THE SPY WHO TRIED TO STOP A WAR
Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion
Marcia and Thomas Mitchell

Copyright

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2019

Copyright © Marcia and Thomas Mitchell 2008; 2019

Cover design by Jack Smyth

Cover image © Alexandru Zdrobau/Unsplash

Marcia and Thomas Mitchell assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008348564

Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008348571

Version: 2019-07-30

Dedication

For daughter Kristin and sons Alan and Jay, and for their

loved ones – which makes them ours as well

And for Paul and Jan Harwood,

Katharine’s remarkable parents

Epigraph

It was a decision of conscience in a world where nobody celebrates that. She will go down in history as a hero of the human spirit.

– SEAN PENN

We are going to be in a very dangerous situation as a country if people feel they can simply spill out secrets or details of security operations, whether false or true actually, and get away with it.

– TONY BLAIR

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

EPIGRAPH

FOREWORD

THE KOZA MEMO

PART I: INVITATION TO A CONSPIRACY

CHAPTER ONE: MESSAGE SENT

CHAPTER TWO: MESSAGE RECEIVED

CHAPTER THREE: FOUR WEEKS THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

CHAPTER FOUR: CONSCIENCE MEETS INSPECTOR TINTIN

PART II: FALLOUT

CHAPTER FIVE: DETOUR ON THE SECRET ROAD TO WAR

CHAPTER SIX: OUTRAGE

CHAPTER SEVEN: SILENCE IN WASHINGTON

CHAPTER EIGHT: TAIWAN CALLING

PART III: THE WOMAN

CHAPTER NINE: EIGHT MONTHS IN LIMBO

CHAPTER TEN: THE THIRD-CULTURE KID

PART IV: THE LEGAL CASE

CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE BLONDE WHO DROPPED THE BOMBSHELL

CHAPTER TWELVE: DEPORTATION REVISITED

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE PROSECUTION AND THE DEFENCE PREPARE FOR COURT

PART V: AFTERMATH

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: A HISTORIC COLLAPSE AT THE OLD BAILEY

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: REACTION, REBELLION, AND A CRUSHING NEW REVELATION

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: AN UNCOMMON DAY IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: MOTIVATIONS, MISDEEDS, AND TRAGIC MISTAKES

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: WHISTLE-BLOWING: CONSCIENCE AND CONFRONTATION

CHAPTER NINETEEN: A LIFE INTERRUPTED

EPILOGUE

NOTES

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

FOREWORD TO THIS EDITION

The consequences of the invasion and of the conflict within Iraq which followed are still being felt in Iraq and the wider Middle East, as well as in the UK. It left families bereaved and many individuals wounded, mentally as well as physically.

– ‘The Chilcot report’ Executive Summary, 2016

Chilcot has shone a light on what happened, but it is clear there are still bits of the puzzle that are missing. Now that we know better, will we do better?

– Katharine Gun, Guardian, 8 July 2016

Gun will not go quietly. Her trial … will rehash the war’s legality.

– Time Magazine Europe, 2 February 2004

ON 6 JULY 2016 – thirteen years after Katharine Gun was arrested for violating the Official Secrets Act, eight years after this book was first published, and seven years after the official UK Iraq Inquiry was launched – a comprehensive government report made worldwide headlines. In twelve volumes totalling 2.6 million words, the inquiry report concluded that the Iraq War was unnecessary, was based on questionable intelligence, and resulted in a chaotic, painful aftermath – all of which were avoidable.

Relevant to this story, Sir John Chilcot’s investigating committee concluded that the legality of military action taken by then-US President George Bush and then-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was questionable and never satisfactorily determined. From January to March 2003, a series of conflicting advisories and decisions revealed shady machinations fuelling Bush’s passionate pursuit of the grand prize: a sanctioned war and the removal of Saddam Hussein.

While two heads of state, two of the most powerful men on the planet, secretly plotted the invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam, a young British woman was among those who suspected that the two were set on war – an unnecessary, possibly illegal, war – despite repeated claims to the contrary. Katharine Gun enthusiastically marched against the invasion, along with thousands of others. But for her, marching was not enough.

It’s been said that Katharine Gun remains a moral compass for the United Kingdom – someone who was willing to put her own interests behind those of her country and of the world. Fearful that the United Kingdom would launch an illegal war, the British secret service officer risked her freedom and her future in an effort to derail that war and to save lives certain to be lost. She did so by blowing the whistle on a United States spy operation against the UN Security Council (UNSC), an operation designed to ensure that it voted for war. Some called the operation blackmail; others, US ‘dirty tricks’. By whatever name, it was unlawful.

At the time, the UNSC was considering a highly controversial resolution to legitimize war against Iraq. Truth, made public by Katharine’s whistle, ended the US National Security Agency spy operation and hopes for legalizing the war.

Where the Crown Prosecution Service’s most distinguished practitioners wanted to make the criminal case against Katharine about sharing secrets, Katharine wanted it to be about the secrets themselves. She wanted the public to understand what our governments were doing, and who would suffer as a result. She was deeply concerned about the multitude of deaths that would result from an unnecessary war. Her defence, that she believed the Iraq War was illegal, would – years later – be supported by excerpts from the Chilcot report.[1]

But five years would pass before the inquiry would be initiated.

When it was complete, the historic, voluminous document substantiated what Katharine and many others had believed all along – that after the 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy, George Bush determined to get rid of Saddam Hussein and then dragged a reluctant Blair along with him. Of special interest was the release of declassified correspondence between Downing Street and the White House. The cosy exchange of thirty-one letters concerning a proposed invasion of Iraq revealed the truth of the matter. Writing in July of 2002, eight months prior to the invasion – Blair told Bush that, ‘I will be with you, whatever.’ A mountain of criticism has been heaped upon the former prime minister for fulfilling his risky promise. He is still widely accused of having followed the wrong man into a wrong war.

In fairness, Blair had earlier supported containment as the way to handle threats from Iraq, and he was concerned about what would happen if military action were precipitously undertaken. The report concluded that he was innocent of inventing or distorting evidence to support the war – but that he had indeed weakened and acquiesced to Bush, and that he was responsible for ill-fated decision-making and its ultimate result. In a heated and nearly tearful response, Blair defended his honour, insisting that he had not been a US pawn, that he ‘did not mislead [his] country.’

Regardless, it is impossible for this author to reconcile the report’s findings with Blair’s overarching denial: ‘What I cannot do and will not do is say we took the wrong decision.’ The world believes otherwise.

Strangely silent in the debate – both during Katharine’s case and after the monumental report was released – was the United States. In July of 2016, that country was distracted by the nastiest, most vicious election campaign in its history. The annoying ‘Iraq issue’ neatly folded into the campaign only as a political weapon: Which candidate had supported the 2003 invasion, and which had not? Still, many American lawmakers regret having supported the invasion.

In The Restless Wave, published shortly before his 2018 death, US Senator John McCain wrote that the Iraq War ‘can’t be judged as anything other than a mistake’. One of the most hawkish Senate Republicans, he had been firmly in favour of the invasion. Later, he took full responsibility for ‘my share of the blame for it’. Hillary Clinton, a Democratic senator from 2001–2009, apologized during the 2016 presidential campaign for her previous aye vote in Congress, for having been deceived by the surround-sound of political rhetoric deafening Capitol Hill.

What is easy to miss in the continuing flurry of political hindsight is what Katharine Gun actually accomplished. No, she was not able to stop the war. However, she revealed a crime, a plot to start and legitimize a war. There is no question that had the UN Security Council adopted a proposed resolution to legalize the war, the Iraq narrative would have been different. The invading coalition would have had legal justification for its action. While criticism certainly would have followed military action, it would have been considered and voiced differently – seen as a coalition of countries, authorized by the Council and acting legally and legitimately. Without Katharine’s act of conscience, the invaders would have achieved what they so sorely sought: approval for a horrific, wrongful act.

