MEPs’ trip to US over ‘eavesdropping’

Date: 03/05/01

By John Shelley

MEPs are next week due to travel to Washington as part of the European Parliament's investigation into whether America is eavesdropping on European telecommunications.

A delegation of 12 MEPs from the temporary committee reporting on America's secretive 'Echelon' network are due to meet officials from US security agencies and the politicians charged with watching over them.

The team, led by the committee's chairman Carlos Coelho, from Portugal, and its rapporteur German Gerhard Schmid, hopes to meet chiefs from both the National Security Agency, allegedly the home of Echelon, and the Central Intelligence Agency.

They are also due to meet members of the House of Representatives and Senate select committees on intelligence.

The Echelon committee, set up last July, has spent the past eight months hearing from a series of experts on the US electronic spying network, in a bid to determine if the American government has the power to intercept Europe's telephone, email and fax communications.

If, as expected, their suspicions are confirmed, they also want to know if sensitive information is being passed to American businesses to give them a competitive advantage over the EU.

Insiders say that the trip will be "make or break," with the answers given, or not given, sure to determine the tone of the Parliament's final report due in June or July.

Witnesses have told MEPs that the commerce department's Advocacy Center, an agency set up to promote US business, could be acting as an intermediary, channelling top secrets to industry chiefs.

MEPs will also be watching the watchdogs. Last week Washington journalist and NSA expert James Bamford told them that the House and Senate oversight committees had become apologists for the security agencies and no longer carry out a genuine scrutiny role.

MEPs are due to travel to Washington as part of the European Parliament's investigation into whether America is eavesdropping on European telecommunications. A delegation of 12 MEPs from the temporary committee reporting on America's secretive 'Echelon' network are due to meet officials from US security agencies and the politicians charged with watching over them.