Climate leak 'work of spy agency'

The British Government's former chief scientist saysx the 'climategate' hack was likely carried out by a foreign intelligence agency. Photo / Kenny Rodger

A highly sophisticated hacking operation that led to the leaking of hundreds of "climategate" emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia was probably done by a foreign intelligence agency, says the British Government's former chief scientist.

Sir David King, former Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser for seven years until 2007, said the hacking and selective leaking of the unit's emails going back 13 years bore the hallmarks of a co-ordinated intelligence operation - especially given their release before the Copenhagen climate conference in December.

King suggested the email leaks were deliberately designed to destabilise Copenhagen and he dismissed the idea that it was a run-of-the-mill hacking. It was done by a team of skilled professionals, either on behalf of a foreign Government or at the behest of anti-climate-change lobbyists in the United States, he said.

"A very clever nerd can cause a great deal of disruption and obviously make intelligence services very nervous, but a sophisticated intelligence operation is capable of yielding the sort of results we've seen here," King said.

More than 1000 emails, and some 2000 documents, were stolen from a University of East Anglia back-up server where remote access is difficult. This represents a small fraction of the total number of emails for the period from 1996 to 2009, suggesting they had been selected for the most incriminating phrases relating to possible scientific misconduct and breaches of the Freedom of Information Act.

The existence of the stolen emails came to light on November 17 when someone tried to load them on to the RealClimate website run by climate scientists, including Dr Gavin Schmidt of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Schmidt said the hackers were using a legitimate computer based in Turkey as a proxy server but the attack could have come from another computer anywhere in the world.

He tried to disable the hacking operation as it was taking place, but was prevented several times before finally succeeding. He said the attack would have required considerable skill and knowledge which an opportunistic hacker would not have had, he said.

Two days after the attempted RealClimate hack, the file of stolen emails appeared on a server used by a company operating from the Russian city of Tomsk. But the uploading could have been done from anywhere else.

Experts have suggested that loading the email file on to a Tomsk computer server may have been a clumsy attempt to lay a trail to the door of the Russian intelligence service, which has since denied any involvement. Some commentators in Russia have said that China had more to gain from destabilising the Copenhagen conference than Russia. King said that it was not possible to dismiss the possibility of Russia's involvement.

"If it was a job done on behalf of a government, then I suppose there is the possibility that it could be the Russian intelligence agency. If it was a maverick group then I suppose it could be the Americans. I've worked within government and I've seen this in operation. It was a sophisticated and expensive operation ... Right now, the American lobbyists are a very likely source of finance for this."

Norfolk Constabulary is investigating the hacking.

- INDEPENDENT