There exists a compelling and excruciatingly obvious lesson in a time when the ‘Iran issue’ and Middle East destabilization are of such concern: The Iraq Inquiry Report should be required study for every US and UK lawmaker. Further, it should be first on the international reading list of anyone involved in decision-making affecting Iran and the Middle East. An addition to the study curriculum could well be the writings of Gordon Brown, Blair’s successor and Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time Bush and Blair were planning their invasion.

‘War could not be justified as a last resort and invasion cannot now be seen as a proportionate response,’ Brown writes in 2017.[2]

On numerous occasions, both publicly and privately, Katharine has insisted that she still has no regrets about violating the Official Secrets Act in an effort to stop the war and save lives. ‘I would do it again,’ she says, words once bannered across newspapers around the world (except in the United States) and accompanied by the photo of a triumphant, smiling young woman. She said it again when she and her infant daughter travelled to Washington DC, where an American University symposium featured Katharine’s story and the first edition of this book.

By then, Katharine was in her early thirties and five years had passed since her arrest. She was happily married to Yasar Gun, a Turkish national, and had fallen back on teaching Chinese to British students. Her parents were close by, and they remained proud, dedicated advocates, championing their daughter throughout her ordeal and beyond. Katharine’s life was before her, but that single decision – as right as it was for her – would play a major role in her family’s future. Most difficult would be finding satisfying long-term employment. It’s just not easy when you’ve been the star of a story like this.

After a while, she and Yasar took trips to his beloved Turkey to explore the possibilities of moving permanently. Making a decision to settle abroad would be difficult for Katharine, despite the challenges she faced in her home country. But finally, in the spring of 2011, Katharine wrote, ‘We finally decided to take the plunge.’ Since relocating to Turkey, the family has visited England several times, and in 2016, the death of Katharine’s beloved mother, Jan Harwood, took Katharine back for a stay with her grieving father.

In her most recent letter, Katharine writes: ‘We moved to a village and live on a farmyard. Our daughter has loved living here; she helps to look after the chickens, goats, sheep, and cows. She wanders off into the fields on her own. There are acres of wheat fields behind the house. She sits and sings songs to herself or writes poetry or draws, she jumps in the haystacks and takes photos of everything, sometimes making videos and introducing the animals. It’s a very simple life, and our home has been very basic.’

This author has lived in the countryside of South Dakota for years, and surely can appreciate the attraction of a simple life, the joys of solitude, and the freedom of children playing in nature. However, one also wonders: what have we all lost, with Katharine Gun removed from the dialogue of conscience? Her sharp mind and strong will are exactly what today’s political and governmental discussions sorely need. One should never say that because Katharine is intelligent, strong, and experienced that she should leap back into the fray – but wouldn’t we all be better for it?

Reflecting on her act of conscience and its impact, Katharine’s letter concludes, ‘I hope my example will give others courage to stand firm against abuse of power and deception.’ As for the war?

‘In truth, it was a war crime, an illegal war, a war against humanity.’

– Marcia Mitchell, 20 February 2019

THE KOZA MEMO

To: [Recipients withheld]

From: FRANK KOZA, Def Chief of Staff (Regional Targets)

CIV/NSA Sent on Jan 31 2003 0:16

Subject: Reflections of Iraq Debate/Votes at UN-RT Actions + Potential for Related Contributions

Importance: HIGH

Top Secret//COMINT//X1

All,

As you’ve likely heard by now, the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how [to] membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/dependencies, etc – the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters.

We’ve also asked ALL RT topi’s to emphasize and make sure they pay attention to existing non-UNSC member UN-related and domestic comms for anything useful related to the UNSC deliberations/debates/votes. We have a lot of special UN-related diplomatic coverage (various UN delegations) from countries not sitting on the UNSC right now that could contribute related perspectives/insights/whatever. We recognize that we can’t afford to ignore this possible source.

We’d appreciate your support in getting the word to your analysts who might have similar, more in-direct access to valuable information from accesses in your product lines. I suspect that you’ll be hearing more along these lines in formal channels – especially as this effort will probably peak (at least for this specific focus) in the middle of next week, following the SecState’s presentation to the UNSC.

Thanks for your help.[1]

PART I

CHAPTER 1: Message Sent

To: [Recipients withheld]

From: FRANK KOZA, Def Chief of Staff (Regional Targets)

CIV/NSA Sent on Jan 31 2003 0:16

Subject: Reflections of Iraq Debate/Votes at UN-RT Actions + Potential for Related Contributions

Importance: HIGH

Top Secret//COMINT//X1

All,

As you’ve likely heard by now, the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how [to] membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq …

IT BEGAN IN the wee hours of the morning at the National Security Agency’s National Security Operations Center not all that far from Washington, DC, where Frank Koza, chief of the Regional Targets group, sat composing a highly secret message. Aside from the usual Intelspeak, his message was straightforward and to the point. It was addressed to his counterparts at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham, England.

Koza’s e-mail was very much in keeping with the business of the NSA, an enterprise little understood by most of the American public, who are much more familiar with the CIA and the FBI, often in the news for questionable management and various commissions and omissions and, less often, for jobs well done. It is the NSA that seems the most obscure, most mysterious of the intelligence agencies.

By design, the NSA remains in the shadows, hidden behind a wall of security in Maryland. Its work is beyond top secret, beyond imagination. A city unto itself, it excludes the outside world and likely could survive comfortably if the rest of civilization vanished in the blink of an eye. It is unbuggable and impenetrable. It stores more secret information than all other hush-hush data collectors combined. Its technical capabilities are mind-boggling and imply that private international communication, by whatever means, is not private at all.

Koza’s addressee is similarly not as well known worldwide as its more glamorous sister agencies, MI5 and MI6, popularized by British fiction. GCHQ is infinitely more secret, with far greater resources than its intelligence siblings. To those knowledgeable about intelligence matters, GCHQ has an impressive significance by virtue of inheritance. Its predecessor was the historic Government Codes and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, where the British broke the infamous German Enigma code during World War II. Now, five thousand staff on the GCHQ payroll speak and listen in 107 different languages every hour of every day. This morning, thousands of miles from Koza’s desk, one of them, Katharine Gun, would be reading in English.

Coincidentally, this same day, 31 January 2003, the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, announced the selection of GCHQ veteran David Pepper to replace Sir Francis Richards as director of the agency. Pepper, with an impressive intelligence background, would assume his new position in April, just in time to inherit the Koza problem.

Also on this same day, then US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice would attend a highly secret and decidedly bizarre meeting in the Oval Office with George W. Bush and Tony Blair, where the topic of conversation would have much to do with what was now taking place at the NSA.

More than o ne reliable source concludes that the message from Koza was Rice’s inspiration. However, a former NSA officer puts his money on Vice President Dick Cheney, for whom desired ends and means for getting there are sometimes considered to be in conflict with the law. The view of unnamed US intelligence officers suggests a team inspiration from Rice and Donald Rumsfeld, along with George Tenet, then CIA chief, and USAF Gen. Michael Hayden, then NSA chief.

Seen as directly complicit in the 31 January fiasco, Hayden has been alleged in the past to be somewhat careless about complying with various laws governing surveillance of individuals. It is true that the four-star general has fiercely disputed such allegations. He has described the NSA’s lawyers as being careful about ensuring the lawfulness of the agency’s actions ‘out of a heartfelt, principled view that NSA operations had to be consistent with bedrock legal protections’.[1] And, later, that ‘Everything that the agency has done has been lawful.’[2]

That seems not to have been the case on 31 January 2003.

Hayden, who has spoken so definitively in defending the NSA’s compliance with the law, has spoken with equal conviction about other aspects of the secrecy business. One statement in particular, uniquely related to this story, seems especially disconcerting: ‘I’m not too uncomfortable with a society that makes its bogeymen secrecy and power … making secrecy and power the bogeymen of political culture, that’s not a bad society.’[3]

In the end, Frank Koza’s message sent from the agency headed by Hayden was all about secrecy and power, about using illegal means to gain power over a small group of suddenly important individuals and nations.

