Special Reports
NSA’s reported eavesdropping on Tony Blair causes major rift in U.S.-British intelligence relations
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Nov 27, 2008, 00:20

(WMR) -- Revelations by ABC News that the National Security Agency (NSA) kept an intercept file on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, including information on his “private life,” has sent shock waves through the British and American intelligence communities.

ABC News reported that files on Blair’s communications were maintained in a NSA database code-named “Anchory” and was accessible from the NSA regional signals intelligence site at Fort Gordon, Georgia, known as “NSA Georgia.” The facility focuses on intercepting communications in Europe and the Middle East.

The NSA and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have worked closely together and share signals intercepts, as well as mutual signals intelligence tasking via the Echelon system. There is an unofficial agreement that the United States and Britain will not eavesdrop on one another. The only exception is when GCHQ tasks NSA with listening in on British citizens inside the United Kingdom, for example, members of the Royal family, and vice versa, when NSA tasks GCHQ to eavesdrop on Americans inside the United States in order to skirt U.S. wiretapping laws.

British intelligence sources have told WMR that the real concerns in Britain are that if Blair’s phone calls were monitored by NSA it means there has been a breach within the secure Brent 2 telephone used by British officials to protect their communications from eavesdroppers. The phone, which uses highly sophisticated encryption capabilities, is not likely to have had its codes broken by NSA, according to British intelligence sources. The fear in British intelligence circles is that British intelligence officials conspired with NSA to listen in on Blair’s communications.

The Brent 2 secure telephone unit is manufactured by Selex Communications, a part of the Italian industrial group Finmeccanica. The encryption used by Brent 2 was designed by the Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG), the information assurance component of the GCHQ in Cheltenham, England. CESG is now a focus of British counter-intelligence agents. Selex is also getting a close look by British counter-intelligence.

There is another fear. The Brent 2 phone continues to be used by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other senior British officials. The NSA eavesdropping on Britain may have also captured and may still be intercepting the sensitive communications, including those up to TOP SECRET UK EYES ONLY, of Brown, Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Defense Secretary John Hutton, and other officials who rely on Brent 2, including Queen Elizabeth II. Brent 2 is also used to encrypt e-mail, faxes, and video links.

The revelations about U.S. eavesdropping on Blair may provide a clue to Blair’s avid support for the United States attack on and occupation of Iraq. If Blair’s private life yielded embarrassing information from the phone intercepts, it may explain why Blair jumped so quickly to support George W. Bush’s Iraq war policy.

UPDATE 1X. There is the possibility that any intercepts of Tony Blair’s private communications have also fallen into the hands of parties not part of the UK-USA signals intelligence alliance of the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. WMR reported the following on September 18, 2005 concerning the compromise of the Anchory database to Israeli intelligence: CIA sources have confirmed that the neo-con penetration of NSA’s raw telecommunications intercept data by John Bolton was part of a multi-pronged attempt by Israeli intelligence to access the “Fort Knox” of America’s cryptologic secrets: the massive repository database of global intercepts of phone calls, email, faxes, and telexes now known as “ANCHORY” but will soon be expanded into a super database code named “OCEANARIUM.” As a result of former NSA Director Michael Hayden’s outsourcing contracts named “Groundbreaker” and “Trailblazer,” companies with ties to Israeli intelligence are gaining increased access to NSA’s operations and its massive archives of secrets.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

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