provided intelligence to Lebanese and Turkish authorities.
The newly-disclosed spat between the two close allies is the latest in a series of revelations stemming from the release of a trove of secret US embassy cables by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.
The cables describe how British officials demanded to be kept better informed about covert missions out of Akrotiri air base and whether other governments were involved, so they could decide if the operations might carry legal or other risks, according to the cables.
The acrimonious discussions, during former president George W. Bush’s administration, led a US diplomat to write that an element of “distrust” had emerged in relations between the traditional allies, according to the 2008 documents, first reported in The Guardian.
Under political pressure at home over Britain’s role in secret CIA flights to transfer terror suspects, officials ordered the Americans to provide in writing more details about planned spying flights out of the base to ensure London was not a party to “unlawful” operations, the cables said.
A British letter to Washington on April 18, 2008, said “recent U2 flights over Turkey/Northern Iraq, and the Lebanon, have highlighted important legal and political issues which require much more careful consideration by HMG.”
Britain believed “it is important for us to be satisfied that HMG is not indirectly aiding the commission of unlawful acts by those governments on the basis of the information gathered through the assistance we provide to the US,” said the letter, quoted in the cable.
London was also concerned about “sensitivities” with the government in Cyprus, to avoid operations that might anger the local government and lead to losing access to the air base, the letter said.
London’s requests angered the Americans, who saw the requirements as hampering counter-terrorism efforts.
“Embassy London is concerned by HMG?s piling on of concerns and conditions, which portend a burdensome process for getting the rest of our intel flights approved,” a cable said.
While the United States shared Britain’s human rights concerns, “we cannot take a risk-avoidance approach to CT (counter-terrorism) in which the fear of potentially violating human rights allows terrorism to proliferate in Lebanon,” the US embassy in London wrote.
London’s concerns were due to an earlier revelation that the US government had transferred captured terror suspects through the British territory of Diego Garcia “without UK permission” and London’s “need to ensure it is not similarly blindsided in the future,” the US embassy wrote.
The embassy urged a high-level US diplomat to intervene after a British official said his government expected Washington to “ensure” any detainees captured in Lebanon with the help of spy flights would be “treated lawfully” by Lebanese authorities, the cables said.
A senior administration official then met with the Foreign Office’s head of defense and intelligence, who appeared to strike a more conciliatory tone.
The foreign office official said the discussions over spy flights were “unnecessarily confrontational” and backed away from demands over detainees captured as a result of the Lebanon spy flights, the embassy wrote.
But the official said Washington had gotten “sloppy” in its use of the Cyprus base, and that the Americans need to fully inform Britain about operations involving third countries, the cable said.
Despite US objections, the official insisted that requests for future flights be made through the US embassy in London and between both governments instead of only going through military channels, it said.
The official said the then foreign secretary David Miliband believed that “policymakers needed to get control of the military.”
NORRISTOWN — Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman is investigating allegations that two of the county commissioners’ meetings at an East Norriton restaurant may have violated the state’s Sunshine Act.
Commissioner Chairman James R. Matthews and Joseph Hoeffel have admitted meeting at area restaurants for the past two years with county Solicitor Barry Miller and Deputy Chief Operating Officer Jim Maza, and The Times Herald, who had a general assignment reporter eavesdrop on them at two morning meetings at Jem Restaurant, suspected the two commissioners violated the state Sunshine Act by allegedly discussing county business there.
Having two of the three commissioners present at the restaurant constitutes a quorum, and when public officials discuss government business outside the public eye, the Sunshine law applies, according to Pennsylvania Newspaper Association’s media law council Melissa Melewsky.
Once elected in 2007, Hoeffel and Matthews formed a political alliance against Commissioner Bruce L. Castor Jr., who has never attended — and is unwelcome — at the Tuesday morning restaurant gatherings.
When questioned by Times Herald’s Montgomery County Courthouse reporter at Wednesday’s commissioners meeting about rendezvouses at the Swede Road eatery, Matthews and Hoeffel claimed no county matters were discussed, and insisted the breakfasts were purely social get-togethers.
On Thursday, a day after The Times Herald published articles alleging the breakfast meetings were unlawful, Hoeffel met with reporters in his office to dispel any notion that he violated the Sunshine law.