This very day a bogeyman, a monstrous American bogeyman, was about to saunter into Katharine Gun’s office and fire up her computer screen. The question was, what to do with him?

CHAPTER 2: Message Received

At the time, it seemed to me that if people knew how desperate Bush and Blair were to have a legitimate reason to go to war, our eyes would be opened … people would see that their intention was not to disarm Saddam, but in fact to go to war.

– Katharine Gun, April 2005

‘IT WAS QUITE cold that Friday morning of 31 January when I woke up about nine o’clock beside Yasar, still sleeping. At GCHQ we had flexible hours, and my workday usually began at about ten o’clock and ended after six, so sleeping until nine was not unusual. Our bedroom was light and bright with natural wood floors and white walls, with cream-coloured curtains. It was a cheerful place to begin the day, even on a cold winter morning – not like the rest of the house, a dreary place with small windows. I got up, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, and layered on a jumper, because I might want to walk home after work and it would be cold. I always dressed casually for work; most people at GCHQ did.[1]

‘Yasar drove me to work in our old, beat-up red Rover Metro. We had a cuddle and kiss before he dropped me off outside the gates of GCHQ. I waved goodbye and he drove off to work at the café. Inside, I bought a coffee and a cinnamon roll at the shop and settled down to work. It was all so normal, so ordinary. There was nothing to suggest that this day would change my life.

‘I went to my desk, finished the last of my coffee, and opened my e-mail. And there it was.

‘I could not believe what was on the screen, and I had to read it several times. I felt quite excited – no, more shocked than anything else. And it suddenly became clear to me that this message was so significant that perhaps it could be used to bring a stop to the rush for military action against Iraq. My thoughts were racing, really bizarre thoughts for me. I had never intended to do anything like that which I was now contemplating. I certainly had not been looking around for information to leak. The thought honestly had never occurred to me. But now, the fact that I was a recipient of Koza’s request made me feel as if I had moved into a different sphere, as if my life had suddenly taken on new and unfamiliar dimensions. I was, in this new place, privy to the internal workings, the most secret workings of top government – workings that seemed so very wrong.’

On Katharine’s screen was a blatant invitation to a conspiracy. The United States was mounting an illegal intelligence operation against the UN Security Council member nations – and their representatives – that would cast the deciding vote on a resolution for war against Iraq. At the moment, the undecided were resisting US pressure for an ‘aye’ on launching a pre-emptive strike.

The purpose of the operation was explained – to collect ‘the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals’. Clearly, the principal goal was war. Sooner rather than later. Called for was listening in on not only office communications, but also ‘domestic’, private conversations.

Britain was asked to join ‘a surge effort … against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea’, with special attention on Pakistan. Other UN delegations not sitting on the Security Council at the moment were also good targets because they could ‘contribute related perspectives insights whatever.’ The message, sent by the NSA’s Frank Koza, recognized that ‘we can’t afford to ignore this possible source’.

As for timing, Koza wrote, ‘this effort will probably peak (at least for this specific focus) in the middle of next week, following the SecState’s presentation to the UNSC’. It was important to know how the ‘swing voters’ reacted to Colin Powell’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) pitch to the Security Council and, it seems, to collect secrets that could manipulate those reactions, ensuring that they would be ‘favorable to US goals’.

‘I sat there, mesmerized, appalled by the fact that the public rhetoric of George Bush and Tony Blair, especially Tony Blair at that time, led us to believe that all efforts were being directed toward securing a diplomatic resolution to the matter of Iraq, not toward an inevitable war. They talked of other options: Saddam Hussein being forced to give up his WMD, or having to leave Iraq. It seemed so hypocritical that they were saying this on the one hand in public, and behind everyone’s back, they were desperately trying to seek a yes-vote to the second resolution to justify a war that they obviously wanted. They were willing to use any means to get what they wanted.

‘It seemed to me, as I sat there thinking, that if people knew what really was going on, they would understand that the intent all along was war, not disarmament. I asked myself: How could anybody even hope for a chance of resolving the issue peacefully when the motives of the US administration were so apparent, so blatant? Besides, I didn’t think that the job of the intelligence services was to manipulate, to politicize intelligence. I don’t believe you should tailor intelligence to a political agenda. I was angry – angry about their trying to manipulate the vote in the Security Council.

‘I knew there were others like me at GCHQ who were worried about this rush to war, who had serious questions in mind.’

By a strange coincidence, a memorandum had been circulated to staff exactly one week earlier. It read, ‘I know from the questions you have asked … that some of you have concerns about the legal or ethical basis of war against Iraq – if and when it happens – and GCHQ’s part in it.’ ‘Well,’ assured the senior officer responsible for the memorandum, ‘there is no question of any member of GCHQ being asked to do anything – at this or any other time – which is not lawful.’

It is likely that the author of the memorandum to staff believed what he wrote so convincingly. Further, he assured, ‘British troops do not go into action unless the Attorney General has advised the Prime Minister that their action is lawful.’ The directive also quoted the prime minister’s remarks from two weeks earlier, when he promised he would never commit British troops to a war he thought was ‘wrong or unnecessary’. Besides, the government ‘has shown its commitment to trying to resolve this difficult situation by agreement with the international community, through the United Nations’.

Through the United Nations. By doing what the Koza message asked? Creating a false coalition? Would the United Kingdom join the United States in this apparent hypocrisy?

That night, after work, Katharine did not take the bus but instead walked several miles into town through the dark and the cold, wanting to be alone with her thoughts. One in particular, she says, ‘was already running around in my head, that this was explosive stuff’. She reached the café shaking with a combination of cold and rattled nerves, pulled off her heavy sweater, and folded into a chair to watch her husband finish his chores before closing. Nothing was said, not a word about the Koza message. He could not know, not at this point. It was a matter she would have to decide for herself, unless, of course, she had already decided. She thinks, perhaps, she had.

‘To be honest, I must admit that the decision to leak the e-mail was instantly in my mind as soon as I read it, not finally made, but certainly in my mind. It was there because of the nature of the message and the impact on me.

‘At the time, all I could think about was that I knew they were trying really hard to legitimize an invasion, and they were willing to use this new intelligence to coerce, perhaps blackmail delegates, so they could tell the world they had achieved a consensus for war. I felt so strongly, and I knew there was so much public anxiety and anger about a pre-emptive strike, about rushing into war, that I didn’t really think about my own personal circumstances at that stage.’

It is along about here in Katharine’s story that her critics howl. What did she think the NSA and GCHQ were doing? Knitting sweaters for poor children in third world countries? She was in the spy business, for God’s sake, they will say. And what was afoot in the business at the moment was a spy operation. Surreptitiously, clandestinely collecting information. The United States and United Kingdom were simply trying to acquire information about the positions of the various target countries. Nothing new – in fact, so old hat as to be boring. So what, they ask, was her problem about a bit of high-stakes eavesdropping at the United Nations?

‘Yes, it was eavesdropping,’ Katharine agrees, ‘and that’s what I did for a living.’ But what she did in the normal course of her work was something quite different, as she sees it, from what GCHQ was being asked to do by the NSA. ‘This request was far more than attempting to collect information on negotiating patterns, on likely responses to draft proposals.’ It was how the information was to be used. Here Katharine and her colleagues were being asked to help manipulate those patterns and responses, to legalize what otherwise might well be an illegal war. Much later, in the spring of 2005, what was going on was described to the public as tailoring intelligence to fit policy.[2]

‘You’re being asked to participate in an illegal process with the ultimate aim of achieving an invasion in violation of international law,’ Katharine says. An illegal process with the imprimatur of a bogeyman on the loose.

Ultimately, Katharine believed that if the Koza message was released to the public, people would see clearly that, despite official government pronouncements about seeking a diplomatic resolution to the Iraq problem, behind-the-scenes unofficial government was in pursuit of quite a different solution. And that solution would allow the United States and United Kingdom governments to claim that a unified United Nations believed Iraq was in contravention of Security Council resolutions and was an imminent threat to world peace. War, then, would be both legal and necessary.

