Coastal
Post Online
January,
2004
For Telling The Truth
By Norman Solomon
Few Americans have heard of Katharine Gun,
a former British intelligence employee facing charges that she violated the
Official Secrets Act. So far, the American press has ignored her. But the case
raises profound questions about democracy and the public's right to know on
both sides of the Atlantic.
Ms. Gun's legal peril began in Britain on
March 2, when the Observer newspaper exposed a highly secret memorandum by a
top US National Security Agency official. Dated Jan. 31, the memo outlined
surveillance of a half-dozen delegations with swing votes on the UN Security
Council, noting a focus on "the whole gamut of information that could give
US policy-makers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals"-support
for war on Iraq.
The NSA memo said that the agency had
started a "surge" of spying on diplomats at the United Nations in New
York, including wiretaps of home and office telephones along with reading of
e-mails. The targets were delegations from six countries considered to be
pivotal-Mexico, Chile, Angola, Cameroon, Guinea and Pakistan-for the war
resolution being promoted by the United States and Britain.
The scoop caused headlines in much of the
world, and sparked a furor in the "Middle Six" countries. The US
government and its British ally - revealed to be colluding in the UN
surveillance caper-were put on the defensive.
A few days after the story broke, I
contacted the man responsible for leaking the huge trove of secret documents
about the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers more than three decades ago.
What was his assessment of the UN spying memo?
"This leak," Daniel Ellsberg
replied, "is more timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon
Papers." The exposure of the memo, he said, had the potential to block the
invasion of Iraq before it began: "Truth-telling like this can stop a
war."
Katharine Gun's truth-telling did not stop
the war on Iraq, but it did make a difference. Some analysts cite the uproar
from the leaked memo as a key factor in the US-British failure to get Security
Council approval of a pro-war resolution before the invasion began in late
March.
The government of British Prime Minister
Tony Blair quickly arrested Ms. Gun. In June, she formally lost her job as a
translator at the top-secret Government Communications Headquarters in
Gloucester. On Nov. 13, her name surfaced in the British news media when the
Labor Party government dropped the other shoe, charging the 29-year-old woman
with a breach of the Official Secrets Act.
She faces up to two years in prison if
convicted.
Ms. Gun, who is free on bail and is to
appear in court Jan. 19, has responded with measured eloquence. Disclosure of
the NSA memo, she said Nov. 27, was "necessary to prevent an illegal war
in which thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed or
maimed." And Ms. Gun reiterated something that she had said two weeks
earlier: "I have only ever followed my conscience."
All the realpolitik in the world cannot
preclude the exercise of the internal quality that most distinguishes human
beings. Of all the differences between people and other animals, Charles Darwin
observed, "the moral sense of conscience is by far the most
important."
In this case, Ms. Gun's conscience fully
intersected with the needs of democracy and a free press. The British and
American people had every right to know that their governments were involved in
a high-stakes dirty tricks campaign at the United Nations. For democratic societies,
a timely flow of information is the lifeblood of the body politic.
As it happened, the illegal bugging of
diplomats from three continents in Manhattan foreshadowed the illegality of the
war that was to come. Shortly before the invasion began, UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan pointed out that-in the absence of an authorizing resolution from
the Security Council-an attack on Iraq would violate the UN Charter.
Ms. Gun's conspicuous bravery speaks louder
than any rhetoric possibly could. Her actions confront Britons and Americans
alike with difficult choices:
To what extent is the "special
relationship" between the two countries to be based on democracy or
duplicity? How much do we treasure the substance of civil liberties that make
authentic public discourse distinct from the hollowness of secrecy and
manipulation? How badly do we want to know what is being done in our names with
our tax money? And why is it so rare that conscience takes precedence over
expediency?
Norman Solomon is executive director of the
Institute for Public Accuracy in San Francisco. He is co-author of Target Iraq:
What the News Media Didn't Tell You (Context Books, 2003). Copyright (c) 2003,
The Baltimore Sun