The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War

by Marcia Mitchell

  Blair explained a motivation – not the one noted above, but one for public consumption – as being consistent with that of George Bush. ‘I have been increasingly alarmed by the evidence from inside Iraq that despite sanctions, despite the damage done to his capability in the past, despite the UN Security Council Resolutions expressly outlawing it, and despite his denials, Saddam Hussein is continuing to develop WMD, and with them the ability to inflict real damage upon the region, and the stability of the world.’[5]

  In the end, when the WMD argument was found to be flawed, when there was increasing concern that the pre-emptive war had been illegal, when public outrage was beginning to swell, both Bush and Blair told the world that the war against Iraq was justified, weapons or no, because Saddam was a bad man. More than that, he was a monstrously bad man who had inflicted untold horror on segments of his own country. The argument was failing to grow sufficient legs, for more than one monstrous despot had murdered and was murdering segments of the population. The new motivation sounded disturbingly and primarily like regime change.

  On occasion, the media have referred collectively to three women characters in the Gun drama: Katharine, Clare Short, and Elizabeth Wilmshurst. Together, they have been represented as being of a single mind about the war, with each taking a very public and determined stand. In the process, Short and Wilmshurst appear to have been kind to and supportive of Katharine; she is deeply grateful and has great respect for both women.

  Clare Short’s revelations about misdeeds in the British secret service were to Tony Blair, and even to some members of her own Labour Party, an act of betrayal; yet she has fans who admire and respect her gutsy stand. ‘People may turn away from me in Parliament,’ she says, ‘but outside, on the street, they come up to me and thank me.’ Short spoke out about spying on Kofi Annan because she believed what was happening was morally wrong and, finally, had to be acknowledged.

  Political opponents find it easy to argue against Short, considering her an outspoken, flamboyant woman whose liberal-soggy brain is as sharp as a jar of crumbling British biscuits. To tattle on the British secret service was criminal, and some still insist she should have been prosecuted for violation of the Official Secrets Act. As for her resignation from Blair’s cabinet, some still question her motivation; yet she has made it abundantly clear that her decision to leave was firm from the beginning. She left, although belatedly, because she believed the pre-emptive attack on Iraq was a violation of international law, which lays out the rules for war.

  ‘The cause has to be just,’ she says. ‘Any use of force has to be proportionate. Most important, it must be the last resort.’

  Short’s explanation for her action makes sense. Iraq was a problem that could not be ignored; however, it was a problem that could be solved in a way far more constructive than going to war. She had solid, specific recommendations that at least deserved a fair try. But in the hurricane-force winds blowing toward war, her voice was lost. She took a stand to make a life-and-death point.

  The motives of Clare Short and Katharine Gun have been challenged, but not those of Wilmshurst. It has been far too difficult a task to find an ulterior motive for the former Foreign Office deputy legal adviser who had nothing to gain and everything to lose by taking a risky public stand against her prime minister and attorney general.

  Wilmshurst’s motivation was made clear in her letter of resignation of 18 March 2003, which was censored, leaked, and released in full in 2005. An offending paragraph had been withheld, said the government, ‘in the public interest’. Shadow Foreign Secretary Sir Menzies Campbell had a different view. ‘The government didn’t withhold it in the public interest, it withheld it in the government’s interest.’

  In her letter, Elizabeth Wilmshurst wrote, ‘I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution to revive the authorisation given in SCR 678. I do not need to set out my reasoning; you are aware of it.’

  What follows is the key paragraph withheld by Blair and company:

  ‘My views accord with the advice that has been given consistently in this Office before and after the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 and with what the attorney general gave us to understand was his view prior to his letter of 7 March.’

  And then, in parentheses, what troubled the legal expert most of all: ‘(The view expressed in that letter has of course changed again into what is now the official line.)’

  In confirming that Lord Goldsmith had, indeed, changed his opinion about the legality of going to war, Wilmshurst was confirming her own integrity. She would not go along with ‘the official line’, would not violate the moral ethic that had guided her professional life. Wilmshurst, throughout her career, was committed to compliance with the law and thus with clearly defined international codes binding both Britain and America.

  Finally, it is helpful, especially for Americans, to consider the action of the late Robin Cook, the prestigious leader of the House of Commons, who resigned that post in the midst of heated debate over the Koza leak and the failure to secure a second UNSC resolution for war. Pre-emptive war, he knew, would be fully under way within days. Cook, intelligent, loyal, could not in clear conscience support a war without true international agreement and without domestic approval. And the absence of both was painfully obvious to the veteran British politician.

  Cook’s statement that history would be ‘astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition’ evidenced his deep concern for governance gone profoundly wrong. He was willing and determined to give up a brilliant career rather than be led by diplomatic miscalculations of such monumental significance.

  During his four years as foreign secretary, from 1997 to 2001, Cook was in part responsible for the Western strategy of containment, a strategy that had crippled Saddam’s ability to make war. ‘Iraq’s military strength is now less than half its size at the time of the last Gulf war,’ he said as he resigned on 17 March 2003. This was hardly a regime in the position of threatening Britain and the United States or even its neighbours. Unable to convince Blair of this fact, Cook had to leave his post. It was the decent and honourable thing to do.