Timing was a significant issue.

‘We were all aware that Hans Blix and the WMD inspectors had not yet had a chance to complete their work. From the beginning it had been estimated that it would take them at least six months once in place to provide any kind of realistic assessment. They had been there about three months when Koza’s message arrived. This was troubling, I would guess, for a lot of us.’

Yasar worked on Saturdays. For Katharine, this Saturday was a day of moving about in something of a fog, the real world obscured behind a hazy scrim, where the words of the NSA memo were all that seemed clear, spelling out what would happen if she were to reveal its contents.

‘At no point during the weekend did I consider telling any of my family members, or even Yasar, because I didn’t want to jeopardize anyone else. I wanted everyone else to be wholly innocent of the affair. But also, at the back of my mind, I was thinking that if I did it, I would do it anonymously. And, hopefully, no one would ever know it was me. We regularly see in the press leaks from official sources, and there never seems to be any kind of retribution, anybody being arrested or charged for making those leaks.’

The question that tortured her throughout the weekend was this: Will I get away with it? She felt confident that she would, that she could remain anonymous. Later, she realized that she didn’t know how to play the game, didn’t know the unwritten rules.

‘I knew there are people, especially those who work in London in both the civil service and the intelligence service, who brief journalists very much below the radar, sort of unofficially, without jeopardizing their positions. And they get away with it. You read about the leak, oh, not one of this nature, but you never hear about who was responsible or a manhunt under way to find the source. No one is punished. No one is identified. This is what I hoped for. This is what I expected.’

Looking back, Katharine recognizes the problem. The ‘official unofficial’ briefings – call them ‘controlled leaks’ – are for the most part institutionalized. A selected journalist, one from each major news entity and each category of news within that entity, communicates directly with his or her assigned contact within an intelligence service. There are unwritten ground rules. The intelligence contact is never named and the information provided is reported to have come from ‘known reliable’ or ‘unnamed government’ sources. The arrangement is mutually beneficial; journalists get information for their stories, and the government releases certain information it wishes to get to the public without having it attributed to a specific individual. Amateurs like Katharine are not allowed to play the game.

There was a caution that kept returning, a fear that had to be placed into the emotional conflict of indecision. Or, perhaps a decision made but not yet wholly accepted. It was the critical matter of Yasar’s safety.

They were wildly in love, these two, the blonde, petite Englishwoman and her ‘beautiful, beloved’ husband. Just six months earlier, Katharine had married the man of her dreams, the tall, dark Mediterranean charmer with finely chiselled features and a quick, expansive smile. They met at the café where he worked, where she would go for coffee in the evenings after leaving GCHQ. He would wink from across the counter, and she was enchanted. ‘He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen,’ she says.

The café, small, unpretentious, was a comfortable, intimate place, ideal for chatting after work, when the chat had to be about anything but work. Filled with light, the café was perfect for people from GCHQ, whose days were spent in a darkness that had nothing to do with either natural or artificial illumination.

Most evenings, Katharine was accompanied to the café by a male GCHQ colleague. Yasar, eyeing pretty Katharine seated with her companion, assumed she was ‘taken’, which was not true. The man with her was a friend, not a boyfriend. Since Yasar made no advance other than a wink now and then, Katharine assumed he was not interested. This, too, was not true. Finally, unaccompanied to the café, Katharine winked back. He came to stand beside her.

‘I’m going to the cinema,’ she said, and then, surprising them both, ‘what are you doing later?’ He had a break, he told her. Would she like to go for a walk? Yes, she would very much like that; she had time for a walk before the picture started. From that moment on, Katharine Harwood had no space in her life for any other man. Winking led to frequent evening walks, which eventually led to dating. They were married in an intimate ceremony attended by a small group of friends and her parents, newly arrived from Taiwan. The family met the enigmatic young man for the first time the night before the wedding.

‘I felt better after meeting him,’ Katharine’s father, Paul Harwood, says. ‘He obviously adores her.’

Weeks after they first started dating, Katharine discovered that Yasar, still learning English, often communicated with customers in the café by winking. It was a way of greeting people. ‘He winked at everyone,’ she laughs.

There was little to laugh about when, two weeks after the marriage ceremony, Yasar was picked up by immigration authorities and taken into police custody, where he was held incommunicado until the following morning. Rushed to Heathrow airport, he was prepared for deportation to Turkey. In their home with her family now up in the north of England, Katharine was on her own and near panic. The fear that she would never see her husband again was suffocating.

Katharine made an urgent call to a solicitor, begging, ‘Please help us.’ They were legally married, she explained. She was a UK citizen! How could this happen? With help, the mess was untangled, government officials called officers at the airport, and the bridegroom was released just moments before the plane bound for Turkey left the gate. A devastatingly close call.

Yasar’s visa, extended, was still temporary. He had asked for asylum, given unsettled political issues in Turkey. They were awaiting an answer. Finally, eventually, Katharine put her money – and Yasar’s safety – on anonymity. It was an egregiously unfortunate wager.

By the afternoon Katharine had decided to make one call, to tell one person about the Koza message. (She has guarded that person’s identity throughout the whole affair.)

‘I called the person that I ultimately sent the e-mail to. I haven’t named her in public and I won’t. Let’s just call her Jane. She was the only person I talked to about this, and I could trust her. I knew how she felt about the war, about the impending invasion of Iraq. We both felt pretty much the same way about the whole issue. I also knew that she had been in contact with a member of the media who probably would help. I didn’t know anybody else whom I could trust and who had a contact like that. So I called Jane to tell her what I’d seen. I didn’t go into details; I just said that I’d received an e-mail I thought was damaging enough that, if it were leaked, might have the effect of preventing the war – or at least delaying it until other options had been exhausted. I asked her if I could send it to her, or perhaps she suggested that I could send it to her.’

On Sunday morning, Katharine and Yasar had a ‘lie-in’, then a big Turkish breakfast of olives, cheese from his home country, tomatoes, cucumbers, lots of toast, and a big pot of tea. Together they cleared away the breakfast things, chatted easily, read the voluminous Sunday newspaper. Later they took a ride out into the countryside, stopping at a picturesque little village for afternoon tea. It was all so deceptively normal.

As usual, Yasar fell asleep to soothing music, drifting off long before his wife on Sunday evening. This night, it would take Katharine an uncharacteristically long time to fall asleep, music or no. She was remembering the GCHQ staff memo of one week ago.

‘Concerns from a moral or ethical standpoint [regarding war against Iraq] are a personal matter,’ it acknowledged. Worries shouldn’t be kept to oneself. Anyone having reservations about what they were asked to do should contact the Welfare Office, the staff counsellor, or one of three specifically named senior officers. No, she thought. A slow-moving, red-taped, and supremely protective bureaucracy was not the answer.

Unwritten, but clear in its intent, was a warning to GCHQ staff. And that was what was keeping her awake.

CHAPTER 3: Four Weeks That Changed Everything

More of a concern to us was that we would be joined in the prosecution. To publish is an offence under the Official Secrets Act as well. We were as culpable as Katharine. But they’re cowards. So they preferred to take on the little guy – in this case, little woman – rather than us big guys.[1]

– Martin Bright, Observer editor

What I hoped was that people would see what was happening and be so disgusted that nobody would support the war in Iraq. And if anybody would go to war it would be the United States going it alone. And I even hoped that the US general public would somehow realize that they were being dragged hook, line, and sinker into the war.

– Katharine Gun, to the authors

AN UNSUSPECTING YASAR drove his wife to work on Monday morning, stopping at the GCHQ gate long enough to give her a quick squeeze and a kiss before reaching across to open the passenger door for her. She gave him a smile, climbed out of the car, and stood watching until the red Metro was out of sight. As she turned to enter her secret world, she felt transparent, as if everyone around her would see through her and into her. Would see the pounding heart and knotting stomach. Would see into her mind and be appalled by the conspiracy of her thoughts.

