Intelligence Gathering and Espionage in the Exclusive Economic Zone: Peaceful or Not?

Abstract

Those fortunate enough to know Elisabeth Mann Borgese were well aware of her deep lifelong commitment to peace. For her, inclusion of ‘for peaceful purposes’ and ‘exclusively for peaceful purposes’ in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (unclos) were intended as operational, not merely dressing up an otherwise highly practical convention. Her long association with the international law of the sea community developed many long and enduring friendships, often culminating in social gatherings at her home in a small fishing village outside Halifax, Nova Scotia. One such gathering took place after a Law of the Sea Institute annual meeting at Dalhousie University in the early 1980s. Elisabeth gathered an eclectic group of friends, including leading scholars, diplomats, lawyers, neighboring fisherfolk and a few fortunate students to share food, drink, and lively discussion. The director of the Institute at the time was Dr. John P. Craven, a widely respected legal scholar, engineer, scientist, and amateur musician.1 That evening, he entertained by singing operatic arias while accompanying himself on Elisabeth’s grand piano, but these were not his only hidden talents. While Dr. Craven’s legal scholarship and musical talent were openly displayed, details of his previous role as chief scientist for the United States Navy’s Special Projects Office would remain hidden for many years.2 He had, in fact, been the US Navy’s ‘ocean spy chief ’, involved in many intelligence-gathering and espionage operations, including recovering lost ships, submarines, and weapons systems, and electronic ‘bugging’ of Soviet Navy telecommunications cables under the Sea of Okhotsk.3 He was also an international lawyer, deeply committed to the principles of unclos as he saw them. Had the clandestine