The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War

by Marcia Mitchell

  What is frankly astonishing is that so many other whistle-blowers also seem to be ‘unlikely’ candidates, high-level, distinguished government workers or seemingly unremarkable, ‘ordinary’ people. A diverse group of individuals sharing a common experience, they are a global ethic in human form. This coming together of the like-minded has resulted in initiatives to encourage and support whistle-blowers through the establishment of dozens of truth-telling alliances – like the informal group Katharine helped bring together – and organizing high-profile meetings, some focusing on government and some on the private sector.

  In May 2007 forty public interest organizations participated in the Whistleblower Week in Washington, its purpose to highlight contributions of whistle-blowers and to garner congressional support for restoring and strengthening legislation protecting federal whistle-blowers.[6]

  At one of the first events that week, author Marcia Mitchell was asked to testify on the Katharine Gun/NSA/GCHQ case and appeared before a distinguished Capitol Hill panel. Hers was the only testimony relating to involvement of a foreign government in a domestic operation. Katharine, whose job in England kept her from being present, was there in spirit. The part-time teacher of Chinese cannot afford to miss work.

  The list of sponsors and organizers of the historic Whistleblower Week in Washington evidences a broad base of support. They include the National Whistleblower Centre, the National Treasury Employees Union, the No Fear Coalition, the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Project on Government Oversight, the Government Accountability Project, Whistle-blowers USA, Common Cause, the US Bill of Rights Foundation, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and a great many others. It was an amazing and diverse coalition.

  There is no question that momentum for organizing has been building over the years since the Iraq War was launched. In September 2004 Katharine was invited to attend an American University symposium in Washington, DC, ‘When Silence Is Complicity’, the first-ever gathering of high-level national security whistle-blowers. Here Katharine spoke before a packed auditorium of faculty and students. And it was here that British Katharine and Americans Daniel Ellsberg and prestigious former CIA intelligence analyst Ray McGovern joined in the informal truth-telling alliance, here in the US capital that she met so many others like herself.

  ‘This was the first time I’d met Sibel Edmonds, Coleen Rowley, and others who had spoken out before and after the war on Iraq,’ Katharine says. ‘I felt at home and part of a supportive network with these wonderful people.’

  Edmonds was fired by the FBI and Rowley was allowed to retire from the Bureau after both leaked information concerning the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They are seen as heroes throughout the whistle-blower community. All three women – Gun, Edmonds, and Rowley – have been recognized by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, a group of mainly former CIA colleagues promoting truth telling.[7] The organization honours devotion to truth, ‘no matter the consequences’. The annual Sam Adams award went to Rowley in 2002, Gun in 2003, and Edmonds in 2004.

  Also participating in the American University symposium was Maj. Frank Grevil, a Danish intelligence officer arrested for leaking pre-war classified documents reporting that no weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq. Parallels were drawn between Gun and Grevil. Both intelligence officers, just weeks before the war was launched, provided the media with critical secret information potent enough to raise public ire and create political upheaval.[8]

  Katharine had met Grevil earlier, during an anti-war conference in Denmark. It was her first public appearance of this nature, a hearing on the Iraq War convened at Christianborg, on 15 April 2004 – not quite two months after the case against her had collapsed.

  ‘One reason for putting together our informal coalition was to help people like us, like Frank and Coleen and Sibel, hold their lives together when the going gets tough and, honestly, it does,’ Katharine says. ‘And Sibel, probably more than most, knows just how tough it can get.’

  Edmonds lives with court decisions and media restrictions that are extraordinary – ‘Kafkaesque’, she says. Not only were all records associated with her case retroactively reclassified as secret, but also every government document bearing Edmonds’s name or birth date – like her driver’s licence and passport.

  The government has been kinder and gentler with Rowley. Rowley claimed the agency bungled a chance to thwart the 9/11 attacks by blocking Minneapolis agents from searching the possessions of jailed terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui. In Rowley’s case, then FBI director Robert Mueller promised there would be no retaliation and granted her permission to publish articles about civil liberties, ethics, and integrity. Intelligence guru McGovern credits Rowley with a monumental achievement. ‘If it weren’t for Coleen Rowley, there would have been no 9/11 commission … The whole thing would have been covered up.’[9]

  Coming at this time was the Truth-Telling Project, an effort to encourage whistle-blowing by government workers, a project Katharine applauded.

  Daniel Ellsberg explained it this way: ‘The project urges current and recently retired government officials to reveal the truth to Congress and the public about governmental wrongdoing, lies and cover-up. It aims to change the norms and practices that sustain the cult of secrecy and to de-legitimize silence that costs lives.’[10]

  In a letter seeking ‘Patriotic Whistleblowers’, the project wrote, ‘Thanks to our First Amendment, there is in America no broad Official Secrets Act [as in the more restrictive United Kingdom], nor even a statutory basis for the classification system’ – which should be encouraging to those considering going public with insider information (but could hardly be reassuring to Sibel Edmonds).

