The spy who tried to stop a war: Katherine Gun’s Courage of Conscience

A KC-135 Stratotanker prepares to refuel a B-2 Spirit bomber during in the “Shock and Awe” campaign of “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image or file is in the public domain in the United States.

by Stefan Schindler

Katherine Gun was 27 in January 2003, working in England as a translator and intelligence analyst for the British secret service.  At that time, the American and British governments were beating the drums for war against Iraq.

Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, but President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, echoed and amplified in the British and American mainstream news-media, claimed Iraq did have such weapons.  They argued that a preemptive attack on Iraq was therefore justified.  Bush and Blair sought United Nations approval for the war, knowing that such approval would give the war a veneer of legitimacy.

Risking prison and the ruination of her life, marriage, and career, Katherine Gun released a classified memo to the press.  The memo was from America’s National Security Agency (the NSA).  The memo was to GCHQ (Government Communication Headquarters, the British equivalent to the NSA), where Ms.. Gun worked in one of its specialized branches.

The classified memo asked England’s secret service to spy on U.N. Security Council diplomats, and to pass their findings to the National Security Agency.  That information could then be used by the Bush Administration to bribe and blackmail targeted U.N. diplomats to vote in favor of the war.

Knowing that she was breaching England’s Official Secrets Act, and thereby committing what the law calls “treason,” Ms. Gun hoped that publication of the secret memo in Britain’s press would force a public reexamination of the war’s legitimacy, and, ideally, prevent the insane loss of life and tragic suffering that war would surely entail.

Ms. Gun was well aware of the Anglo-American push for war against Iraq.  It was the major news of the day.  However, to Ms. Gun, it didn’t sound right – it didn’t feel right – as Iraq had long been enduring international sanctions and Anglo-American surveillance.  The claim that Iraq had WMDs didn’t make sense.  To check the validity of her intuition, Ms Gun informed herself further by reading books on Iraq’s recent history and its tensions with the West.

Thus, already suspicious of the Bush-Blair trajectory toward another act of international violence, Ms. Gun viewed the memo as confirming illegal activities in support of an illegal war.

She felt an instantaneous revulsion at the moral hypocrisy of so-called statesmen; she saw the memo’s explosive potential; and she felt an obligation to the British people to show them that they were being lied to and manipulated.

Throughout February, 2003, Gun’s memo did not appear in the press; then, in early March, it did appear, two weeks prior to the American start of the bombing of Iraq which President Bush called “shock and awe.”

Publication of the memo caused an international sensation.  GCHQ began an immediate hunt for the whistleblower.  Ms. Gun at first denied that she was the leak.  The following day, not wanting her colleagues to suffer suspicion and humiliation, she confessed.

Arrested and interrogated, Ms. Gun was asked if she worked for the British government.  She said no, governments come and go; she works for the British people; she “does not gather intelligence so the government can lie to the British people.”

Out on bail, it was eight months before Katherine Gun was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act.  Her defense team prepared a “defense of necessity” case on her behalf.

“Defense of necessity” means that a person has legitimately violated the law in order to prevent harm or loss of life.  (For example, breaking the speed limit in order to get a grievously wounded person to a hospital.)

In preparing a “defense of necessity” case, Gun’s legal team was putting the war itself on trial.  The prosecution would be forced to reveal the various Anglo-American “dirty tricks” designed to drum up support for the war.

On the first day of the trial, the prosecution dropped all charges, and Katherine Gun was a free woman.

Release of the memo did not stop the war, but it did cause the U.N. Security Council to deny approval for the war, depriving Bush and Blair of the U.N. blessing they were hoping for.

The Katherine Gun story was barely covered in America’s news media, yet it parallels in highly relevant and fascinating ways Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in early 1971, Ellsberg risking prison to try to halt the ongoing slaughter in America’s Indochina holocaust (euphemistically called The Vietnam War).

To learn more about Katherine Gun’s odyssey, I recommend the 2008 book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War, by Marcia Mitchell and Thomas Mitchell.  I also recommend the film based on that book.  Called Official Secrets and released in 2019, the film stars Keira Knightley.

On youtube, I recommend Amy Goodman’s interviews with Gun at “Democracy Now;” also on youtube, the “True Spies” podcast, Episode 14, “The Spy Who Said No.”

Katherine Gun has recently been nominated for The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award.  In an interview for Vanity Fair (August 30, 2019), she offers this reflection as the fruit of her experience:

“In any walk of life, you can choose to do the right thing.  At the end of the day, we are accountable to our conscience.  We should think about that and remember that.”

FROM DARKNESS AT NOON TO THE GLOW OF HOPE, Part 1

  • A Female demonstrator offers a flower to military police on guard at the Pentagon during an anti-Vietnam demonstration. Arlington, Virginia, USA. Oct 21, 1967. In the public domain. Author: S.Sgt. Albert R. Simpson.

The Tragic Triumph of the Reagan Counter-Revolution

Against The Spirit of the Sixties, Now Counterbalanced by

the Rekindling of Candles in the Wind

by Stefan Schindler

The 1960s were a time of hope in America and the world. A time of questioning and protest. A renaissance of The Renaissance. The blossoming of a counter-culture committed to peace, freedom, and creative expression.

The Spirit of The Sixties carried over into the 1970s. America and the world saw the continuation and growth of the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the environmental movement; and, of course, the feminist protest against sexism, perhaps best captured in the bumper sticker: “Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition.”

