Katharine Gun

Katharine Teresa Gun (Template:Nee;<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> born 1974) is a British linguist who worked as a translator for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).<ref name="ipa-teresagun">Template:Cite web</ref> In 2003, she leaked top-secret information to a friend who passed it to The Observer. The information concerned a request from the United States for compromising intelligence on diplomats from member states of the 2003 United Nations Security Council, who were due to vote on a second UN resolution on the prospective 2003 invasion of Iraq.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Early life

Katharine moved to Taiwan in 1977 with her parents, Paul and Jan Harwood. Her father studied Chinese at Durham University and taught at Tunghai University in the city of Taichung, central Taiwan.

After spending her childhood in Taiwan, where she attended Morrison Academy until age 16, she returned to Britain to study for her A-levels at Moira House School, a girls' boarding school in Eastbourne. Her upbringing later led her to describe herself as a "third culture kid".<ref name="GuardMar04">Template:Cite news</ref> In 1993 she began studying Japanese and Chinese at Durham University.<ref name="GuardMar04"/>

She graduated with an upper second-class degree, then took a job as an assistant English teacher with the JET program in Hiroshima, Japan.<ref name="thetimes1">Template:Cite news</ref> She left teaching in 1999, and after some temporary jobs, finding it difficult to find work as a linguist, she applied to GCHQ in 2001 after reading a newspaper advertisement for the organisation.<ref name="thetimes1"/> She was previously unaware of GCHQ, and later said, "I didn't have much idea about what they did...I was going into it pretty much blind. Most people do."<ref name="GuardMar04"/>

She has a younger brother who was teaching in Taiwan.<ref name="telegraph1">Template:Cite news</ref>

Leak

Her regular job at GCHQ in Cheltenham was to translate Mandarin Chinese into English.<ref name="GuardMar04"/> While at work at GCHQ on 31 January 2003, she read an email from Frank Koza, the chief of staff at the "regional targets" division of the American signals intelligence agency, the National Security Agency.<ref name="GuardMar13">Template:Cite news</ref>

Koza's email requested aid in a secret operation to bug the United Nations offices of six nations: Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea and Pakistan. These were the six "swing nations" on the UN Security Council that could determine whether the UN approved the invasion of Iraq.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Outraged by the email, she took a printed copy of it home.<ref name="GuardMar04"/> After contemplating the email over the weekend, she gave it to a friend who was acquainted with journalists.<ref name="GuardMar04"/> In February, she travelled to London to take part in the demonstration against the impending invasion of Iraq.<ref name="GuardMar04"/> She heard no more of the email, and had all but forgotten it until Sunday 2 March, when she saw it reproduced on the front page of The Observer newspaper.<ref name="GuardMar04"/> Less than a week after the Observer story, on Wednesday 5 March, she confessed to her line manager at GCHQ that she had leaked the email, and was arrested. In a BBC interview with Jeremy Paxman, she said that she had not raised the matter with staff counsellors as she "honestly didn't think that would have had any practical effect".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She spent a night in police custody, and eight months later was charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act.<ref name="GuardMar04"/> While waiting to hear whether she would be charged, she embarked on a postgraduate degree course in global ethics at the University of Birmingham.<ref name="GuardMar04"/>

Court case

Template:See also On 13 November 2003, she was charged with an offence under section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1989.<ref name=Beeb1>Template:Cite news</ref> Her case became a cause célèbre among activists, and many people stepped forward to urge the government to drop the case. Among them, from the US, were the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Daniel Ellsberg (the US government official who leaked the Pentagon Papers), and Congressman Dennis Kucinich.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The case came to court on 25 February 2004. Within half an hour, the case was dropped because the prosecution declined to offer evidence.<ref name=Beeb2>Template:Cite news</ref> At the time, the reasons for the Attorney-General to drop the case were unclear. The day before the trial, the defence team had asked the government for any records of legal advice about the lawfulness of the war that it had received during the run-up to the war. A full trial might have exposed any such documents to public scrutiny, as the defence was expected to argue that trying to stop an unlawful war of aggression outweighed her obligations under the Official Secrets Act. She was defended by Alex Bailin KC.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Speculation was rife in the media that the prosecution service had bowed to political pressure to drop the case so that any such documents would remain secret.<ref name=Beeb2/> A government spokesman said that the decision to drop the case was made before the defence's demands were submitted.<ref name=Beeb2/> The Guardian newspaper had reported plans to drop the case the previous week.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> On the day of the court hearing, Gun said, "I'm just baffled in the 21st century [that] we as human beings are still dropping bombs on each other as a means to resolve issues."<ref name=Beeb2/> In May 2019 The Guardian said the case was dropped "when the prosecution realised that evidence would emerge ... that even British government lawyers believed the invasion was unlawful."<ref name=guardian-20190504>Template:Cite news</ref>

