国际英语新闻：U.S. diplomats ordered to spy on UN leadership

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- U.S. diplomats are spying on the leadership of the United Nations as well as the permanent Security Council representatives from China, Russia, France and Britain, classified cables released on Sunday show.

"The United States has expanded the role of American diplomats in collecting intelligence overseas and at the United Nations, ordering State Department personnel to gather the credit card and frequent-flier numbers, work schedules and other personal information of foreign dignitaries," The New York Times said in its website.

The revelation is part of a huge trove of secret directives sent to U.S. embassies, which are being released by the whistleblower site Wikileaks. The trove, some 250,000 diplomatic cables, was made available in advance to The New York Times, British paper The Guardian and other news outlets for analysis.

"The cables give a laundry list of instructions for how State Department employees can fulfill the demands of a National Humint Collection Directive in specific countries," The New York Times website said.

A classified directive, issued to U.S. diplomats in July 2009 under the name of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, demanded forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.

It also sought detailed biometric information on key UN officials as well as intelligence on Secretary General Ban Ki-moon 's "management and decision-making style and his influence on the secretariat."

A parallel intelligence directive sent to diplomats in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi said biometric data include DNA, fingerprints and iris scans.