Alas, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated, as were the leaders of the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement.

Richard Nixon was elected president twice; then Gerald Ford pardoned him for crimes against humanity.

Jimmy Carter was convinced by his national security adviser to start a covert war against the newly elected social democratic government of Afghanistan, which led to a Russian counter-intervention, which led to America’s creating, funding, and arming of Al Qaeda.

The liberal wing of the Democratic Party saw citizen activism as a “crisis of democracy.” Ronald Reagan applauded American-financed terrorists as “freedom fighters,” and launched the Bush-whacking of FDR’s socialist inspired “New Deal” for the American people.

Bush The First continued Reagan’s attack on America’s middle class and poor, as well as continuing Reagan’s wars abroad, saying, after America shot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 civilians, including 66 children: “I will never apologize for America, I don’t care what the facts are.”

Newt Gingrich, in one of history’s greatest ironies, was elected Speaker of the House, successfully championing lies, insults, and divisive sophistry as the road to power during the failed presidency of Bill Clinton, whose Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, said that half a million dead Iraqi children from American bombings and sanctions was “a small price to pay” for freedom, although Iraq was in fact no threat to America’s national security, and Saddam Hussein had long been Ronald Reagan’s favorite dictator.

The Cheney-Bush administration lie-launched America’s Second Vietnam War, this time in the Middle East, convincing Congress to pass the least patriotic legislation in American history, called “The USA Patriot Acts.”

Obama wasted eight years compromising, betraying his base, and succumbing to a cowardice of conscience that made possible the tragic triumph of a new Trumpeting of racism, sexism, militarism, economic apartheid, and fanatical pseudo-patriotism.

Recalling Jeremiah’s warning that “Ye shall reap the whirlwind,” I’m reminded of another bumper sticker: “God is coming; and, boy, is She mad.”

 

The US government: Guilty of torture, as charged

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Abu Ghraib, Oct. 20, 2003. Nude detainee handcuffed to bed with pair of panties draped over his face. In the public domain.

Today’s post is an excerpt from an interview with guest author Dr. Anthony Marsella back in 2008. What the US administration has been doing and attempting to justify in its “war on terror” is terrifying; it is also torture, as the recently released report on torture from the U.S. Senate corroborates.

“The issue of torture is important for our very nation. What is at stake is our moral authority in the world. The US Administration has simply used the notion that torture is an essential tool for our national defense. In fact, [George Bush] has had the audacity to say that the use of torture may be necessary to protect America.

This kind of rabid nationalism, this fear of non-existent provocation is consistent with many political leaders throughout history who sought to control and dominate people by creating fear and anxiety, so that they would increasingly rely upon their national leader for protection. This is an old trick used by dictators.

Unfortunately the media has failed to respond and the American public has been taken in by all this propaganda, so resistance has not been as widespread as we would like it to be. It would be wonderful if throughout the US all organisations as well as people would simply say to the government: what are you doing? Stop it! It is against the law! You are destroying our national character and integrity….

On the one hand Bush said: “We refuse to be part of this. America does not torture” and on the other hand we know what happened in Abu Ghraib, in Guantanamo, in Kandahar and in rendition. We also know that the Pentagon has decided to eliminate some of the Geneva Convention restrictions on Torture from its army training manual and the highest members of the US administration have had meetings in which they have authorised and actually orchestrated torture activities.

This duplicity, along with the very act of permitting torture itself, has a heavy cost on America because in the eyes of the world we have lost our moral authority. We have lost whatever role and stature we had. We are no longer the voice for democracy, freedom and justice.”

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., is Emeritus Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii. The complete interview can be found at http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/6158459/1031475337/name/Marsella%20-%20The%20Moral%20Cost%20of%20Torture%2Edoc

Labor Day 2012 P.S.

Who hates organized labor, liberated women, and peace?

The war profiteers. The radical right. The power elite within the 1% who seek wealth over human rights, power over fairness, and profitable wars over global peace.

But they are in the minority. Even though they have frightened millions and lured millions into supporting the agendas that hide their greed, they are in the minority.

The majority of Americans:

  • overwhelming support equal rights for women and believe more needs to be done to ensure those rights
  • support the right of workers to organize (e.g., participate in labor unions)
  • support an international order based on international law, which, they believe, imposes constraints on the use of force and coercion
  • prefer negotiation and nonviolence to armed conflict[1]

This majority is not the “silent majority” enshrined by Ronald Reagan, but nevertheless is too often silent in these frightening times.

Don’t believe the hype of the radical right. Don’t buy into claims that big corporations making millions in profits are forced to “outsource” their work because organized labor in America makes “unreasonable demands.”

Don’t be lulled into ignoring the attacks on women’s rights, including voting rights, taking place in this country today. (See, for example).

Finally, ask yourself whether cutting social services, educational programs, and unemployment entitlements for the working class—and increasingly the middle class—while retaining George Bush’s revolutionary tax benefits for the wealthy makes your life better or makes America more secure.

The Occupy Movement of 2011 raised the right questions and offered some provocative solutions. Let’s not allow their demands to get lost in the shuffles of the 1% power elite.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

[1] See http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/ for more detailed results of relevant polls; also informative are http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/07/01/gender-equality/ and http://www.gallup.com/poll/157025/labor-union-approval-steady.aspx .