National Security Agency secretly intercepting Aristide's phone calls, Clinton White House

Recently, a long restricted November 1994 file from the office of Bill Clinton at White House reveals that the National Security Agency (NSA) had secretly intercepted former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's phone calls. The NSA is a U.S. intelligence agency responsible for global monitoring, collection, decoding, translation and analysis of information and facts for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. Ira J. Kurzban, a Miami based American civil rights and immigration lawyer, has commented that such an act of interception is in contravention of the U.N. Charter and international law; it offends the principle of peaceful cooperation among states. He is of opinion that the government did never change its conduct since the 1994 incidence.

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During the same time in October last year, amid mounting questions in the House about how the N.S.A collects information overseas, one U.S top spy master, James R. Clapper Jr., who is a director of the National Intelligence, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that the NSA maintains senior officials to conduct surveillance in foreign countries and White House had long been aware in general terms of the NSA's overseas eavesdropping. He further asserted that the European allies of the NSA assist the NSA even as they spy on U.S. officials. In October 2013, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly asked for an explanation for the alleged spying by the US National Security Agency. She even called U.S President Barrack Obama to demand explanations over reports that the US National Security Agency was monitoring her mobile phone.

Mr. Clapper and the NSA Director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander both have argued on the occasion and said that such act of overhearing is a basic tenet of intelligence trade-craft. So it was there and will remain forever.

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Read more: Jean Bertrand Aristide, Ira Kurzban, telephone, International

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