WASHINGTON - A U.S. official said Monday that the National Security Agency did not monitor phone conversations between a New Zealand journalist and his Afghan sources, after claims by the journalist that his reporting was monitored on behalf of New Zealand’s military by the U.S. intelligence programs revealed by agency leaker Edward Snowden.
Officials in the intelligence community and experts said that if any surveillance was done, it was more likely that his phone calls were caught up by standard military intelligence monitoring of enemy communications in war zones.
President Barack Obama’s administration brushed off new allegations of National Security Agency surveillance overreach, this time focusing on freelance reporter Jon Stephenson, who was in Kabul, Afghanistan, working for American news service McClatchy and other media outlets when his phone records were reportedly seized.
It was the latest revelation in the ongoing debate over government snooping since Snowden in June revealed two top secret U.S. programs that monitor millions of Americans’ telephone and Internet communications each day.
In a short statement, the U.S. government official said the agency did not target Stephenson or collect his phone records. A U.S. intelligence official suggested that any surveillance could have been run by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which oversees warzone intelligence missions. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the secret program. The Defense Intelligence Agency did not comment.
On Sunday, the Star-Times newspaper of New Zealand reported that the New Zealand military conspired with U.S. spy agencies to monitor Stephenson’s communications with sources in Afghanistan. New Zealand officials denied the new allegations.
The U.S. military has for years monitored most communications in war zones, where there is little expectation of privacy in the hunt for enemy combatants and suspected terrorists.
New Zealand withdrew its small contingent of roughly 150 troops from Afghanistan earlier this year. But the New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau, which is the country’s National Security Agency equivalent, would have been included in an allied intelligence gathering and reporting system in Afghanistan, Canadian intelligence expert Wesley Wark said.
Wark said the New Zealand security bureau also would have been able to access a secret system once code-named “Stoneghost,” which allows it to share and draw from intelligence reports compiled from four other counties - the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia. Stoneghost was one portal through which the so-called Five Eyes allies - the U.S., U.K, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - shared data.
“It is entirely possible that New Zealand intelligence ran its own surveillance operation against Stephenson on the basis of access to a common allied intelligence pool in Afghanistan without necessarily requiring any direct U.S. input or involvement,” said Wark, a national security professor at University of Ottawa.
He added: “It would not have been beyond the means of a small New Zealand contingent to do this on their own.”
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Monday that it’s possible that reporters could get caught in surveillance nets when the U.S. spies on enemy combatants. But generally, Five Eyes nations do not spy on one another’s citizens and residents.
The National Security Agency would not spy on citizens of another Five Eyes ally, especially if it were to circumvent that ally’s own espionage laws, said former Michigan congressman and House intelligence committee chairman Pete Hoekstra.
What’s picked up in war zones is considered fair game, however, and such surveillance has been a priority in Afghanistan as American troops prepare to withdraw in 2014. NATO and U.S. officials depend on the intelligence systems to detect and disrupt al-Qaida and the Taliban plots against the Afghan government and foreign forces.
New Zealand’s top spy agency and the Government Communications Security Bureau are banned from spying on its citizens. Key has drawn fire for supporting a new bill in New Zealand’s Parliament that would expand the Government Communications Security Bureau’s powers to allow eavesdropping on its citizens under certain legal conditions.
Thousands of New Zealanders marched in nearly a dozen cities throughout the country over the weekend to protest the bill.
New Zealand’s government did acknowledge the existence of a confidential order that lists investigative journalists alongside spies and terrorists as potential threats to New Zealand’s military.
New Zealand Defense Minister Jonathan Coleman said the order will be modified to remove references to journalists.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 07/30/2013