American soft power is undermined by allegations of widespread spying

Many years ago when I was the founder editor of a daily newspaper in Malaysia, I was tipped off that the country's spy agency was tapping my office telephone. I was flattered.

These were the days before mobiles, so it was a complicated exercise to pick out a switchboard extension and quite an honour to be singled out by an agency that had limited capacity. My source said they could tap fewer than 100 telephones.

Why my blatherings about the daily task of producing a new newspaper should be of any interest or yield anything of value to anyone, I never understood. When I was told that the spy agency continued to tap my telephone at least 10 months after I had left Malaysia, I lost respect for both the intelligence (meaning brain power) and intelligence (spying results) of intelligence agencies.

The performances of the US spy chiefs before Congress this week yielded few surprises, but left many real questions about their intelligence.

General Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency, claimed that his agency's swoop on the telephone calls and e-mails of millions of people was keeping America safe from terrorism. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, defended tapping foreign leaders' telephone calls on the grounds that it helped to know the intentions of foreign leaders.

Spying has always gone on. Moses sent spies into Canaan to "see what the land is like and whether the people living there are strong or weak … do their cities have walls round them or not?" Successful spies have often meant the difference between victory and defeat in war.