On January 22, 2021, the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force—giving the world what might be the best path to survival. You can learn more about the TPNW by visiting ICAN—the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons—a coalition of non-governmental organizations promoting implementation of the United Nations nuclear weapon ban treaty. For an example of the approach of one peace organization—Mass Peace Action—to the threat of nuclear disaster and the passing of the TPNW] check out the announcement for this webinar, scheduled for April 24, 2021: Building Political Support for the Nuclear Ban Treaty in Congress and at state and local levels. Zoom event: Saturday, April 24, 2021 10:30 am-12:45 EDT
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.”
Saturday’s rally in Brattle Square Plaza, Cambridge, MA, to end the U.S.-Saudi blockade of Yemen, began just as the morning’s rain ended and pedestrians returned to Harvard Square.
Activists held signs and gave out leaflets urging an end to U.S. support for the Saudi blockade.
As the leaflet noted, “Yemen is a Massachusetts war. Raytheon is headquartered here in Massachusetts. It makes the bombs for Saudi Arabia and it makes the jet engines for the planes that drop the bombs. Let’s do all we can to end this connection between Massachusetts and this terrible humanitarian disaster.”
Further information is available at the Raytheon Antiwar Campaign (617-354-2169), and at info@masspeaceaction.org.
Pegean says: “If you’re concerned about the situation in Yemen, let your national and state legislators know.”
1. Like so many in Congress we can ignore nuclear weapons and hope they go away—some in the new administration want to restart talks—that’s progress
2. The pope condemns war and nuclear weapons every so often but diplomatically hasn’t mentioned anyone by name
3. Political oppositions must rise up in all nuclear nations and press
governments to reduce their numbers—zero’s a nice number.
4. Convince the military to dismantle them—gotta include that one
5. Wave a magic wand
No one knows how effective the new government will be. Obama promised to rid us of nukes and to close Guantanamo—still waiting. The pope has spoken for himself but most bishops are hardliners. Activist efforts continue despite setbacks. The fourth method is an outlier, but it has been tried. Ground Zero’s attempt last year to urge submariners to disobey unlawful orders (viz.,“Fire the missiles”) didn’t dent Trident. So keep waving that wand, Bubba. What do you do if writing your congress-person or upholding honkable banners is not yielding the desired results?
One method I didn’t mention is direct action (civil disobedience/ nonviolent resistance) which was first advocated by Henry David Thoreau against slavery and the war with Mexico. Ghandi employed it for civil rights in South Africa and against colonial rule in India. More recently Martin Luther King, Jr., and others used the same principles effectively in the struggles of the ‘sixties. However, the tactic has a risk not characteristic of the others of financial loss and/or incarceration.
It’s one thing to claim imprisoned heroes like Plowshares7 Jesuit priest Steven Kelly or Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange or soldier and intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden, leaker of National Security Administration surveillance methods; it’s quite another to follow in their footsteps.
In May of 2019, the Ground Zero Center for Non-Violent Action (GZ) emailed me about their proposal to protest at the Bangor-Kitsap Trident Base the weekend of May 11. Activists were invited to perform brief gestures of non-violent civil disobedience. They scheduled a morning of inspirational talks by GZ leaders and a keynote by Kathy Kelly, a well-known war-crime protestor and Afghanistan activist. In the afternoon a lawyer sympathetic to the cause would present legal information and instruction. Replying I’d attend, I ordered an 8’ x 3’ vinyl banner and contacted other Olympians to rideshare that day.
By scheduling the event the day before Mothers’s Day they wished to remind people that holiday had close connections to peace advocacy. Ann Reeves Jarvis of West Virginia used her Mothers Friendship Day in 1868 to reconcile former Union and Confederate soldiers. Two years later the suffragette and abolitionist Julia Ward Howe authored her Mother’s Day Proclamation urging mothers to unite in promoting world peace.
At the entrance of the Trident Base a one-foot-wide blue line, labeled US Government brightly in white, has been painted on each lane of the highway at Trident Boulevard, the Navy property. Knowledge of this line is critical to the nature of the GZ protests.
After lunch GZ’s legal advisor clarified for us that protestors who stand (dance, read poetry, sing peace songs, etc.) blocking highway traffic on the state side of the blue marker who also refuse to disperse when ordered to do so by the highway police will be cited for blocking access on a state highway and must report to a state court as notified to answer the charges. Those protestors who cross the blue line onto the base and stand (dance, read poetry, sing peace songs, etc.), who refuse to return to the state property when ordered by base security (the Marines) will be cited for federal trespass and informed they must report to a federal court. He could not make it plainer the federal violation is regarded as more serious—occasionally much more serious—than the state offense.
We were then asked as to what course we’d choose without judgment as to our sincerity or dedication to the cause: 1. to stand alongside the highway; 2. to violate the state law; or 3. to violate the federal law. Eight stalwarts opted for the state side; I chose the federal side: the rest, about fifty in number (and average age), chose to march, sing, witness, and cheer.
GZ and Navy base security had earlier agreed on the site and timing to avoid dangerous surprises. Banners and signs in hand we proceeded to the base as state police cars gathered on an overpass, and Marines with protective vests and weapons, parked their van near the blue line.
First the eight formed a line in front of the blue demarcator and began with a song, followed by each demonstrator via bullhorn presenting his or her rationale for blocking the road: citing international law, recounting other heroic stands, praying and announcing recent comments of the pope. Finished, they stood in place, and as each was approached by the highway police to move off the road, they refused, and were in turn politely taken by an arm and led off to the berm where individual citations were drafted and delivered.
As the last was led away I stepped forward with my banner held chest high, got to the center of the road, and took two steps behind the blue line. A Navy security officer told me to step back to the state side. I stood still and did not answer. Then he asked if I knew the meaning of the word trespass. I acknowledged I did and was approached by two guards, one who took the banner out of my hands while the other led me behind the van out of sight of the crowd.
They took several photographs (presumably for Navy and NSA records) while a guard asked for my ID and address.
One guard, fearful I might faint, inquired if I preferred to sit on the van floor where the side was open. I did and gladly accepted a paper cup of water besides. Despite our training to remember carefully everything we were asked and said, there was some casual conversation before they returned my banner and took me back across the blue line. My allies cheered my return. The citation told me I would be advised within ninety days of my court date.
