Who May Be Spying on You ... and Why?

‘Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail.’
—Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, 1929

October 2006 By Denny Hatch

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From 1920 to 1933, Henry L. Stimson was secretary of state in the Hoover administration. In 1929, he closed down the State’s cryptanalytic office and his quote about gentlemen not reading each other’s mail became famous. Fortunately he changed his mind when he headed the War Department under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Had the United States not broken the Japanese code in the early years of World War II, tens of thousands of American lives would have been lost. The same is true for the Brits intercepting German radio traffic with the now-famous Enigma machines at Bletchley Park.

Down deep inside, I agree with Stimson; snooping on people gives me the creepy-crawlies.

Yet, in business and in war, it’s essential.

The Culture of Distrust
The news recently has been rife with stories of snooping by corporations, private individuals and the federal government:

* In her new memoir to be published this week, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina describes her angst when private discussions with board members turned up in the media. “It is hard to convey how violated I felt,” she wrote. Subsequent to Fiorina’s firing in February 2005, leaks continued. Hewlett-Packard board Chairman Patricia Dunn allegedly contacted private detectives to find the leakers. Last week, Dunn and four others—including three outside investigators—were indicted attempting to obtain the phone records of Hewlett-Packard directors suspected of revealing confidential information to the press.

* New York State Republican candidate for attorney general, Jeanine Pirro, is being investigated for possibly hiring former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik to illegally tape conversations of her husband whom she suspected of having an affair. The brouhaha isn’t helpful to Pirro’s campaign to become New York state’s chief law enforcement officer.

* This past February, celebrity Hollywood attorney Terry Christensen was indicted for conspiring with private detective Anthony (the Pelican) Pellicano for wiretapping the conversations of billionaire MGM boss Kirk Kerkorian’s ex-wife.

* In “The Man Who Made the Twenties Roar,” a biography of the early 20th-century Andrew Mellon, which was published this week, David Cannadine describes how the enormously wealthy entrepreneur in his 40s married a woman in her early twenties. Their sensational divorce, gleefully covered in the tabloids for two years, included accounts of Mellon accusing his wife of infidelity and her countercharges that he hired private detectives and used listening devices to catch her, ultimately to no avail.

* On Dec. 16, 2005, The New York Times revealed that “months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States ... without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.”