The final decision to act had been made. When? She wasn’t certain. Possibly in those first few minutes on Friday, when Koza’s message appeared on her screen. Perhaps during the solitude of her walk to the café to meet Yasar after work, or while talking with Jane later. At some point, there was no emotional turning back. More likely, it had been there, the finality of it, after her talk with Jane.

‘This morning, Monday, I worked in a different office from the one I normally worked in, so I thought it would probably be a good idea to print a copy off from that computer, rather than the one that was my normal terminal. Obviously, this is all an indication of how I was trying to remain as anonymous as possible. I brought up the e-mail, looked at it one more time, then copied it and pasted it to a different window. I printed it off and put it in my handbag. Of course, if I were caught, that’s where anyone would look, wouldn’t they?

‘I was planning to take the e-mail outside GCHQ’s grounds, which is already breaking the law, regardless of whether or not you make it public. You weren’t, without prior permission, permitted to take classified documents off GCHQ territory. I knew exactly what I was doing.’

Up to this point, it is true that Katharine had broken no law. Once she removed the copied document from the premises, which she fully intended to do, she could be charged with high crime against her country. The thought made her ill, and throughout the day she reminded herself that this was something right, that she was not a criminal. What she was doing, however, identified her as precisely that.

‘I guess some people would accuse me of being naïve, in that I didn’t consider the ramifications of what this act would be for me personally. And that’s probably true, in the sense that I’ve never done anything really bad. I mean, I had never done anything that could be considered a crime. It made it very difficult to consider what I was doing as a criminal offence. In fact, it felt like it was the only morally right thing to do. Oh, I was of course frightened and nervous, but – and it’s hard to explain – I didn’t feel frightened or torn apart by my decision, once it was made.

‘So, call me naïve if you will, but obviously if I’d been selling state secrets to somebody considered to be an enemy, an arch-rival, that would be a totally different issue. If I had been leaking information not in an attempt to prevent unnecessary loss of life, that would have been different. There are degrees of breaches of official secrecy, and I didn’t feel that mine was a criminal offence. I believed I was doing the right thing.’

The following day Katharine posted Koza’s message to Jane. When it arrived, Jane read the words that had so distressed Katharine and decided to pass it along as agreed. Had she known what was to come later, Jane might well have destroyed the message the minute it reached her. But she did not know, and she felt confident that her friend Katharine would not betray her, that she would not be considered a co-conspirator.

By that Monday morning when Katharine was printing Koza’s message, other recipients were responding in quite a different way. It is assumed that Sir Francis, in his last two months as the head of GCHQ, responded both favourably and immediately, authorizing cooperation with the NSA. According to sources close to the intelligence services, the US request for UK cooperation was indeed ‘acted on’ by the British.[2]

At the time Koza’s request arrived in the United Kingdom, there were at least some intelligence and other government officials asking critical questions, secretly of course, about the legality of an invasion. The whole business was sticky, and it seemed fairly obvious that the United States was asking for help not only with electronic black bagging, but also with what could become high-stakes political blackmailing.

At the very highest level, it already was known – and had been since April 2002, when Blair and Bush met in Crawford, Texas, and reached an accord for military action – that the rhetoric coming from the White House and Downing Street was only that.[3] The decision to invade Iraq had been made, pushed by George Bush and his neoconservative team. It was now essential to find an excuse, an acceptable rationale for doing so. Twisting the arms of the recalcitrant UNSC representatives in order to win approval for a new resolution could supply a universally acceptable rationale. If regime change came about as a result of invasion based on a WMD threat, well, that would be serendipity within the rules. Thus in some lofty quarters, where the strategy was either known for certain or even ‘twigged’, there was neither shock nor surprise when the Koza message arrived at GCHQ.

‘For four weeks I was nervous, on edge. Every day I frantically searched the papers and watched the news. I figured it would take a few days to appear, but then, day after day, there was nothing. It was difficult trying to live normally, as if nothing had happened. It was a struggle, I mean, going about life that way. Everything was quiet, for those four weeks, and I began to think that perhaps it wasn’t actually of interest to anybody. Perhaps it would never be made public. I suppose I was a little bit relieved. I could go on with my life as before, and everything would be the same.

‘No one would know what I had done.’

The news that Katharine was reading during this period showed an intense ratcheting up of the pitch for war. Three days after she posted her letter to Jane, Colin Powell went before the United Nations – and the world – to explain why war was absolutely necessary, that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction ready to destroy his neighbours and threaten the peace and security of everyone everywhere. Details about the kind and numbers of weapons known to be in Iraq’s possession were supplied. And he was convincing, this highly respected member of the Bush administration. Handsome, charismatic, articulate, respected – no one else in the Bush administration could have done the job so masterfully.

In New York, among the many secret meetings going on with members of the UN Security Council that were of particular interest to Washington were those led by Chile’s Juan Gabriel Valdés and Mexico’s Adolfo Aguilar Zinser. The two were continuing the fight against a resolution definitively authorizing use of military force against Iraq. Both men were highly respected diplomats, and their colleagues were listening to their concerns.

Aguilar Zinser was particularly annoying to the United States during these intense four weeks. A lawyer and former senator, he dissected the Bush–Blair draft resolution line by line. He complained about what he believed to be obvious conflicts with international law. He threatened to ‘throw the book’ at both countries. Colin Powell met with Aguilar Zinser and reportedly shook his finger at him, ‘jokingly’ scolding him for troublemaking.

The uncooperative and obstructionist behaviour of both Valdés and Aguilar Zinser led to repeated efforts to get the diplomats replaced in their roles at the United Nations. But the anti-war heads of state in both Chile and Mexico were refusing to capitulate during this crucial period of negotiation. In Mexico, President Vincente Fox was clearly gaining prestige for refusing to respond to American pressure. Said one Mexican diplomat at the time, ‘The Americans don’t understand. The more they ask for his [Aguilar Zinser’s] resignation, the more they are hammering him into his seat.’[4] Later, the two UN diplomats would reap unfortunate rewards for their efforts, as both Chile and Mexico – bruised by White House cold shouldering – would finally give in to US demands.

Independent journalist Yvonne Ridley was sending news reports from Afghanistan following the US/UK invasion when she was captured by the Taliban, treated unexpectedly well, and eventually released. The capture and release brought Ridley a measure of fame she had not enjoyed before her unplanned adventure. At the time Jane’s message reached her, the journalist was travelling the United Kingdom on a lecture tour. Her subject was more than Afghanistan; it was her conversion.

During captivity, Yvonne became interested in Islam. Upon her return to England, she made the decision to convert. She also became, in the process, a strong anti-war protester. Yvonne was colourful, certainly controversial, and she had worked for several British newspapers.

Yvonne explained, ‘I was handed the document in the upstairs of Patisserie Valerie in Old Compton Street, Soho, by a woman I only knew as Isobel [Katharine’s ‘Jane’] … a name I had given her when we first met at an anti-war meeting in Bristol the previous year. When I looked at the document, I was almost shaking with excitement but tried to remain calm and impassive – as an investigative journalist should – but my stomach was doing turns. Judging from previous intelligence documents I’d encountered, I felt this was the real thing because it looked so ordinary. No red stamp in thirty-point shouting TOP SECRET. It was far more subtle than that. Its real significance was hidden in the rubrics or lettering and numbers which, when translated by an intelligence contact later, revealed the document to be highly classified.[5]

‘It was the real thing. I called a former colleague of mine on the Daily Mirror. I was crestfallen when, after being badgered by me daily, he said that no one in the newsroom had been able to authenticate it and therefore it could not be used. However, journalist Chris Hughes did return it to me by a high-speed bike through Canary Wharf back to my home in Soho.’

Next, Yvonne did the obvious. She called Martin Bright, the London Observer’s home affairs editor. His title seems misleading, as he is an expert in international affairs, human rights, and Islamic issues – in concerns that seem outside the realm of ‘home affairs’. Yvonne and Martin were old friends, and over the years, the two journalists had developed a trusting professional relationship. Among the newspapers for which Yvonne once worked was the Observer.

