US tapped ElBaradei calls, claim officials

[emad]

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and Ian Traynor in Zagreb
Monday December 13, 2004
The Guardian

The Bush administration has been listening in on telephone conversations between the director of the international nuclear agency and Iranian diplomats with the aim of gathering evidence to remove the UN bureaucrat from his post, it was reported yesterday.

With Washington's campaign against the IAEA chief, Dr Mohammad ElBaradei, now in its second year, the administration has acquired dozens of telephone intercepts of such conversations in the hopes of finding evidence of wrongdoing, the Washington Post said. The newspaper quoted three anonymous US government officials as saying that the administration embarked on its eavesdropping mission to collect material that would discredit Dr ElBaradei in his dealings with Tehran in the crisis over its clandestine nuclear programme.

At the IAEA headquarters in Vienna it is taken for granted that Dr ElBaradei's phone calls are tapped. Officials shrug that such activities go with the territory. The CIA had no comment when contacted yesterday.

For the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration, Dr ElBaradei has been an enemy since he exposed the hollowness of Washington's claims about Saddam Hussein's nuclear arsenal during the run-up to the war on Iraq. In recent months, as global efforts to halt Iran's clandestine nuclear programme gathered pace, some US officials who were sceptical of a diplomatic resolution accused Dr ElBaradei of hiding evidence of Tehran's weapons programme from the nuclear watchdog.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1372539,00.html

[maddezmom]

1. dupe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1064565&mesg_id=1064565

[emad]

2. thanks, didn't see that one...