  What may make Cook’s comments upon resigning that day of particular interest to Americans is this observation, part of his farewell speech: ‘What has come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops.’

  In the end, the powerful leader of the House of Commons broke ranks with his prime minister – a necessity based on principle and conscience. Katharine Gun’s defence was based on the concept of necessity. It was necessary for her to act according to her conscience, necessary to try to save British lives. An unanticipated outcome was that others in the intelligence/government community followed her lead, and a dam of secrecy crumbled as more and more deceit and outright lies were exposed to a dismayed public by ‘leakers’, whistle-blowers dealing with conscience and necessity.

  Considering motivations, the heroes and the villains are not easy to identify in this drama. A worldwide and highly critical audience must sift through the evidence, examining the motives behind actions planned in laid-back Downing Street offices – where, it is said, a barefoot Tony Blair held meetings of import – and strategies discussed in Crawford, Texas, in the cab of a dusty pickup truck, with a blue-jeaned driver and a foreign head of state in the passenger seat.

  CHAPTER 18: Whistle-Blowing: Conscience and Confrontation

  What has to be understood is that most whistle-blowers are not natural activists – this one certainly wasn’t. We usually work in anonymous jobs, far from the spotlight. We are not campaigners or journalists or wannabe celebrities craving a platform. Our conscience tells us we must reveal what we know. We do that, we blow the whistle, and overnight the whole media circus descends on us. Y
ou just don’t know what to do … that’s why we stick together.[1]

  – Katharine Gun

  SPEAK OUT, KATHARINE Gun invited government workers. Speak out when you have information about illegal government activity. Coinciding with the third anniversary of her arrest, published in the British press but directed to Americans as well, her invitation pointed to ominous similarities between Iran nuclear-threat rhetoric and the rhetoric that preceded the pre-emptive strike against Iraq. It all sounds too much like military inevitability. What are the facts, she wanted to know, and what, instead, is politically driven hype spun by the same sources who fictionalized the WMD story? Where does the truth lie, and who will tell it?

  Katharine admits, ‘The fact that Iran thinks its answer to generating power lies in nuclear energy is worrying.’ But she finds the cause of worry not in the possibility of weaponization, which can be monitored, but rather in the critical problem of maintaining safety. ‘We should be encouraging Iran to seek safer alternatives, just as our environmentalists lobby governments to seek safe, renewable sources of energy.’

  In addressing government workers, Katharine said, ‘follow me’.

  One must ask – follow her where? To a promising career forever destroyed? To the possibility of years behind prison bars? To a life where earning a modest living is an unrelenting struggle, to where even decent, honourable people think she should have been executed? There are still some who feel this way, including the wife of a distinguished British diplomat who told the authors more than three years after the case against Katharine collapsed, ‘They should shoot her.’ This, from an intelligent, well-educated, thoughtful, and seemingly caring person.

  Despite angry comments from her detractors, Katharine continues to urge those ‘in a position to do so’ to disclose misleading or false information from government sources. For example: ‘Don’t let intelligence be fixed around policy ever again.’ Expose the prevaricators. And do it now, not later.

  The issue of immediacy is one that whistle-blower icon Daniel Ellsberg stressed when praising Katharine Gun for revealing the NSA spy plot within days of learning of it. Ellsberg delayed in leaking the Pentagon Papers until 1971 – a mistake, he says, and one he sorely regrets. American lives could have been saved in Vietnam if only he had gone to the media a year earlier.

  ‘Like so many others, I put personal loyalty to the president above all else – above loyalty to the Constitution and above obligation to the law, to truth, to Americans, and to humankind. I was wrong.’[2]

  Ellsberg believes that Katharine’s revelation was critical in denying the attack an acceptable legitimacy. To Ellsberg, Katharine is the ultimate model for whistle-blowers: conscience-driven with a keen sense of timing.

  Katharine, much in the way Ellsberg does, talks about the crushing ramifications of egregious government deception, and what could have been – a war averted, lives saved, respect for international accords, confidence in the integrity of government.

  In the centre of the spin, in the eye of the rhetorical vortex, was the Big Lie. ‘It’s been more than four years now, with the knowledge that there were no WMD in Iraq, that the intent was regime change all along, that because of the lie, lives were destroyed and hundreds of thousands have suffered untold misery.’ Do we think, she asks, that those who set out to invade Iraq on false charges are ‘too bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan’ to take similar action against Iran? Or, perhaps, somewhere else in the Middle East?

  In December 2007, an unnamed individual (who may or may not have been aware of Katharine’s appeal to potential whistle-blowers) revealed that her former agency, GCHQ, had been involved in espionage operations against Iran. Not only that, GCHQ had, of course, been sharing that intelligence with the United States. In Washington, ‘speaking on the condition of anonymity’, a source leaked the news that British intelligence gatherers were so occupied. No doubt, data collected were invaluable in developing the US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear programme.[3]

  It can be assumed that the wires continue to hum productively on Menwith Hill and at the NSA in Maryland. Togetherness in the world of the listeners.

