Fury in Iraq as Bob Woodward claims US spied on Nouri al-Maliki

Iraq is demanding an explanation from the United States after allegations that US intelligence agencies have been spying on Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister and other government officials.

If the claims, made in a new book by veteran investigative reporter Bob Woodward, prove to be true they will “cast a shadow” over relations between Baghdad and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other US intelligence services, an Iraqi government spokesman said yesterday.

“If it is true, if it is a fact, it reflects that there is no trust and it reflects also that the institutions in the United States are used to spy on their friends and their enemies in the same way,” Dr Ali al-Dabbagh told The Times.

“If it is true it casts a shadow on the future relations with such institutions,” he said. “We will raise this with the American side and we will ask for an explanation.”

The comments came in response to excerpts from Mr Woodward's latest book, which claimed that US intelligence agencies “know everything” Mr al-Maliki says.

It also alleges that they have been spying on his staff and others within the Iraqi Government at a time when both sides were working together to defeat the bloody insurgency that consumed Iraq in 2006 and early 2007.

A US embassy spokeswoman in Baghdad declined to comment on the revelations in The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008.

The book, due to be published on Monday, also claims that a “surge” last year of almost 30,000 additional US troops into Baghdad and the surrounding area was not the primary reason behind a drop in the violence in recent months.

Instead, it alludes to “groundbreaking” new covert techniques that enabled US military and intelligence officials to pinpoint and kill key insurgent leaders, including senior members of al-Qaeda in Iraq. It declines to give more details, however, to avoid revealing state secrets.

Mr Woodward's book, his fourth on President Bush's handling of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, portrays the rifts that plagued the Bush Administration as the troop surge policy was devised against a backdrop of escalating bloodshed.

He writes that top generals staged a “near revolt” in late 2006, fearing that their advice was not reaching the President.

General David Petraeus, the current top military commander in Iraq, is portrayed in a positive light. However, as the man who implemented Mr Bush's new policy on the ground, his predecessor, General George Casey, is seen as falling out of favour with the President.

Away from the political and military wranglings in Washington, the book describes the development of a close working relationship between Mr Bush and the Iraqi Prime Minister, with the American President encouraging Mr al-Maliki to take decisive action against sectarianism.

Mr Woodward, an associate editor at The Washington Post, wrote that one official with knowledge of the surveillance activities recognised the sensitivity of the issue and then asked, “Would it be better if we didn't?”.

A senior aide to Mr al-Maliki expressed regret at the spying allegations if they were valid.

“If it's correct I feel sorry because the relation between Iraq and the United States should be on a level of trust and of co-operation rather than of spying and a lack of trust,” Sadiq alRikabi told The Times.

The aide said that he would not be able to tell if his whole office was full of bugging devices, adding: “I am not a professional in that field.”

It is unclear what damage the spying allegations will do to relations between Iraq and the United States if proved to be true.

At present, Mr al-Maliki's offices as well as other key government buildings are just down the road from the US Embassy inside the fortified green zone in Baghdad.

US advisers work side by side with their Iraqi counterparts at various Iraqi ministries, while US, British and other coalition officials attend weekly top-level security meetings with the Iraqi leader and other senior government officials.

Mr al-Maliki, who was sworn in as Prime Minister in May 2006, has led Iraq through some of its most turbulent postwar months and, more recently, a dramatic drop in the violence.

He was seen initially by the Bush Administration as weak and ineffective as daily bombings and sectarian killings raged across the country at the hands of Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda and the Shia al-Mahdi Army. But that image changed thanks in part to the surge.

Boosting his secular credentials, the Shia Prime Minister, 58, has also headed crackdowns on Shia militants in the southern city of Basra as well as the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, while attacking al-Qaeda strongholds in the north.

The words of Woodward

— Bob Woodward's career as a journalist began badly. In a trial fortnight at The Washington Post in 1970 he wrote 17 stories and had none published

— He unearthed the Watergate scandal after only nine months at The Washington Post, while working night shifts. He was assigned to cover the story along with a younger but more experienced reporter, Carl Bernstein.

— Much of their information came from one of Woodward's contacts, named Deep Throat.

— He was later revealed, although not by Woodward, to be W. Mark Felt Sr, an FBI agent

— Through the years he has accumulated some critics: one dubbed him a “mindless Sir Edmund Hillary: he climbs for the detail because it is there, gettable by him, even if it tells us nothing”.

— In the late 1980s his reputation suffered a blow with claims that he had faked or exaggerated a deathbed interview with William Casey, a former Director of the CIA

—More recently he has built a formidable reputation on the strength and depth of his contacts. High ranking officials in the White House and the security services talk to him in depth on and off the record. He has written 15 books