Spies' Role Debated in U.N. Inspections of Iraq

Undercover U.S. agents working with the U.N. teams secretly planted a high-tech "black box" device in Baghdad that year to eavesdrop on Saddam Hussein's phone calls, among other Iraqi communications, former inspectors say. The signals then were encrypted in other U.N. data and transmitted via satellite to the National Security Agency headquarters at Ft. Meade, Md.

Other operatives helped the U.N. team track Iraqi officials abroad. In one case, they planted hidden cameras and microphones in the hotel room of an Iraqi scientist trying to buy banned missile parts in Romania -- and then sneaked into his room at night to photograph the contents of his briefcase.

As new U.N. inspectors plan to return to Iraq after a four-year absence, and as the Bush administration prepares for a possible war there, the role of intelligence in the effort to disarm Iraq is the subject of sharp debate at the U.N. and in Washington and other world capitals.

Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, argues that U.N. credibility was badly hurt by disclosures about covert CIA, British MI6 and Israeli Mossad operations with the former U.N. inspection teams.

Some of the intercepts and other data were used to help identify and target Hussein's suspected hide-outs when U.S. and British bombers launched the Desert Fox airstrikes in December 1998 after the U.N. inspectors were withdrawn, former inspectors say. If U.N. teams go back to Iraq in coming weeks, Blix insists that he will not provide any direct assistance or information to U.S. or other intelligence agencies that could compromise the teams.

"We are not an espionage service, a spy organization," Blix said in a recent interview. "We want intelligence from member governments, but it must be a one-way street. We will tell them what we are interested in."

But U.S. diplomats are fighting to ensure that a new U.N. resolution on Iraq will allow the U.S. and other permanent Security Council members to send their own "experts" and equipment with the disarmament teams, which otherwise would be limited to U.N. employees.

France, Russia and Iraq, among others, objected to the initial U.S. proposal last month, saying the addition of such outside experts was a pretext to permit spying under the U.N. flag.