The film about Katharine Gun suggests that the case against her was dropped because Gun’s defence team asked for disclosure of the attorney general’s initial legal advice to Tony Blair before the invasion. In September 2019, Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, confirmed the case against her was dropped because a fair trial would not have been possible without the disclosure of information that would compromise national security. <ref>Iraq war whistleblower’s trial ‘was halted due to national security threat’, The Guardian, 1 September 2019 </ref>

Personal life

Gun's husband, Yaşar Gün,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> is a Turkish Kurd.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Template:Asof, Gun lives in Turkey and visits Britain.<ref name="Anadolu">Template:Cite news</ref> After the charges against her were dropped in 2004, she found it difficult to find new employment. Template:Asof, she had been living in Turkey for several years with her husband and their 11-year-old daughter.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=film/>

Later life

Gun received the Sam Adams Award for 2003 and was supported in her case by the UK human rights pressure group Liberty and in the US by the Institute for Public Accuracy. Following the dropping of the case, Liberty commented, "One wonders whether disclosure in this criminal trial might have been a little too embarrassing."<ref name=Beeb2/>

Two years after her trial, Gun wrote an article titled "Iran: Time to Leak",<ref name=TimeToLeak>Template:Cite web</ref> which asked whistleblowers to make public any information about plans for a potential war against Iran. She urged "those in a position to do so to disclose information which relates to this planned aggression; legal advice, meetings between the White House and other intelligence agencies, assessments of Iran's threat level (or better yet, evidence that assessments have been altered), troop deployments and army notifications. Don't let 'the intelligence and the facts be fixed around the policy' this time."<ref name=TimeToLeak/>

In film

In January 2019, the film Official Secrets, recounting Gun's actions in 2003, received its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, with Keira Knightley playing Gun.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Daniel Ellsberg praised the swiftness and importance of Gun taking action, saying it was in some ways more significant than his own whistleblowing on the Vietnam War.<ref name="Ellsberg on Vimeo">Template:Cite AV media</ref> In July 2019, in a lengthy interview on the US program Democracy Now!, Gun, Gavin Hood (the film's writer, director and producer), as well as Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy (the journalists who broke the story of the leaked memo) discussed the events that the film describes.<ref>In 2003, This U.K. Whistleblower Almost Stopped the Iraq Invasion. A New Film Tells Her Story Template:Webarchive 19 July 2019 www.democracynow.org, accessed 14 March 2020</ref><ref>15 Years Later: How U.K. Whistleblower Katharine Gun Risked Everything to Leak a Damning Iraq War Memo Template:Webarchive 19 July 2019 www.democracynow.org, accessed 14 March 2020</ref> Together with journalist Peter Beaumont, Gun advised and consulted over the years it took to make the film and they are "very happy with the result.”<ref name="Anadolu"/><ref name=film>Is Official Secrets Based on a True Story?, TheCinemaholic, Dhruv Trivedi, 27 September 2021. Retrieved 22 May 2023.</ref>

Further reading

• Template:Cite book (additional Template:ISBN Template:ISBN Template:ISBN Template:ISBN)

See also

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• Template:Annotated link, cleared of breaking the Official Secrets Act, resulting in the law being tightened
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• List of whistleblowers (worldwide, all sectors)
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References

• Democracy Now! Interviews:
  • 9 September 2004 (archive) Katharine Gun together with Danish former intelligence officer Frank Grevil
  • 19 July 2019 (Part 1) and (Part 2) on the film Official Secrets and the events it depicts, with Katharine Gun, the film's director Gavin Hood and the Observer journalists who investigated the story, Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy.
• Template:Webarchive
• The leaked memo
• Links to news stories (2003–2006) about Katharine Gun