Justified Spying

Though details remain obscure, it now is clear that for some months the United States used the U.N. arms inspection system in Iraq as cover for intelligence gathering, sharing some of what it learned about Saddam Hussein’s covert weapons programs with the inspectors while retaining other information for its own uses. This information apparently came to include determining where to aim some of the bombs and missiles it employed against key targets in Iraq during last month’s air assaults.

Leaked reports on this U.S. intelligence effort have raised concerns that the effectiveness of the United Nations in its global operations may have been compromised. Iraq’s propaganda machine has gone all out to cite these reports as justification for the regime’s decision not to readmit the U.N. inspectors. But that decision was announced well before the stories about U.S. spying surfaced. Iraq wants to bar the inspectors not because information tipped them where to search but because they had been getting too close to uncovering what Iraq is determined to keep hidden.

A key fact too readily overlooked is that the arms inspection program, created eight years ago by the Security Council, has always had to rely on information and expertise provided by member states.

The United States has been the source of much of this information, most of which, given Iraq’s enormous efforts to deceive the world about the magnitude and progress of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs, has of necessity been obtained covertly. In short, the U.N. arms inspections have always depended heavily if indirectly on U.S. spying.

The most recent fruits of this espionage appear to have involved placement of listening devices in Iraq by an American member of the U.N. inspection team. That operation yielded information of great value to the inspectors, and to U.S. officials.

Was this means of intelligence gathering somehow dirty pool? The inspectors and the U.S. shared a common goal: to find and eliminate a massive clandestine weapons program that imperils all of Iraq’s neighbors. That goal by definition does not require “impartiality” on the part of the U.N. inspectors but rather an unwavering commitment to ferreting out Iraq’s hidden weapons. Iraqi behavior has simply allowed no alternative to using every intelligence means possible to uncover and destroy its provocative and threatening secret arms programs.