  Katharine was first approached to speak out against war shortly after the case against her collapsed and while she was still very much in the news. The invitation came from the UK Stop the War Coalition, an organization that frequently holds rallies in Central London locations like Trafalgar or Parliament Square, often drawing huge crowds. Katharine declined.

  ‘At the time, the thought of speaking out in front of hundreds or even thousands of people scared me.’ There was an even more important reason for declining. ‘I also didn’t want to draw additional attention to myself, as Yasar’s immigration status had not yet been settled. Our main focus at that time was to try and find a solution to allow him to remain in the United Kingdom with me.’

  Katharine’s reluctance to make public appearances lessened as time went on, although being in the political limelight was not easy. It was not simply a matter of shyness. Katharine believed the secret service remained quite interested in what she did and said.

  ‘I was terribly nervous when I talked about what had happened. My heart raced, my hands shook, and I felt as though I were reliving that frightening period of time. It’s only in the last year or so that those feelings have subsided, only now that I’m more confident about speaking in public,’ she said in late 2007. There has been no official negative reaction to her appearances thus far. But she does not delude herself. It could come at any time.

  Anyone watching Katharine on television or listening to a radio interview would never suspect that she had ever felt insecure or frightened. She is articulate, poised, seemingly confident. There is no hesitancy, no struggle for words, as she discusses war and peace, global ethics, international accords. She is, as some have said, ‘a great interview’.

  ‘I was, and still am, torn about what I should now do, about what more I can do,’ she admits. ‘My close friend once said that many people try to speak out, but no one listens because that person has no platform. She said I have a platform and I should use it. But, looking back, it didn’t come naturally to me, and I decided to be selective about what I said and when I said it.’ There are times, she notes, when it is absolutely essential to take a stand.

  Katharine says, ‘Truth telling and whistle-blowing are crucial after a war as ill-advised as Iraq.’ If the truth had been known by the public earlier, perhaps Saddam Hussein could have been disposed of through other means, potentially effective strategies ignored by two governments secretly set on war. The truth did indeed come late, long after that first leak of Katharine’s, when others in government and the intelligence community followed her lead, including bold, outspoken Clare Short. Still, learning the truth even now allows ‘piecing together the facts’, a piecing together that, if the world is ready to learn, may well avoid further chaos and destabilization in the Middle East.

  At every opportunity, Katharine continues to press for truth telling, both in the United States and abroad. Is she encouraging others to break the law? Yes, indeed, would answer the ‘let’s shoot her’ proponents; absolutely not, would answer the whistle-blowers.

  The potentially deadly international implication of manipulation and falsification of intelligence is only one reason for speaking out on both sides of the Atlantic. Without someone’s telling the truth, Americans would not be aware of shocking dirty secrets that have so dishonoured their country since 9/11 – the clandestine ‘terrorist flights’ to foreign countries for the purpose of torture, the brutal and humiliating treatment of prisoners and detainees in US care abroad, the disgraceful and absolute disregard for the Geneva Conventions. British citizens would not have learned about Tony Blair’s blatant deception concerning Lord Goldsmith’s opinion on the war’s legality, the real substance of the prime minister’s pre-war meetings with George W. Bush, or the misleading and false statements in the infamous 2002 Iraq dossier. They would never have known of
the attack on truth that, like a disease, plagued the days before the war.

  It seems appropriate that the word whistle-blower originated in the country where Katharine was born, used in reference to uniformed bobbies whose whistles signalled discovery of a criminal act. Wherever used, the word conveys a very distinctive meaning clearly understood by everyone who has revealed secret information – trouble. Trouble for the person with the whistle and trouble for the reason it’s blown. It means pain, sometimes agonizing and, almost always, of lengthy duration. To blow the whistle on a perceived wrong is an act of courage or foolishness or a bit of both. Not everyone gets caught, but everyone is fearful.

  Those who reveal illegal or embarrassing government secrets pay, as Katharine did, a high price for their acts of conscience. Like her, they pay in the currency of lives interrupted and careers destroyed, of being called traitors at worst and unpatriotic at best. Whistle-blowers have to be tough and determined, knowing full well the measure of the opponents and the height of the deck stacked against them. There are wounds that do not heal, even when someone wins, as did prestigious social scientist Dr Marsha Coleman-Adebayo. Settlement of her case against the US Environmental Protection Agency included a $600,000 award from the government.[4] But win or lose, whistle-blowing is no game for sissies. All of which make some of the most improbable of this category the most courageous.

  ‘There is something about Katharine Gun that makes her seem an unlikely candidate for whistle-blowing,’ observed BBC political staffer Ben Davies.[5] And yet, Davies continues, ‘this rather shy thirty-year-old’ had leaked details of the NSA spy operation against members of the UN Security Council. Davies’s first impression of Katharine was on target. Meeting her is an unsettling experience; she is hardly what one expects. There is a poignancy, a legitimacy, a sweetness about her that is inescapable. One expects toughness, an obvious fighting spirit, even a bold recklessness. Perhaps conscience, in her case, works quietly and doesn’t neon-light itself in this petite, courteous young woman.