She says: ‘It might sound pretty naïve, but I really thought this could affect the decision to go to war. If the Observer could authenticate the document it would, I imagined, cause a furore across the world through the pages of the media. The news would jolt the United Nations into acting, and the British government might just pull back from the abyss. If all of that happened, I felt the United States would not go into Iraq on its own, that this would have a domino effect, with publication of the story in the Observer the start.

‘The reason I did not write the story myself was that I had become well known as an anti-war speaker and was one of the founders of the Stop the War movement. I felt if my name were attached to the story, it might have diluted its strength, and so I did something I never thought I would do – I gave up a scoop and the exclusive byline tag for the greater good.’ They met at a café in Central London, not far from the Soho flat Yvonne shared with her young daughter, who was with her this day. A number of media colleagues have been critical of Yvonne for leaving her daughter at home while she adventured in Afghanistan, but Martin takes exception to this criticism. He admires Yvonne as a colleague and as a mother. She is not only a reliable journalist, but also a good, decent person.

‘Yvonne handed me a scrap of paper, with this memo typewritten on it,’ Martin says.[6] ‘There were no markings on it at all, no evidence of who sent it or who it had been sent to. My immediate reaction was, “what use is this to anybody? You could have typed this out.”’

‘No, no. Really, honestly, it’s for real,’ Yvonne insisted. ‘You need to check it out yourself.’ She said she did not know the source of the message, and Martin believed her. If Yvonne’s anti-war, Islamic stance crossed Martin’s mind it did so quickly and did nothing to shake his trust in the woman beside him.

Yvonne had written on the back of the paper some identifying marks from the memo’s header. They included Frank Koza’s name and organization.

Back at the Observer, a vetting process began. It was vital to prove Frank Koza and his message were real. Quiet contacts made with intelligence sources led to some amazing responses, the first being that the memo was a likely forgery. There were cautions expressed about the infamous Hitler Diaries, all forgeries. One had to be careful. Most interesting was word from one source within the intelligence community that a renegade operation within MI6 was leaking the message to discredit the government. The idea seemed to have legs.

‘We became, at the time, convinced that there were elements within the intelligence service that were so unhappy with the war that they would do this,’ Bright says. ‘We thought renegade elements against the war had managed to receive this leak through contacts at GCHQ and thought, “One way of stopping this war is to get this out.”’ Eventually, the journalists believed differently, but for a time, the argument held and the newspaper team moved ahead carefully.

‘When you’re dealing with areas of intelligence, you are constantly in a strange world,’ Bright says, a world in which manipulation of the media by sources is always possible. By now, Observer colleagues Ed Vulliamy in New York and Peter Beaumont, also in London, joined Martin. Both, Martin says, ‘are older and more experienced’.

Ed, from New York, made the call to Frank Koza at the NSA in Maryland. To his amazement, a switchboard operator responded to his request for Koza’s office and immediately put him through to a receptionist. According to Bright, the conversation went like this:

‘Frank Koza’s office.’

‘May I speak to Frank Koza, please.’

‘Who may I say is calling?’

‘Ed Vulliamy of the Observer newspaper in London.’ Pause.

‘Who do you want to speak to?’ the receptionist asked.

‘Frank Koza.’

‘Sorry, I’ve never heard of him.’

The Observer team now believed they were on solid ground. Ed was asked to check around with various insider sources and learned that the style and content of the message seemed consistent with authentic communications of this nature. They decided, after three weeks of investigation, that the memo was not a forgery, that there was no way it ‘could have been set up’.

One final concern was the possibility of legal action against the newspaper.

‘More of a concern to us was that we would be joined in the prosecution,’ Martin explains. ‘To publish is an offence under the Official Secrets Act. We were as culpable as Katharine. But they’re cowards. So, they preferred to take on the little guy – in this case, little woman – rather than us big guys.’

The editorial team had to be careful in speaking to sources about the NSA message. Loose talk could lead to a legal injunction prohibiting publication. Earlier, the newspaper had been successful in fighting an injunction in the case of former MI5 officer David Shayler, also charged with violation of the Official Secrets Act. The court’s decision had been close, but the Observer had prevailed. Bright and company were counting on the government’s not coming after them again. The Shayler case had become so high profile that it now stood as a principle against the police going to journalists for evidence. The Shayler injunction application had asked for all meeting notes and tape recordings concerning the case, a broad ‘trolling’ request eventually denied. Bright notes that a different decision would have meant that every time a journalist wrote about an investigation, an application could be made to ‘turn over everything that might be of interest’ to law enforcement.

Going on the experience with Shayler, trusting their gut feelings about the authenticity of the Koza message, and figuring that the government would not prosecute the Observer for an Official Secrets Act violation, the decision was made to publish three weeks after Bright and Ridley met in Central London.

It was still a risk.

In Washington, last-minute preparations for Powell’s historic and, as it would turn out, inaccurate report to the United Nations must surely have been aided by the information requested by Frank Koza and eagerly scrutinized by the folks behind the operation. It was advantageous to know what the opposition was thinking.

The operation continued beyond Powell’s performance. For four weeks, the surveillance ‘surge’ went according to plan. Despite the continuing problem with Aguilar Zinser and Valdés, there was hope in Washington that the swing voters would soon join the right team (if need be, through coercion), that China would hold to its position of abstaining, and that Russia and France could be convinced to go along. In that case, success was at least within the realm of reasonable possibility. It was, until travel along the secret road to war encountered a dangerous, and unanticipated, barrier.

And in Cheltenham: ‘I went to my local shop, as usual, on a Sunday morning to get my copy of the newspaper. It was 2 March. I was completely, totally bowled over – gobsmacked – when I saw what was on the front page. It knocked me for six, and I think that’s the point where it hit me that I was in trouble. Serious trouble.’

‘The United States is conducting a secret “dirty tricks” campaign against UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of the battle to win votes in favour of war against Iraq,’ Martin Bright, Ed Vulliamy, and Peter Beaumont wrote. ‘Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the e-mails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed in a document leaked to the Observer.

‘The memo describes orders to staff … whose work is clouded in secrecy, to step up its surveillance operations … to provide up-to-the minute intelligence for Bush officials.’

Made clear in both the news story and the memo itself was that UNSC members not specifically named by Frank Koza also were of interest. These would include Russia, France, China, and Mexico. And it would be more than a year later when the full extent of the surveillance was known.

The Observer scoop noted that the disclosure came ‘amid increasingly threatening noises from the United States towards undecided countries of the Security Council who have been warned of the unpleasant economic consequences of standing up to the United States’. Attributed to Washington sources was information that President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, requested the spy operation. It was predicted, albeit wrongly, that this NSA misadventure would be ‘deeply embarrassing to the Americans’.

The nature and depth of news coverage made it clear that this was not going to be one of the usual ‘reliable government source’ leaks. It was explosive, and there would be demands for accountability. Katharine made her way home in struggling slow motion, manoeuvring through a slog of sickening fear, apprehension, and guilt – guilt only so far as Yasar and her family were concerned. The full realization of what her action could mean to her husband’s safety struck her as solidly as a slap on the face. And there were her beloved parents and brother living and working in Taiwan, not to mention Gran in Yorkshire. All those who loved and trusted her.

It was not known who leaked the message or where that person worked. But the fact that the message had been replicated in the newspaper, not just its contents reported in an article, that it had been headlined on page one, signalled that naming the betrayer would be only a matter of time. Gobsmacked.

Katharine fell into the house and into Yasar’s arms, sobbing, so distraught that he was terrified and had difficulty making sense of what she was trying to say. Katharine handed him the newspaper. ‘It was me,’ she said. Slowly he read the headlines and the beginning of Bright’s story. His reaction was gentle, surprisingly so for a passionate Mediterranean temperament. ‘I understand,’ he told her. ‘You did what you had to do. I am proud of you.’

Yasar tried to comfort his wife, but she could not stop crying. He told her, ‘You don’t have to tell anybody. Nobody knows it’s you if you don’t confess. They can’t prove anything.’

