{"id":183575,"date":"2021-04-26T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T11:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=183575"},"modified":"2021-04-23T03:17:02","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T02:17:02","slug":"the-spy-who-tried-to-stop-a-war-katherine-guns-courage-of-conscience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/04\/the-spy-who-tried-to-stop-a-war-katherine-guns-courage-of-conscience\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War: Katherine Gun\u2019s Courage of Conscience"},"content":{"rendered":"

21 Apr 2021 – <\/em>Katherine Gun was 27 in January 2003, working in England as a translator and intelligence analyst for the British secret service.\u00a0 At that time, the American and British governments were beating the drums for war against Iraq.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 They argued that a preemptive attack on Iraq was therefore justified.\u00a0 Bush and Blair sought United Nations approval for the war, knowing that such approval would give the war a veneer of legitimacy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Katherine Gun – The Guardian<\/p><\/div>\n

Risking prison and the ruination of her life, marriage, and career, Katherine Gun released a classified memo to the press.\u00a0 The memo was from America\u2019s National Security Agency (the NSA).\u00a0 The memo was to GCHQ (Government Communication Headquarters, the British equivalent to the NSA), where Ms.. Gun worked in one of its specialized branches.<\/p>\n

The classified memo asked England\u2019s secret service to spy on U.N. Security Council diplomats, and to pass their findings to the National Security Agency.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Knowing that she was breaching England\u2019s Official Secrets Act, and thereby committing what the law calls \u201ctreason,\u201d Ms. Gun hoped that publication of the secret memo in Britain\u2019s press would force a public reexamination of the war\u2019s legitimacy, and, ideally, prevent the insane loss of life and tragic suffering that war would surely entail.<\/p>\n

Ms. Gun was well aware of the Anglo-American push for war against Iraq.\u00a0 It was the major news of the day.\u00a0 However, to Ms. Gun, it didn\u2019t sound right \u2013 it didn\u2019t feel right \u2013 as Iraq had long been enduring international sanctions and Anglo-American surveillance.\u00a0 The claim that Iraq had WMDs didn\u2019t make sense.\u00a0 To check the validity of her intuition, Ms Gun informed herself further by reading books on Iraq\u2019s recent history and its tensions with the West.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

She felt an instantaneous revulsion at the moral hypocrisy of so-called statesmen; she saw the memo\u2019s explosive potential; and she felt an obligation to the British people to show them that they were being lied to and manipulated.<\/p>\n

Throughout February, 2003, Gun\u2019s 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 \u201cshock and awe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Publication of the memo caused an international sensation.\u00a0 GCHQ began an immediate hunt for the whistleblower.\u00a0 Ms. Gun at first denied that she was the leak.\u00a0 The following day, not wanting her colleagues to suffer suspicion and humiliation, she confessed.<\/p>\n

Arrested and interrogated, Ms. Gun was asked if she worked for the British government.\u00a0 She said no, governments come and go; she works for the British people; she \u201cdoes not gather intelligence so the government can lie to the British people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Out on bail, it was eight months before Katherine Gun was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act.\u00a0 Her defense team prepared a \u201cdefense of necessity\u201d case on her behalf.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefense of necessity\u201d means that a person has legitimately violated the law in order to prevent harm or loss of life.\u00a0 (For example, breaking the speed limit in order to get a grievously wounded person to a hospital.)<\/p>\n

In preparing a \u201cdefense of necessity\u201d case, Gun\u2019s legal team was putting the war itself on trial.\u00a0 The prosecution would be forced to reveal the various Anglo-American \u201cdirty tricks\u201d designed to drum up support for the war.<\/p>\n

On the first day of the trial, the prosecution dropped all charges, and Katherine Gun was a free woman.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The Katherine Gun story was barely covered in America\u2019s news media, yet it parallels in highly relevant and fascinating ways Daniel Ellsberg\u2019s 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\u2019s Indochina holocaust (euphemistically called The Vietnam War).<\/p>\n

To learn more about Katherine Gun\u2019s odyssey, I recommend the 2008 book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War<\/em>, by Marcia Mitchell and Thomas Mitchell.\u00a0 I also recommend the film based on that book.\u00a0 Called Official Secrets<\/em> and released in 2019, the film stars Keira Knightley.<\/p>\n

On youtube, I recommend Amy Goodman\u2019s interviews with Gun at \u201cDemocracy Now;\u201d also on youtube, the \u201cTrue Spies\u201d podcast, Episode 14, \u201cThe Spy Who Said No.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katherine Gun has recently been nominated for The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award.\u00a0 In an interview for Vanity Fair<\/em> (August 30, 2019), she offers this reflection as the fruit of her experience:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn any walk of life, you can choose to do the right thing.\u00a0 At the end of the day, we are accountable to our conscience.\u00a0 We should think about that and remember that.\u201d<\/p>\n

__________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Stefan Schindler taught philosophy, psychology, education, and religion for 40 years at institutions of higher learning, including The University of Pennsylvania, La Salle University, Berkley College of Music, The Boston Conservatory of Music, Dance and Theater, and the Boston and Brookline Centers for Adult Education.\u00a0 Co-founder of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a recipient of The Boston Baha\u2019i Peace Award, and a Trustee of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey, Dr. Schindler received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston College (on Freud, Sartre, Hegel, and Jung). He wrote The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Awards for Howard Zinn and John Lennon.\u00a0 His books include <\/em>The Tao of Socrates and <\/em>America’s Indochina Holocaust.\u00a0 His forthcoming book is titled <\/em>Buddha’s Political Philosophy.<\/p>\n

Go to Original – engagingpeace.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

21 Apr 2021 – The prosecution would be forced to reveal the Anglo-American \u201cdirty tricks\u201d to drum up support for the Iraq war. On the first day of the trial, the prosecution dropped all charges. Katherine Gun\u2019s memo caused the U.N. Security Council to deny approval for the war, depriving Bush and Blair of the U.N. blessing they were hoping for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":183576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[950,741,86,754,1109,639,124,70,481,921,875],"class_list":["post-183575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance","tag-invasion","tag-iraq","tag-occupation","tag-oil","tag-spying","tag-uk","tag-united-nations","tag-usa","tag-warfare","tag-whistleblowing","tag-wmd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}