Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United
Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland on 20 April 2009.
The NSA will probably spy on foreign leaders like Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
during the UN General Assembly in New York this week, applying a "full
court press" that includes intercepting cellphone calls and bugging
hotel rooms, former intelligence analysts told NBC News.
A top-secret report on a previous NSA operation
against Iran's U.N. delegation illustrates just how extensive this
electronic surveillance can be. The document, obtained by NBC News,
shows the U.S. bugged the hotel rooms and phones of then-Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
and his entire 143-member delegation in 2007, listening to thousands of
conversations and learning the "social networks" of Iran's leadership.
The three-page document, called "Tips for a
Successful Quick Reaction Capability," recounted what happened when the
NSA was asked by the Bush administration for blanket surveillance of
Ahmadinejad's September 2007 trip to the UNGA. Ahmadinejad was then in
his first term as president but already notorious in the West for
questioning the Holocaust and saying Israel should be wiped off the map.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia University on Sept. 24, 2007. Shannon Stapleton / Pool via Getty Images, file
In response to the "Quick Reaction Capability" request, the NSA
obtained "authorization for special FISA collection on the Iranian
delegation during their stay in New York." The secret, 11 judge "FISA"
court can grant permission for electronic surveillance of foreign powers
or agents of foreign powers and can also approve the physical search of
the premises or property used by a foreign power.
Although the NSA document makes no specific
reference to bugging the rooms of the delegation, which stayed at the
Intercontinental Hotel and other hotels in midtown Manhattan, a former
senior U.S. government official confirmed to NBC News that the bugging
took place.
Once the "ok" for the "special collection" was
given, said the report, "we had to ensure that the proper procedures
would be in place … to efficiently tackle the anticipated influx of
traffic." The operation, conducted nearly around the clock, used the
latest in "Human Language Technology" to gather not just information
about what Ahmadinejad was thinking and telling his aides, but to dive
deep into the personal and political connections of Iran's top
officials.
An "EXCEL spreadsheet guru" compiled information
on all 143 delegates, including names, titles and passport numbers,
according to the document, as well as the schedules of Ahmadinejad and
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, according to the document.
"Collection information and identifications of the various hotel rooms
and cell phones were also updated as soon as they were discovered." The
spreadsheet was continuously updated and provided to the NSA and the
FBI.
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Teams of five or six analysts from three different sections then
worked from 4 in the morning to 11 at night during the delegation's
visit recording and transcribing conversations. In addition to
monitoring phone calls and in-person conversations, a secret technology
called "Blarney" allowed them to intercept Skype conversations and video
teleconferencing.
To make sure they knew who they were listening
to, the analysts used "Speaker Identification" to "pinpoint people of
significant interest, including the Iranian Foreign Minister."
"Speech Activity Detection," meanwhile, "was run
on all incoming traffic to help identify [recordings] with little-to-no
speech to prevent our having to listen to dead air." The analysts also
used "VoiceRt" to set up phonetic keyword searches in Farsi to find
email addresses and "discussion of prominent individuals."
The teams then analyzed 2000 "voice cuts," or
conversations, per day. "Some analysts scanned and prioritized while
others transcribed and gisted (meaning summarized the conversations),"
said the document. "Everyone moved between the two jobs throughout the
day as needed. This made for very efficient scanning."
The results of the surveillance included the
discovery of new "leads" from the Iranian delegation — which may mean
persons who could be contacted or exploited by U.S. intelligence — as
well as Ahmadinejad's feelings about his controversial Monday, Sept. 24,
2007 address at Columbia University, where he said the Nazi
extermination of Jews should be treated as theory, not fact, and claimed
there were no homosexuals in Iran.
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The "Social Network Analysis office" of the NSA also used the
surveillance to reconstruct the social networks of the top Iranian
delegates, and better understand their relationships with each other.
According to a former analyst, that would help the U.S. understand
things such as which aides Ahmadinejad relied on most, and which held
the real power.
The National Security Agency declined to comment
on the document or the surveillance of the 2007 Iranian delegation. A
spokesperson for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he had no way
to confirm whether or not the U.S. had spied on the Iranians, but said,
"We would expect every member state to respect the inviolability of
communications to and from the United Nations, whether by phone or
internet." The Iranian government did not respond to requests for
comment. President Rouhani is expected to arrive in New York Thursday.
However, an Iranian-American translator hired to
work with Ahmadinejad said she believed members of the delegation were
quite aware they would be under surveillance and behaved accordingly. Banafsheh Keynoush,
a San Francisco-based Middle East analyst, described herself as "not
much surprised" but wondered how successful the eavesdropping could have
been.
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"At a general level, [the Iranians] have always
felt such bugging would take place, but have probably been unaware of
the scale of it," said Keynoush, who has translated for four Iranian
presidents during their visits to the UNGA. "I don't believe personally
that much intelligence that would make the Iranians uneasy could be
gathered from these events, because the Iranians would likely mindfully
not engage in secretive conversations while in the U.S."
Keynoush also said the Iranians physically and electronically "cleared" conference rooms before sitting down.
The report on the operation was contained in an
October 2007 issue of top-secret NSA Newsletter called "SID (or Signal
Intelligence Division) Daily." The report described the operation as an
example of what cooperation between agencies can produce with "a
collaborative spirit" among technologists, language analysts and
managers.