Hoeffel claimed he didn’t discuss, deliberate or decide any county government business at morning meetings he attended at Jem Restaurant with Matthews in recent weeks.
In October and November, the newspaper reporter sat near Matthews, Hoeffel and the other staffers and took notes while they discussed a variety of government business.
Hoeffel, a former congressman, said he, Matthews, Miller and Maza, who were unacquainted when the commissioners took office in 2008, began meeting together to “develop a level of trust” among themselves. Previously, the officials met at Ray’s Diner in East Norriton.
“I Just think the (Times Herald) story misses the facts and frankly is a bit of gotcha journalism, that I think is unfortunate,” he said. “It’s my belief the Times Herald reporter who eavesdropped on the (Jem) meetings didn’t clearly hear what she claimed, didn’t understand what she was hearing, and thinks that any discussion among the four of us is a violation of the Sunshine Act. That’s not true.”
On Thursday, Hoeffel repeatedly emphasized that neither he nor Matthews deliberated or decided how they would vote on any issues before the board, but when asked if it was okay to discuss government business at the restaurant with Matthews, he claimed Miller and Maza did most of the talking at the breakfast meetings.
“I think Miller and Maza did the discussing,” Hoeffel said. “I might have reacted to something they said, and what I’m saying to you is that Matthews and I don’t deliberate at those breakfasts.”
During the Jem gatherings, Hoeffel said when the other staffers have talked about official business, “I react, I comment, I might say something to Maza or Miller, but we don’t deliberate on that issue.”
The recent news reports in the Times Herald and other media outlets detailing allegedly secret meetings between two of the three commissioners, in which they were reportedly discussing county business in advance of their public meetings to the exclusion of the other member of the board, present sufficient detail to warrant a criminal investigation, according to Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman.
In 2008, Ferman created the Public Corruption Unit, which has the full power of the DA’s Office to investigate corruption utilizing an Investigating Grand Jury, immunity, informants and wiretaps.
“While it is generally not our practice to announce investigations, the level of public awareness about these allegations involving the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners has reached the point that we felt it necessary to confirm the existence of the investigation,” she wrote in an e-mail message to the newspaper Thursday evening. “We will follow the evidence wherever it leads. The public must have confidence that law enforcement will never turn a blind eye to crime or corruption of its government, no matter who is involved and no matter the magnitude of the alleged violation. No one is above the law.
U.S. diplomats have largely ignored a directive from Washington urging them to collect personal and technical information about their foreign counterparts that could be used for spying, former senior State Department officials say.
The directive, disclosed Sunday in secret cables released by the WikiLeaks website, asked State Department officers based abroad to gather foreign diplomats’ credit card, cellphone and frequent flier numbers, as well as information on their Internet identities and telecommunications systems. The National Security Agency routinely uses such information to track movements of subjects and eavesdrop on their communications.
Cables containing the guidance were sent in 2008 and 2009, and have raised eyebrows among U.S. analysts and foreign diplomats. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, whose organization was among the targets, said this week, “I do not believe that anybody would be happy when somebody knows that he or she is under watch by somebody.”
Obama administration officials have denied that diplomats engaged in espionage, but they have not disputed the authenticity of the cables. Washington sought the information as part of a “National Humint Collection Directive.” “Humint” is an abbreviation for “human intelligence.”
Former diplomats say the directive was treated the way satellite offices the world over often treat missives from headquarters they deem misguided: It was rarely if ever followed.
“No one ever reads the Humint tasking reporting,” said a former diplomat who did not want to speak for attribution about a sensitive matter. “Probably if an adult pair of eyes had looked at it, they’d say, ‘Wait a minute, we’re not going to get anyone’s frequent flier number. Give me a break.’ “
The guidance was written by the CIA, the former official said, but was sent under Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name because the CIA and other agencies cannot direct State Department embassy personnel.
Two senior U.S. officials confirmed this account, but would not do so on the record because the Obama administration does not want to respond to individual leaked cables.
Diplomats frequently pass information to colleagues in the intelligence community, said veteran envoy Christopher Hill, who was U.S. ambassador to Iraq from early 2009 until August. But Hill said he never heard of anyone gathering the kinds of technical data spelled out in the WikiLeaks cables.