  There are only three types of information whose disclosure is expressly criminalized by the US Congress, explains the letter: communications intelligence, nuclear data, and the identity of US intelligence operatives. This last, of course, is what got Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby into trouble. The first, had she been a US citizen, would have done the same for Gun.

  The project called for specific documents that deserved disclosure, including several concerning ‘prisoners from the war on terrorism’, reports on inquiries into intelligence activities before and after 9/11, redacted segments of various other government reports, and predictions and analyses focusing on the post-war occupation and restoration of civil government in Iraq.

  Well understanding a reluctance to respond to its call, the project cautions that doing so can entail danger and the inevitable high cost. But a ‘continued silence brings an even more terrible cost’.

  It was a ‘continued silence’ that Katharine Gun’s conscience rejected.

  It would seem that fired senior intelligence analyst Mary McCarthy was the ideal respondent to whistle-blowing pleas from both Ellsberg and, later, Gun. McCarthy was sent packing in 2006 for leaking information to the media on the CIA’s prisons abroad, precisely one of the disclosures called for in the project’s appeal. It appears that McCarthy was one of the sources Washington Post reporter Dana Priest used in researching the secret prison story that won the journalist a Pulitzer as well as outrage about her lack of patriotism.

  An ‘unnamed former senior intelligence official’ said most CIA officers would agree that McCarthy should be among the missing at the agency. After all, he said, ‘the ethic of the business is not to leak’.[11]

  McCarthy’s detractors say she should have stayed within official channels rather than going to the media. ‘This is what they’ve said about me,’ Katharine says, noting the similarity between her leak and McCarthy’s. ‘But my complaint would have been lost in bureaucratic red tape. Nothing would have happened if I’d worked within the system.’

  Katharine worries about the fate of whistle-blowers and leakers. She has said that, although she was arrested and charged with high crime, she paid far less for telling the truth than did UK weapons expert Dr David Kelly, whose death still
troubles her. Kelly died following the Blair government’s naming him as the source of information regarding ‘sexing up’ pre-war Iraq intelligence.

  Controversy over Kelly’s death – suicide or murder – led to an investigation chaired by British Law Lord Hutton. Hutton concluded that Kelly was a suicide, who ‘probably killed himself because of extreme loss of self-esteem’. Chalk up one dead whistle-blower, killed by deception, vindicated long after the truth was leaked about sexing up WMD intelligence.

  ‘I fared far better than he did,’ Katharine says.

  Because of Katharine Gun’s criminal act two weeks prior to the strike against Iraq and the acts of those who followed her lead – sometimes, like Kelly, at great cost – a saddened public has learned about the insidious and clandestine use of deception and nuance as tools for political purpose. This has been particularly true when the purpose is to ratchet up fear and to gain support for controversial and perhaps illegal measures taken in the name of national security.

  A fearful populace can be kept silent and acquiescent by the spectre of evil terrorists ready to strike the United States once again. This is not to say that the threat does not exist, but rather that, because of it, exaggerated fear and irrational response can be manipulated at will.

  Just like in the Cold War, when the feared bogeyman was a Communist said to be lurking in every corner of government, in neighbours’ homes, and on university campuses across the country.

  CHAPTER 19: A Life Interrupted

  Thanksgiving is just around the corner. I’ve been trying to find more work besides teaching, but without success. I’m trying to remain positive – poor hubby gets hurt when I’m miserable and worried, but it’s very hard to see any improvement in our situation.

  – Katharine Gun, 2007

  KATHARINE’S LEGAL BATTLE ended on 25 February 2004, but not that of her husband. Deportation had threatened Yasar Gun twice. His visa had been extended more than once but would not be again. His request for political asylum was denied. Further, he would not be allowed to apply for residence while on United Kingdom soil, even as the husband of a citizen; instead, he would be deported.

  One option existed – Yasar could leave the United Kingdom and apply for residency from another country. This would not immediately ensure permanent status but would be a step in the right direction. The problem: time was very much of the essence. Visions of Yasar being picked up by law officers and put on a plane were vivid. This time, the plane might leave with him on board, with no last-minute rescue as before.

  The Guns decided that whatever they would do, they would do it together. If they travelled abroad to apply for Yasar’s residency and he was denied re-entry, Katharine would remain with him and not return as well. But if they went abroad and were allowed to re-enter, all would be well. Otherwise, the United Kingdom would see the last of both of them.

  One wonders if this prospect might have been extremely appealing in certain government circles.

  Messages to the authors during this period revealed that Katharine and Yasar were desperately concerned about leaving the country with no guarantee of a return visa. But time was running out, and, with no other choice and with great trepidation, they hurriedly left home.

  For a few days, there were no messages until, with great relief, Katharine wrote, ‘All is well!’ Legal requirements for Yasar’s UK residency application had been met; it would be safe for him to return to England in a few days, his wife at his side. The couple, for the first time since the infamous NSA message was sent, felt what had been an emotionally crippling tension slip away, replaced – at least for a time – by a soaring, absolute joy. They had a carefree holiday, a honeymoon, a celebration. They even dared to hope for a ‘happily ever after’ ending to their story.

