BLAIR BUGGED; US listened to PM's calls Personal details on file.

Byline: BY ANTON ANTONOWICZ US CORRESPONDENT

US spymasters snooped on Tony Blair's private life, a former security agent claims.

Mr Blair was allegedly given the codename Anchory by America's National Security Agency which listened to and taped his personal phone chats.

And a file on the former PM, now a Middle East peace envoy, was compiled at the world's biggest listening post - NSA HQ at Fort Gordon, Georgia.

Former Navy communications operator David Murfee Faulk told ABC News that he saw a file in 2006 on the "private life" of Mr Blair.

He said his security clearance at Fort Gordon gave him access to top secret information. He would not say what was in the file but it was of a "personal nature".

The revelations will cause huge embarrassment to President Bush because there is an unwritten rule that the UK and US do not gather information on each other. GCHQ in Gloucestershire and the NSA routinely share information on other nations. And Mr Blair was Mr Bush's closest ally during the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

One former CIA agent said: "If it is true that we maintained a file on Blair, it would represent a huge breach of the agreement we have with the Brits."

Whistleblower Faulk, 39, also claimed that the US bugged Iraq's first interim president, Ghazi al-Yawer. Arabic translator Mr Faulk was assigned to monitor Mr Al-Yawer and said he heard pillow talk with his fiancee.

He claimed that some young translators would pass round tapes of sex chats for a laugh during smoking breaks.

Mr Faulk first broke his cover last month when he claimed that US intelligence intercepted the private phone calls of American journalists, aid workers and soldiers stationed in Iraq. The US Congress later called for his claims to be investigated.

A second whistleblower, Adrienne Kinne, 31, backed up the allegations about eavesdropping on journalists. She said the calls were intercepted when they used satellite telephones.

Ms Kinne said the calls were "personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism".

Mr Bush has always denied the NSA snooped on private US citizens.

One time NSA director General Michael Hayden, now director of the CIA, told Congress that private chats were not intercepted.

He said: "It's not for the heck of it. We are narrowly focused and drilled on protecting the nation against al-Qaeda and those organisations who are affiliated with it."

Faulk, who until recently was a newspaper reporter, said he was one of 3,000 linguists at Fort Gordon. Much of their work was monitoring calls in and out of Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.

If true it would be a huge breach of the agreement we have with the Brits

FORMER CIA CHIEF

CAPTION(S):

ALLIES Tony Blair and George Bush