The following delicious item appeared at the bottom of page 4 in the National Edition of The New York Times on Saturday, 3 July 1993. The Iraq Raid: Snoop Gets Scoop Special to The New York Times Washington, July 2 --- An electronic hacker was able to listen in as top aides to Secretary of State Warren Christopher helped him to alert world leaders about the missile strike against Baghdad last Saturday. The conversations were intercepted beginning nearly an hour before the raid was made public. But the first calls were apparently not overheard until after Tomahawk missiles from Navy ships struck the headquarters of the Iraqi intelligence service. The calls, placed from a Government plane as Mr. Christopher returned to Washington from Maine, provided a sense of the hurried efforts made by officials in midair and in Washington to spread news of the attack. At one point, they indicate, a State Department official awakened Chancellor Helmut Kohl of of Germany only to discover that President Clinton had spoken with the German leader earlier in the day. The eavesdropping was first reported in the current issue of Business Week, which obtained a tape recording of the conversations from an electronic hacker who specializes in monitoring unsecured calls. The magazine made available a transcript of the recording. The State Department refused to comment on what is said were private conversations among Mr. Christopher's aides, but a senior official there said the transcript was essentially accurate. None of the calls made by Mr. Christopher himself was recorded, apparently because they were placed through secure channels. Any uncoded call that travels through the airwaves rather than along a wire can be intercepted, and electronic eavesdroppers have become skilled at using scanners to monitor the communications.