The fear made her physically ill all that Sunday and throughout the night. Vomiting and diarrhoea left her weak, and she was barely able to dress for work in the morning. She thought about calling in sick but then thought better of it, not wanting to call undue attention to herself. This morning, when Yasar dropped her at the gate he held her close longer than usual, smoothed her hair, kissed her gently. ‘I am proud of you,’ he told her again when at last she pulled away from him. ‘Very, very proud.’

The manhunt was immediate, thorough, and tough. There would be no anonymous source; the source would be found and punished. Too much was at stake at the moment, principally the hotly debated US/UK draft resolution designed to legitimize a pre-emptive strike on Iraq and to build a broad-based supporting coalition. Throughout the day, various people were called in for interrogation; wide-eyed and apprehensive, they disappeared and, damp-browed and silent, they returned. The air was thick with fear and suspicion.

Katharine’s turn came on Tuesday. She had slept a little on Monday night, but not for long and certainly not peacefully. Her answer to the principal question was simple, direct, and patently false. ‘I read the message and I deleted it.’ The questioning session was just what she expected. She was well prepared and apparently convincing. Katharine remained outwardly calm during her interview but was mentally awash and weak-kneed when she returned to her desk, unable to focus. Blurred images floated mystically across her computer screen, refusing to settle into place, defying her ability to translate. Somehow, she got through the day. The night would be worse.

Yvonne, in Bahrain, was relieved to see the story published ‘after three nail-biting weeks’. Feelings of relief did not last and she feared she would be arrested. She debated whether she should go to Jordan, or even into Iraq.

‘Anything,’ she says, ‘seemed preferable to being arrested.’

CHAPTER 4: Conscience Meets Inspector Tintin

The Observer said yesterday that the memo had been leaked to it ‘by British security sources who objected to being asked to aid the American operation’ … a 28-year-old woman employee at GCHQ was arrested.

– Jeevan Vasagar and Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian

I’m pretty rubbish at telling lies, and I try to be an honest person. If I had continued to lie, I would have been dishonest, like them. I have to say that I’ve only ever followed my conscience. And it, my conscience, is such a nuisance.

– Katharine Gun, to the authors

KATHARINE’S NUISANCE OF a conscience would not let her sleep after telling government interrogators on Tuesday that she had read and immediately deleted Frank Koza’s message, that she had assumed it had nothing to do with her. The magnitude of the lie was too great, the sense of guilt too strong. Her conscience had made her physically ill, and she reached the only decision possible. After a fretful, sleepless night, and tortured indecision, she determined she would admit to her crime. All hopes of anonymity had evaporated.

On Wednesday morning, Yasar did not drive directly to GCHQ; instead, in silence, he drove aimlessly around the city, delaying the moment when he would leave his wife at the GCHQ gate. She sat at his left, exhausted, head tilted back against the seat, numbed. A tape of Turkish music played softly. There was an amazing sense of serenity in the car.

Wednesday morning was chilly but lovely. The rush hour, such as it was, had passed in this city, a uniquely inviting place resting peacefully on the western edge of the lush Cotswolds. In the distance are ancient forests and gentle hills, a verdant green that extends down to gardens throughout the city. In spite of a modern mall downtown, Cheltenham is typically picture-perfect English, with its elegant Georgian architecture and palpable aura of the past. Here, one can reach out and touch the Middle Ages, can marvel at historic Regency influence.

Although she was raised in Taiwan, Katharine is fiercely, loyally British. She never felt her nationality, her fealty to birthplace, more vibrantly than this day when she knew she was taking the risk of being called ‘traitor’.

Finally, reluctantly, Yasar pulled to a stop at the sprawling secret complex located in a suburban setting that seems so inappropriate. But then, that seems to be the way of some of the world’s most secret enterprises, settling themselves as they do in bucolic rural or suburban neighbourhoods. Even if the mission is markedly different, one expects a place more ominous; for example, more like Russia’s infamous Lubyanka, standing meanly in the heart of bustling Moscow.

Not yet ready for occupancy this Wednesday was GCHQ’s new ‘doughnut’, a circular answer to its five-sided American counterpart in Arlington, Virginia. The new facility is located in the open, where from a short distance away one can stop and gawk at the hub of the United Kingdom’s most secret business. This morning, during the drive around Cheltenham, Katharine was thinking that she would not be with her colleagues when it came time to move to the posh new building.

Yasar both knew and understood what his wife had decided, that Katharine had to do what she firmly believed was right, a belief consistent with Yasar’s own philosophy of the human experience. This, in spite of his having told her that ‘no one could prove anything’ if she did not confess. Those were throwaway words, which they both recognized as soon as they were spoken.

The goodbye kiss and cuddle were brief, and Katharine did not look back as the Metro drove away. She knew the scene at the gate would never be repeated.

No coffee, no cinnamon roll this morning. As she entered the office, Katharine, in obvious distress, caught the attention of her manager. Concerned that the young translator was ill, she took Katharine into a side office. With no preamble, with no excuse, Katharine said simply, ‘The leak was me. I did it.’ She burst into tears.

Visibly shocked, disbelieving at first, the woman said nothing but reached out to put an arm around Katharine’s shoulder. When Katharine calmed, her manager took her arm and led her directly to the Security Department, her touch gentle, her obvious concern comforting to the frightened younger woman.

The die was cast, and Katharine’s promising future evaporated as quickly as if it had been deleted from her computer screen. Zap. Gone. Permanently, irretrievably deleted. There would be no handy ‘undo’ or ‘restore’ options.

Questioning began around ten o’clock that morning, Katharine’s interrogators GCHQ security personnel. She was comforted by the presence of her manager, who never left her side. They sat circling a round table, questions and answers posed and responded to with quiet civility. Why? Who? When? And, of course, how? It was necessary to make certain that Katharine was indeed responsible for this egregious breach of the Official Secrets Act.

Two years earlier, on 4 January 2001, Katharine Teresa Harwood signed the GCHQ Statement of Written Particulars, required of all new intelligence officers, and she accepted the terms and conditions set out for her job as a Mandarin translator. It included the paragraph below:

34. OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT

GCHQ is one of the UK’s intelligence and security services. As an employee you will therefore be subject to the special provisions of Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1989. You are required to sign a document on joining and leaving the Department to show that you are aware of the provisions of this section and of the other provisions of the Official Secrets Act which also apply.

Essentially, the Official Secrets Act makes it a criminal offence for all members, or former members, of the security services to disclose official information about their work. The areas covered by the act include releasing information on defence, international relations, security service activities, foreign confidences, and information that might lead to a crime being committed. Katharine’s release of the Koza message fit neatly into the specifically named offences.

Thirteen years earlier, almost to the day, a newly revised OSA made not only secret service officers, like Katharine, but also journalists – like Martin, Ed, and Peter at the Observer – subject to prosecution if they disclosed information the British government considers damaging to the defence of the country or to its interests abroad.

Katharine’s manager escorted her to lunch, then returned with her to the Security Department. She was not left alone at any time. When the Metropolitan Police arrived, they gave Katharine the chilling news that Scotland Yard was coming to make a formal arrest.

‘It was then that it really hit me. I had never been in trouble with the law. I had only spoken to police to ask directions, or when I had things stolen from me. I’d always been the victim, not the criminal.’

At some point, her questioners asked Katharine if she wanted to call a lawyer. She answered that she knew of no one to call and was assured that a duty solicitor would be assigned to her in due course. When Scotland Yard officers arrived, Katharine Gun was arrested for violation of the Official Secrets Act, a serious crime with ominous possibilities of punishment. She was terrified.

Katharine speaks highly of the Scotland Yard officers who arrested and interrogated her, as she does of the Cheltenham ‘regular police’ who held and confined her. The men from the Yard were thorough but kind, one in particular, whom she calls ‘Detective Inspector Tintin’, after a cartoon French boy who adventures around the world. ‘He is a little blond boy with a sticky-uppy flick in his hair,’ Katharine says of him. Because of the serious nature of Katharine’s crime, Scotland Yard conducted all post-arrest interviews and investigations.

