US Spied on Its Allies During the Creation of the UN

The US's spying on the UN is nothing new; in fact, the US intercepted the encrypted communications of its allies immediately before and during the founding conference of the UN. This has literally been happening since before day one.

Former reporter Stephen Schlesinger, now the Director of the World Policy Institute, made a Freedom of Information Act request for the daily summaries of these intercepts, part of the project known as "Magic," run the Army's Signal Security Agency.

In 1993, the NSA declassified portions of the Magic Diplomatic Summaries. Based on these, Schlesinger broke the story with his article "Cryptanalysis for Peacetime: Codebreaking and the Birth and Structure of the United Nations," published in the cryptography journal Cryptologia (9.3, July 1995). Schlesinger's article goes into extreme detail about the spying and maneuvering that went on. The first portion of the article, though, gives a brief overview of what the documents reveal:

"The interception of foreign diplomatic traffic by the United States played a major role in enabling America to fashion the United Nations into the organization it wished at the San Francisco conference in 1945. The United States, the primary strategist behind the creation of the UN, had a war-created cryptanalytic program that included the interception and solution of the embassy cables not only of its enemies, but also of its allies and of neutrals. As World War II wound down, America employed it to uncover the interests of the San Francisco participants in order to mold the organization's charter to its liking.

Secret US files recently released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal how Pentagon operatives eavesdropped on friendly nations in the weeks leading up to the San Francisco meeting to find out how they were preparing for it and during the two months of the conference to find out how they were reacting to it. These documents suggest that, in producing a United Nations that the United States envisaged, it was indulging not only in altruism but also in national self-interest. Such revelations indicate that, in retrospect, some revisions in conventional historical judgments on the origins of the United Nations may now be in order.

The 635 pages of diplomatic messages came from the Army's Signal Security Agency, which broke codes and solved intercepts, and its Special Branch, which evaluated, edited, and distributed them as "Magic" Diplomatic Summaries. These summaries reported information obtained from intercepted and solved foreign diplomatic cryptograms. Reproduced in purple ink by the Ditto process and issued daily, they averaged fifteen pages each. All were divided into three categories--military, political, and economic--and, where needed, into two others: psychological and subversive and miscellaneous. Sometimes annexes amplified some items or gave the full text of important documents; occasionally maps were included. Within each category, headings described the subject of the intercept or intercepts. The scope was extremely great, ranging from German military plans as reported by the Japanese ambassador to Afghan attitudes to Japanese intelligence activities. The documents do not include any British or Soviet messages.

The "Magic Summaries" reveal that:

* Washington knew in advance the negotiating positions of almost all of the 50 countries that assembled in San Francisco.

* On key issues--whom to admit to the UN, decolonization, the Security Council veto, the role of smaller countries, even Soviet views--the US had crucial intelligence beforehand.

* Most nations, including the US, sought to push their own interests over those of the world community.

* The US apparently used its surveillance reports to set the agenda of the UN, to control the debate, to pressure nations to agree to its positions, and to write the UN Charter mostly according to its own blueprint.

In his towering book Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency From the Cold War Through the Dawn of the New Century (Doubleday, 2001), James Bamford devotes a couple of pages to the topic. He explains that Western Union and the other telegraph companies diverted these messages to receivers designed just for this purpose.

"The intercepts were then forwarded to Arlington Hall, headquarters of the Army codebreakers, over forty-six special secure teletype lines. By the summer of 1945 the average number of daily messages had grown to 289,802, from only 46,865 in February 1943. The same soldiers who only a few weeks earlier had been deciphering German battle plans were now unraveling the codes and ciphers wound tightly around Argentine negotiating points.
....
Impressive was not just the volume of messages intercepted but also the wide range of countries whose secrets could be read. Messages from Colombia provided details on quiet disagreements between Russia and its satellite nations as well as on "Russia's prejudice toward the Latin American countries." Spanish decrypts indicated that their diplomats in San Francisco were warned to oppose a number of Russian moves: "Red maneuver...must be stopped at once," said one. A Czechoslovakian message indicated that nation's opposition to the admission of Argentina to the UN." [pp 22-23]