“The relationship a U.S. diplomat might have with a foreign contact is a very sensitive one, which no one would want to jeopardize by the sort of data fishing described in WikiLeaks,” Hill said.
The State Department has publicly acknowledged collecting information for U.S. intelligence agencies. Last year, Philip Goldberg, who heads the department’s intelligence bureau, said in written answers for his Senate confirmation that State “cooperates with all elements of the Humint enterprise … to ensure that Foreign Service posts and reporting officers know what the Humint collection requirements are.”
Goldberg did not respond to an interview request. Briefing reporters this week, State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley called the human intelligence directives a “wish list” prepared “outside the Department of State.”
Although CIA officers frequently work undercover as diplomats, actual Foreign Service officers don’t want to be perceived as spies, said Greg Thielmann, who served as a senior staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee after a 25-year stint as a Foreign Service officer.
“We relied on relations based on trust and discretion for our reporting,” he said, “so it just was not in our interest to be snooping around people’s desks, reading things upside down, and eliciting that kind of personal data.”
The most detailed intelligence collection instructions came in a cable asking U.S. diplomats posted all over the world to gather information on United Nations officials. The cable sought “biometric data,” which can mean fingerprints, and the “current technical specifications” of telecommunications infrastructure “used by top officials and their support staffs.”
Spying has been directed at the U.N. before. In 2004, a member of the British Parliament revealed that U.S. and British officials had access to transcripts of conversations by then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Zalmay Khalilzad, who was U.S. ambassador to the U.N. late in the George W. Bush administration, said he never received a directive to collect intelligence.
“The collection of this sort of sensitive information is an appropriate responsibility of the intelligence community,” not diplomats, he said.
It was with great interest that I read your report (Foreign fighters in the shadows, 25 November) on how spy planes have been patrolling British skies trying to pick up voice signatures of British citizens suspected of travelling to Afghanistan to fight against Nato forces, after Yorkshire and Birmingham accents were detected by RAF spy planes in Helmand.
If this is true, it raises a number of serious questions. First, how often have these flights been taking place and under what authority? Second, which areas have these spy planes been operating over? One can only presume that they would be targeting Muslim majority areas in Yorkshire and Birmingham. If so, it makes a mockery of the apology offered by the West Midlands chief constable, Chris Simms, after a secret police operation to place thousands of Muslims in Birmingham under secret camera surveillance was uncovered (Report, 1 October). If spy planes are indeed also operating over Muslim areas in Britain, it once again highlights how little the government really cares about the dignity of its Muslim citizens.
Third, how is the information gathered from such surveillance being used by the authorities? Is it being used as “secret evidence” against terror suspects brought before draconian Special Immigration Appeals Commission courts, where they are unable to see or challenge the allegations against them? One of the justifications often put forward in support of the use of “secret evidence” is that to disclose it to the accused would be to compromise the intelligence services and their methods and strategies. If this is indeed one of those methods, it is understandable why the government is fighting to keep it secret. For were it to become public knowledge, it would further underline the fact that Muslims in Britain are being deliberately targeted by the authorities as a suspect community and treated as second-class citizens.
Police looked at funding for the cameras in 2007, the report said
More than 200 so-called “spy” cameras put up in largely Muslim areas of Birmingham will be removed.
West Midlands Police Authority said Project Champion will be withdrawn and all cameras and poles removed at an estimated cost of ÂŁ630,000.
The cameras, some of which were hidden, were paid for with ÂŁ3m of government money earmarked for tackling terrorism.
The decision was rubber-stamped at a routine authority meeting some weeks after the force said they should go.
‘Lack of consultation’
They were erected in the Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook areas of the city and members of the community said they were angry about a lack of consultation.
A recent independent report into the project was highly critical of the scheme and the police.
The chief constable of West Midlands Police, Chris Sims, said last month at the last authority meeting that he agreed the cameras should be removed.
All the hidden cameras were removed some months ago and the remainder that were clearly in view were covered with bags.
The police have made assurances that none of them have ever been switched on.
It is not known when the poles and remaining cameras will start to be removed following the authority’s approval.