  In many ways, it has eluded them.

  Returning home, the Guns faced problems like those confronting most young couples, except that theirs were exacerbated by all that had happened since Katharine’s arrest. The construct of a typical life had not been theirs, except for those few months before Katharine’s arrest, when Yasar’s work was less difficult and Katharine had a secure, well-paying job. Before the media discovered Katharine Gun.

  Inevitably, as time went on, the debilitating pressure of their personal past lessened but did not cease. It is likely it never will, at least not until fallout from the Iraq War and rumblings about further conflicts in the region disappear from the international landscape – an unlikely possibility in anything like the foreseeable future.

  But for now, the Guns were in a quieter space, looking around them, wondering where to begin building a normal life.

  They began with the ordinary.

  Yasar’s job had become increasingly pressure-filled. He was working long, difficult hours just to provide the barest essentials in a country where the cost of living is extremely high. The new house, purchased with help from the Harwoods, needed furnishings, and the Metro was not in good mechanical condition. Katharine began searching for work.

  A series of jobs, not one of which fitted Katharine’s rather unique professional background, seemed at first to provide a solution to growing financial problems. But never for long. The jobs were temporary, nothing permanent, nothing offering a future, contracts that helped for a time. When applying for a more appropriate permanent position, she often found that she was considered ‘overqualified’.

  Katharine told the authors, ‘I am still spending most of my time at home either online or being a housewife. It is very leisurely, but I know it is not helping my state of mind and confidence levels.’ It did not help financially.

  What did help, at least in terms of spirit, was the invitation to American University’s whistle-blower seminar. With the immigration problem resolved, Katharine was finally able to accept.

  ‘Good news, good news, good news!!!’ she wrote to Ray McGovern. ‘We are now legitimate citizens! I am now pretty sure that I will be able to come to the United States – as long as they don’t arrest me at the border! So, you can book those tickets. I am ready,’ she assured, ‘to rock and roll.’

  Katharine returned home from an exhilarating visit and a roster of new and supportive international friends to a renewed UK celebrity, which did nothing to ease the problem of earning a decent living, a problem she never thought she would have. She was a university graduate with excellent work experience. She had a career. She had had a life. But things were different now.

  Excerpts from letters reveal just how different from her life before her arrest:

  ‘I spoke with a lady from the BBC the other day, she just wanted to meet me and chat about the possibilities of doing either a drama documentary about my case or following some new line of information from people who have contacted me because of the truth-telling project. She has approached her manager with the idea of a drama and will reply when she has more details.’

  And another example:

  ‘I was approached by IPA [Institute for Public Accuracy] to be a contact on their news release re the indictment story. So far, two radio stations have contacted me about doing an interview on Monday. I don’t know if they’ll both happen, but as usual, I’m slightly nervous about going on air! I’m almost always nervous, it seems.’

  Requests for interviews came not just from the United Kingdom, but also from the United States, including New York, Atlanta, and Phoenix. Interviewers, she said, were ‘really supportive and wonderful’. But of a North Carolina interviewer she wrote, ‘He was quite antagonistic, and I didn’t expect that at all. I don’t know if it was his personal opinion or whether he was playing devil’s advocate, but he was certainly doing a damn good job if it was the latter. I felt that I really had to defend my position and the whole anti-war mentality. It was a bit uncomfortable, but I hope I got my point across. It’s always easy to preach to the converted, so hopefully I may have induced some people to rethink their positions.’

  And later, ‘Yesterday, I did an interview for a Greek TV channel. The hot t
opic in Greece at the moment is the bugging of the Olympic committee. The programme is going to compare that with previous buggings, like Watergate and my story.’

  The week following the Greek programme, Katharine spoke to the National Union of Journalists with Observer editor Martin Bright; their topic was the Official Secrets Act.

  Media attention did not bring financial rewards. A journalist friend told Katharine he thought she had a talent for writing, and she began doing articles – principally on Iraq. She hoped doing so would help financially and make her hours ‘spent at home with my laptop’ more productive.

  The Gun marriage was healthy, despite every reason for it not to be, despite the real-life roller coaster their lives had become. Testing the relationship were difficulties more compelling than lack of money, employment problems, and the pressure of media attention. Most significant was the unsettling change in personal relationships. Closest friends remained loyal and supportive, but they were very few, and reinforcing social activities were dramatically curtailed. Once surrounded by colleagues in the intelligence community, Katharine was now very much alone in terms of professional contact, except for a very few GCHQ staffers who dared to continue a friendship with her. And Yasar, the vibrant Mediterranean, was dealing with a sense of suffocation in the cool atmosphere of England.

  Katharine found herself more and more concerned about her husband’s homesickness: ‘It occurred to me yesterday that we should save up for a real visit with his family. Each time he speaks on the phone to his mum, she ends up crying and asking him to come home. It breaks his heart. It shouldn’t be a problem now that his status is valid here and he can travel without worry. Perhaps it is something we can aim for some time next year. His parents aren’t getting any younger, that’s for sure.’