Katharine was taken into police custody in Cheltenham, where she went through a booking process and then was led to the Custody Suite. Her personal belongings were taken from her – her handbag, watch, necklace, and her belt. There was no body search, but a female officer patted her down.

‘They were kind about it all,’ she says. ‘I knew they were just doing their jobs, and I tried to keep that in mind.’ This was not difficult to do, given that she had moved to a far distant mental place, one where she did not consider herself a criminal, where she saw herself as quite different from the usual jailhouse residents. She did not belong with the ‘addicts, drunks, and prostitutes’ who were the ‘regular customers’ of this place. Her mental and physical selves had separated.

‘Custody Suite’ was something of a misnomer. It was a single room with a bare cement floor. The bed was a block of cement holding a plastic-covered foam mattress. Next to the bed was a metal toilet without a seat, with no partition of any kind to offer privacy from police officers who opened the door without warning. ‘I was afraid I would be caught on the loo,’ Katharine says. Dinner that night was fruit juice and biscuits. She could have asked for a bowl of chilli but did not. As it turned out, this would be the menu item for breakfast.

Once the booking process was over, a duty solicitor was called on Katharine’s behalf, and she spoke to the woman over the telephone. Next, she was allowed to call her husband.

‘I guess we were both in shock at that stage, when we talked on the telephone. He had already come down to the police station, but they wouldn’t let him see me. They told him, “Oh well, we’re too busy at the moment processing this and that and whatever. Besides, we have to supervise the visit. Try later.” He was asking me on the phone if I was all right, and if I needed anything. He said he would keep trying to see me, but he had no idea what time that would be.

‘Yasar learned where I was when my manager called him. I had given her his mobile number and she called him almost straight away. From one o’clock until eight, then, he wasn’t allowed to see me. He was so worried.’

There would be no more questioning until a search of the Gun home in Cheltenham was completed, which meant not until the next morning. Yasar told Katharine that night that he found the search terribly upsetting. He had let the officers in the front door, then left the premises. Every inch of the place was searched, and only incidentals taken. These included two books in Turkish from among the dozens of books in the house. Curious, one might observe, that the searchers recognized and confiscated the Turkish texts.

‘As to what they were looking for, I think they were just trying to see if there was anything at all that would suggest a pattern of activity. I mean, they didn’t need evidence because I had already admitted that I had done it. They took my passport, my mobile phone. I didn’t have a computer at the time; they surely would have taken it if I had.

‘Later, everything was more or less back in the same position after the search, but you just knew things had been touched. I felt bad, because the house was a rented accommodation, rented from someone at GCHQ posted to London. I felt bad that it was his house being searched as well as our dwelling. I wanted to move after the search, but we continued to live there for over a year. The owner was very calm and dignified about it all. He didn’t say, as he could have, “How dare you get yourself in trouble while living in my property?” I think GCHQ had got in touch with him and alerted him to the search before it happened.’

Yasar would not sleep in the house the night of the search. It was eerie, being there, and he went to stay with a friend.

Sometime after eight o’clock Yasar was finally allowed to see Katharine. They met in a special visiting room, one where the prisoner enters one side of the room and the visitor the other. A glass partition in the centre separates criminal and visitor.

‘Yasar cried the minute he saw me. I would have cried if he had not, but the minute I saw him crying, I thought no, I’ve got to be strong. So I was saying, “Look, it’s going to be okay, don’t worry. I’ll be out tomorrow. Please don’t cry.” He brought me comfortable sweat pants and a jacket to keep me warm. There was only a thin brown blanket on the bed. He brought some books, but they wouldn’t let him give them to me. Anything he brought in like that had to be sealed.

‘We had only fifteen minutes. But because you can’t reach out and comfort each other, I don’t know if more time would be beneficial. You feel really helpless like that.

‘It was such a shock for Yasar. He married a nice, white, middle-class English girl, who had a nice, secure, sensible job with the government. A civil servant, well paid, and then she goes and lands herself in prison.

‘The police were quite considerate that night, as nice as they could be without jeopardizing their professionalism. They said to me, if I needed a cup of tea or anything like that, I could ring the bell.

‘The police said if I had trouble sleeping there would be a duty doctor in later that evening, and I could get a sleeping tablet if I wanted one. I did. I got a headache tablet and a sleeping tablet. I’d never taken a sleeping tablet in my life, so I was quite nervous. It worked a treat, and I didn’t wake up feeling groggy or anything. But I was thinking, if I take the tablet, will it knock me out instantly? Do I dare go to the toilet before I sleep? Suppose I end up falling asleep on the toilet? But no, it worked really well. I slept soundly, to my surprise.’

She saw both the solicitor and Tintin the next morning, meeting in a small, windowless interrogation room. Katharine learned the solicitor would be assigned to her only temporarily, until permanent representation could be arranged. She had no idea at the time what extraordinary, world-class representation that would turn out to be. In the meanwhile, it seemed painfully obvious that the duty solicitor was out of her depth in attempting to deal with a case that was far beyond her experience. The court-appointed solicitor was accustomed to working with ‘street kids’ in trouble. Katharine Gun was something else.

Tintin’s questions focused on the why and how of Katharine’s crime and on whether she had an accomplice. She explained her motivation, and the Scotland Yard officer seemed to accept what she had to say. Interrogation focusing on the question of an accomplice was another matter and reached a stage where Tintin, certain someone else was involved, pressured Katharine for answers. Fearful of betraying Jane, she began to cry, insisting that, ‘All the intentions were mine.’ In attempting to protect Jane, she had said at the time of her arrest and until this instant that she acted totally alone, that she had mailed Koza’s message directly to the newspaper.

Now, under enormous pressure, she asked Tintin, ‘Am I obliged to give a name?’ He said no. He did not need a name, certain he would learn by investigating communication records and other avenues just who it was Katharine had contacted the weekend prior to printing out the memo. Katharine believes she somehow let slip enough clues, perhaps through e-mail and telephone contacts, to lead investigators to Jane. ‘You just don’t know what they’re capable of,’ she says. ‘Experienced criminals do, but not people like me.’

Once the police identified Jane as the likely accomplice, they repeatedly questioned her, searched her home, interviewed her family. She denied everything. Without Katharine’s naming her and given Jane’s refusal to admit to complicity, she was never indicted; evidence was lacking for a conviction. She was furious with Katharine.

‘Jane said, “Oh, Katharine! How could you let your guard down?” She said I should have kept quiet and said “no comment,” that what I had done was “un-streetwise”. It was a bit of a tricky patch for a while, because Jane thought I had let her down, but now, in spite of it all, we are still friends.’

While in Bahrain, Yvonne Ridley received a couple of alarming text messages saying that Katharine had been arrested and police had ‘raided a couple of homes’. Finally, after much deliberation, she abandoned thoughts of hiding out and returned to London.

‘Later,’ Yvonne says, ‘Katharine’s solicitor John Wadham said he would act for me as the “third person”.[1] He revealed that intelligence authorities had been monitoring my mobile phone and that is how they were able to link me to Katharine via Isobel. He contacted Special Branch and told them if they wanted to interview me, to contact him first. This, at least, would stop the prospect of a dawn swoop on my home.’

As it turned out, Yvonne, unlike Jane, was never questioned. But she did receive another kind of special attention. ‘I discovered that what happened earned me a place on an FBI watch list, which means I get questioned about my activities and plans every time I visit America. When I am “randomly selected” at airports, fellow passengers always assume it is because I am a Muslim.’

It was especially ironic that Katharine was incarcerated in the Cheltenham jail and her Turkish husband left outside, when the situation had been reversed less than a year earlier. For two ‘ordinary’ young people in love, the Guns had had enough excitement to last a lifetime. Unfortunately, it had only begun.

And Katharine, in the months ahead, would see Inspector Tintin again.

PART II