November 25, 2008	Tuesday	Ziqa'ad 26, 1429

NEW YORK, Nov 24: US intelligence services snooped on the private lives of two of America’s most important allies: former British prime minister Tony Blair and Iraq’s first interim president, Ghazi Al-Yawer, ABC News reported on Monday citing a former communications intercept operator.

David Murfee Faulk, the intercept operator, told ABC News he had seen and read a file on Blair’s “private life” and heard “pillow talk” phone calls of Al-Yawer when he worked as an Army Arab linguist assigned to a secret NSA facility at Fort Gordon, Georgia, between 2003 and 2007.

Last month, Faulk and another former military intercept operator assigned to the NSA facility triggered calls for an investigation when they revealed that US intelligence had intercepted private phone calls of American journalists, aid workers and soldiers stationed in Iraq.

Faulk said his top secret clearance at Ft. Gordon gave him access to an intelligence data base, called “Anchory”, where he saw the file on the then-British prime minister in 2006.

Faulk declined to provide details other than to say it contained information of a personal nature.

A spokesman for Blair, who stepped down as prime minister in 2007, said there would be “no comment” on Faulk’s allegations.

Collecting information on foreign leaders is a legal and common practice of intelligence agencies around the world but under a long-standing agreement, the US and Britain have pledged “not to collect on each other”, according to several former US intelligence officials.

The NSA works extremely closely and shares data with its British counterpart, the GCHQ, Government Communications Headquarters.

“If it is true that we maintained a file on Blair, it would represent a huge breach of the agreement we have with the Brits,” said one former CIA official.

In the case of the former Iraqi president, Faulk says his “pillow talk” phone calls were to his fiancé, whom he later married.

Faulk says the calls were intercepted and posted on the computer system for others to read about and hear.

Faulk described the Al-Yawer calls as “courting, wooing and pillow talk” with an Iraqi woman, Nasrin Barwari, the minister of public works in the interim government.

Al-Yawer was the first president of Iraq’s interim government between 2004 and 2005.

At the same time, US intelligence was monitoring his private calls, Al-Yawer was flown to Washington to meet President George Bush in the White House.

“I’m really honoured you’re here,” said President Bush as he greeted Al-Yawer in front of reporters in the Oval Office.