Ex-UN arms chief Richard Butler “told Australian radio at least four UN Security Council members monitored his calls, and he would walk in the park if was taking a confidential call.“
“I was well aware of it. How did I know? Because those who did it would come to me and show me the recordings that they had made on others to help me do my job disarming Iraq.”
Mr Butler said he was bugged by the Americans, British, French and Russians.
“I knew it from other sources,” he said. “I was utterly confident that I was bugged by at least four permanent members of the Security Council.”
Tony Blair, while responding to Clare Short’s revelation and what he considers her dragging of the security services “through the mud”, has admitted he has no self-respect:
“I really regret the way they have been dragged through the mud over the past few months. It is totally unfair for them …
“People who put them in the firing line like this – I really do not have a great deal of respect for …”
Spy case casts fresh doubt on war legality
But the Guardian has learned that a key plank of the defence presented to the prosecutors shortly before they decided to abandon the case was new evidence that the legality of the war had been questioned by the Foreign Office.
It is contained in a document seen by the Guardian. Sensitive passages are blacked out, but one passage says: “The defence believes that the advice given by the Foreign Office Legal Adviser expressed serious doubts about the legality (in international law) of committing British troops in the absence of a second [UN] resolution.”