As a stroll down memory lane:
On March 2, 2003, the Observer in London published a smoking-gun memo written by a supervisor at the NSA. The memo
ordered surveillance of UN Security Council delegations in New York as
part of the U.S. battle to win votes in favor of the war against Iraq.
The memo is blunt about the purpose of the surveillance: NSA wants the
"whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in
obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises".
The timing of the disclosure was critical: the memo was only a month
old, it was revealed two-and-a-half weeks before the launch of the
war.
How did the U.S. press cover this story? Well, they pretty much didn't.
From the New York Times, zip, nada, zilch. From the Washington Post, a buried story,
"Memo a big yawn."
Look, Times, look, Post: everyone knows that U.N. diplomats in New York
are among the most bugged people in the world. But when you've got a
smoking gun memo showing against-UN-charter surveillance, expressly,
the memo itself says so, for political purposes, that is news.
Look, Times: at least this story was true. Katharine Gun, the translator at
GCHQ who leaked the memo? She is
a lot more real
than your damn centrifuge aluminum tubes.
Someone charged under the Official Secrets Act for leaking the thing, charges later
dropped because the British government wouldn't release what evidence it's got because
that would embarrass them worse? Times, Post, look: That should have been news too.