 Saturday, January 17, 2004
US stars hail
[British]
Iraq war whistleblower GCHQ
WORKER Katharine Gun faces jail for exposing
American corruption in the run-up to war on
Saddam. Now her celebrity supporters insist it
is Bush and Blair who should be in the dock.
Martin Bright reports SHE was an anonymous junior
official toiling away with 4,500 other
mathematicians, code-breakers and linguists at the
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in
Cheltenham. But now Katharine Gun, an unassuming
29-year-old translator, is set to become a
transatlantic cause celebre as the focus of a
star-studded solidarity drive that brings together
Hollywood actor-director Sean Penn and
senior figures from the US media and civil rights
movement, including the Reverend Jesse
Jackson. Gun appears in court
[in London]
tomorrow accused of breaching the Official Secrets
Act by allegedly leaking details of a secret US
'dirty tricks' operation to spy on UN Security
Council members in the run-up to war in Iraq last
year. If found guilty, she faces two years in
prison. She is an unlikely heroine and those who
have met her say she would have been happy to
remain in the shadows, had she not seen evidence in
black and white that her Government was being asked
to co-operate in an illegal operation. The leak has been described as 'more timely and
potentially more important' than The Pentagon
Papers by Daniel Ellsberg, the celebrated
whistleblower who leaked papers containing
devastating details of the US involvement in
Vietnam, in 1971. Ellsberg has been vocal in
support of Gun. She was arrested last March, days
after The Observer first published evidence
of an intelligence 'surge' on UN delegations,
ordered by the GCHQ's partner organisation, the
National Security Agency. Legal experts believe
that her case is potentially more explosive for
the Government than the Hutton inquiry because
it could allow her defence team to raise
questions about the legality of military
intervention in Iraq. The Attorney General,
Lord Goldsmith, is likely to come under
pressure to disclose the legal advice he gave on
military intervention -- something he has so far
refused to do. At a hearing last November, Gun's legal team
indicated that she would use a defence of
'necessity' to argue that she acted to save the
lives of British soldiers and Iraqi civilians. At the time Gun, who was sacked after her arrest
and whose case is funded by legal aid, said in a
statement: 'Any disclosures that may have been made
were justified on the following grounds: because
they exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on
the part of the US government who attempted to
subvert our own security services; and to prevent
wide-scale death and casualties among ordinary
Iraqi people and UK forces in the course of an
illegal war.' She added: 'I have only ever followed my
conscience.' Sean Penn and Jesse Jackson have already signed
a statement of support for Gun and a broader
campaign will be launched later this year. They are
joined by Ellsberg, who is keen to travel to
Britain soon to meet Gun. Other signatories of the statement, to be
released in the coming weeks, include Linda
Foley, president of the Newspaper Guild, and
Ramona Ripston of the American Civil
Liberties Union, both in their personal
capacities. The statement is a glowing tribute to the
publicity-shy GCHQ mole who has avoided all media
attention since her arrest: 'We honour Katharine Gun as a
whistleblower who bravely risked her career and
her very liberty to inform the public about
illegal spying in support of a war based on
deception. In a democracy, she should not be
made a scapegoat for exposing the transgressions
of others.' The statement also pays tribute to the
transatlantic opposition to the war in Iraq, which
it links to historical campaigns against
oppression. 'There has been much talk in recent
months about the "special relationship" between
the US and British governments, which led the
world to war, but history tells us of another
"special relationship" -- between people of good
will in the United States and Britain who worked
together in opposition to slavery and
colonialism, and most recently against the push
for war on Iraq. It is in the spirit of
friendship between our peoples in defence of
democracy that we sign this statement.' The leaked memorandum - dated 31 January 2003 -
from Frank Koza, chief of staff of the NSA's
Regional Targets section, requested British
intelligence help to discover the voting intentions
of the key 'swing six' nations at the UN. Angola,
Cameroon, Guinea, Chile, Mexico and Pakistan were
under intense pressure to vote for a second
resolution authorising war in Iraq. The disclosure of the 'dirty tricks' memo caused
serious diplomatic difficulties for the countries
involved and in particular the socialist government
in Chile, which demanded an immediate explanation
from Britain and America. The Chilean public is
deeply sensitive to dirty tricks by the American
intelligence services, which are still held
responsible for the 1973 overthrow of the socialist
government of Salvador Allende. In the days
that followed the disclosure, the Chilean
delegation in New York distanced itself from the
draft second resolution, scuppering plans to go
down the UN route. Opposition politicians are already increasing
pressure on Tony Blair to release
Goldsmith's legal advice. Parliamentary answers
last week to Lord Alexander of Weedon QC,
the Tory head of the all-party legal reform group
Justice, show that the Government recognises there
are precedents for disclosure. In 1993, government legal advice in the
arms-to-Iraq affair was disclosed to the Scott
inquiry and advice concerning the 1988 Merchant
Shipping Act was disclosed when Spanish fishermen
argued that it breached EU law. The government
response of Baroness Amos would appear to be
an open invitation to Gun's defence team: 'In both
cases, disclosure was made for the purposes of
judicial proceedings.' But she continued: 'It has been made clear in a number of
parliamentary questions that the Attorney
General's detailed advice would not be disclosed
in view of a long-standing convention, adhered
to by successive governments, that advice of law
officers is not publicly disclosed. The purpose
of the convention is to enable the Government,
like everyone else, to receive full and frank
legal advice in confidence.' A summary of the legal advice published on 17
March last year showed that Goldsmith believed that
UN Resolution 678, which authorised force against
Iraq to eject it from Kuwait in 1990, could be used
to justify the conflict. This position has been
fiercely criticised by most experts in
international law, who argue that 678 applied
specifically to the threat posed to the region by
Saddam in 1990. Alexander has accused
Goldsmith of 'scraping the bottom of the legal
barrel' and described the use of 678 as
'risible'. When the details of the GCHQ disclosure were
published in The Observer on 2 March last
year, there was considerable media speculation that
Goldsmith was set to resign over the issue of his
legal advice over the war. Foreign Office legal
experts were known to be split on the issue. A key figure could prove to be 54-year-old
Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser
to the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, who stepped
down on 21 March. Wilmshurst is said to have left
her post because she would not agree to Goldmith's
legal advice. Since leaving her post she has not spoken about
the crucial discussions in the Foreign Office last
March. Many believe that a second whistleblower
could prove fatal to the Government. © Guardian
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