Dirty tricks?

Atrios at Eschaton is reporting on a memo leaked to The Observer (a British newspaper) that indicates that the US is engaged in significant surveillance efforts to try and learn how to influence the votes of several countries in their quest to gain "approval" for the invasion of Iraq.

There is a copy of the memo here, and I have to admit that I'm not sure from reading the memo that I understand where the Oberver gets its conclusions from.  Also, as someone noted in the comments section at Electrolite on this same article, the memo - as published by The Observer - has many "British" spellings, as opposed to the "American" spellings one would expect from an American official.  Obviously, this is not conclusive proof of anything - the Observer has a good reputation for accuracy, and there are possible explainations for the spelling.  Another commenter at Electrolite noted that British papers routinely change the spellings of American documents to the way the Brits write the words, or the author of the memo may, for whatever reason, make use of British forms of various words, despite being American. (I bring this up because I, myself, have a very odd tendency to British spellings - especially words like honour, favour, colour, etc., and I was born and raised in the states, and I figure I can't be the only American who does that).

MetaFilter discussion here.

The Observer's response to some of the concerns that have been raised can be found here.