WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Foreign officials gathering at the UN General Assembly in New York City next week are likely well aware they will be under surveillance by the US intelligence community, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Paul Pillar told Sputnik.
On Wednesday, NBC News reported, citing former intelligence analysts, that there is a high possibility the US National Security Agency (NSA) will be spying on leaders during next week’s UN General Assembly meetings.
"With the type of collection under discussion, the damage comes not from the fact that it is being done, which is unlikely to be a surprise to the foreign leaders in question, but rather from the public discussion of it," Pillar said.
The UN was founded in 1945, Pillar explained, and there never has been a time since then that "deliberations and conversations of foreign leaders would not have been of interest to one's own policymakers."
The risk that leaks get exposed is always a consideration in these matters, he added, but argued that it would be "foolish to let the fear of leaks paralyse the program or operation in question."
NSA whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe also claims that US intelligence agencies help American officials get inside the heads of their foreign counterparts to gain an advantage ahead of negotiations at the UN.
"Any time a nation can obtain an ‘inside view’ of what the other sides are thinking, the better it can prepare for useful dialogue when discussions begin," Wiebe said on Thursday.
The US government has likely been surveilling foreign leaders, including Iran, "for at least as long as it has been surveilling US citizens," Wiebe argued, which means going back to the 1940’s or early 1950’s.
The annual general debate at the UN General Assembly will take place on September 28 — October 3.
