By MARTIN DALY

American spy agencies virtually crippled United Nations' efforts to shut
down Saddam Hussein's nuclear and chemical warfare arsenals after the Gulf
War.

American self-interest threatened the disarmament process in Iraq and peace
in the Middle East, according to a book by Sunday Age journalist and author
Tania Ewing to be published tomorrow.

As the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq, headed by former
Australian diplomat Richard Butler, faced threats from gun-toting Iraqi
troops, the Americans were using personnel and equipment from the special
commission, known as UNSCOM, to gather crucial intelligence, which they then
refused to share with Mr Butler's disarmament inspectors.

In The Peace Broker, Ewing analyses Mr Butler's career and his controversial
period in the often fractious UN network.

She reveals that the United States hijacked UNSCOM's intelligence-gathering
project to such an extent that some staff in Baghdad complained they had
been dragged unwillingly into espionage.

UNSCOM members were adamant that some Iraqi targets bombed during Desert
Fox - including the bedroom of one of Mr Hussein's mistresses - could only
have been picked from information recorded by UNSCOM.

The mantle of American interest hung so heavily over the operation that the
boundaries between UNSCOM, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National
Security Agency became blurred.

UN member nations were obliged to help UNSCOM where it did not have the
capacity to monitor the deadly arsenals hidden by the Iraqi regime, but they
were mandated to hand over the information. Often the US maintained sole
access to intelligence they were supposed to decode for UNSCOM.

Even when the US did share information, it was often rendered useless
because of long and deliberate delays, enabling Iraq to change tactics and
hide arsenals and evidence from UNSCOM.

Ewing also reveals that UNSCOM personnel sometimes thwarted American
self-interest by asking personnel from one US agency to decode data without
letting the other know about it, and by using other intelligence sources
such as the Israelis to decode the data.

At the time, Iraq complained bitterly that UNSCOM was a front for the US and
other military powers. These complaints were dismissed as an Iraqi ruse to
deny UNSCOM access to its arms data and arsenals.

The book also reveals that UNSCOM installed a listening device in its
Baghdad headquarters for disarmament purposes but this was used by the US
for monitoring Mr Hussein, an activity not covered under the UN mandate.

A $1 billion Vortex satellite launched by the US to use those frequencies to
monitor mobile telephone conversations and radio traffic in Iraq crashed on
take-off.

Mr Butler eventually acknowledged the CIA could have been using UNSCOM, but
he claimed to have no knowledge of it.

"He refused to concede that, ultimately, the buck stopped with him," Ewing
notes.

"All he had to say was, if the CIA did compromise UNSCOM, then he took full
responsibility because it happened on his watch. But he didn't, and it
damaged him and his organisation."