Report: US spied on UN chief
Leaked documents of classified material have left Washington red-faced
The United States eavesdropped on conversations of the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and other UN officials, according to a report by The Washington Post, citing leaked classified intelligence documents the newspaper obtained.
Guterres expressed to UN officials and world leaders his “outrage” over being denied an opportunity to visit Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region, The Post said in a report on April 17, citing four documents, two of them previously unreported.
The UN has expressed to the US its concern over reported surveillance on Guterres.
“UN officially expressed to the host country its concern regarding recent reports that the communications of the secretary-general and other senior UN officials have been the subject of surveillance and interference by the US government,” said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for Guterres, on April 18.
“The UN has made it clear that such actions are inconsistent with the obligations of the United States of America enumerated in the UN Charter and the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations,” he added.
Guterres, according to a document dated Feb 17 and seen by The Post, wanted to confront Ethiopian UN Representative Taye Atske Selassie Amde as the country’s foreign minister, Demeke Mekonnen, had sent Guterres a letter rejecting his planned visit to Tigray amid peace negotiations.
Another document obtained by The Post revealed that Guterres was “not happy” about having to travel
“UN officially expressed to the host country its concern regarding recent reports that the communications of the secretarygeneral and other senior UN officials have been the subject of surveillance and interference by the US government... The UN has made it clear that such actions are inconsistent with the obligations of the United States of America...” STEPHANE DUJARRIC Spokesman for United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres
to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in early March. While the document did not provide a reason for the secretary-general’s unwillingness, The Post cited a UN diplomat as saying weeks of tiring international travels on commercial flights was the cause.
The trove of leaked classified documents, numbering hundreds of pages and resulting in the arrest of a US air national guardsman on charges of disclosing classified national defense information without authorization, has seen the US scramble to assess the damage and restrict access to classified information for certain employees at the Department of Defense.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on April 18 accused the Pentagon of spying on his government following leaks in US media, and said he would begin classifying information from the armed forces to protect national security.
“We’re now going to safeguard information from the navy and the defense ministry, because we’re being a target of spying by the Pentagon,” Lopez Obrador told his daily news conference.
On April 16, Lopez Obrador had described the US intelligence in the leaks as an “abusive, overbearing intrusion that should not be accepted under any circumstance”, adding that he did not plan to rebuke the US, but
would at some point discuss “conditions for collaborative work”.
Other documents recently reported by US media showed the US had also been spying on allies such as South Korea, Israel and Ukraine.
The US air national guardsman suspected of leaking the classified documents received two charges on April 14 under the Espionage Act for allegedly posting the sensitive material online.
During his first court appearance at the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Boston, Jack Teixeira was informed of the two charges he faced: unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information, and unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material, court documents showed.
The airman was arrested “without incident” by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents on April 13 at his mother’s home in North Dighton, Massachusetts, US Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters at a news briefing.
According to publicly available information, Teixeira enlisted in the Massachusetts Air National Guard in 2019. His job title is cyber transport systems journeyman, and he had been promoted to the junior rank of Airman 1st Class.
However critics said Teixeira’s highprofile arrest and charging him was a smokescreen. Kash Patel, former US president Donald Trump’s ex-national security aide, claimed that the Pentagon leaks by Teixeira could not have been a one-man’s job.
“It’s just not possible” for a lowlevel Air National Guard IT specialist to have access to such information, which was eventually leaked, Patel was quoted as saying by the New York Post on April 15. “You can be the biggest IT person in (the Department of Defense), and you are still compartmented off of the actual information.”
“I think he’s definitely working with other people in DOD or the intel space to get this information out,” Patel added, calling Teixiera’s arrest “an extensive cover-up”.
The US government has been left in an awkward position in what is believed to be potentially the worst intelligence breach in a decade, partly because the revelations made clear Washington’s deeper-than-perceived involvement in the day-to-day developments of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and exposed continued US spying on its allies.
Amid the unsetting fallout of the incident, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who until April 6 had been unaware of the leaks, ordered a review of the “intelligence access, accountability and control procedures” within the department, according to a statement.