Bush and Blair continue to be celebrated in high society. Perhaps the most emotionally distressing aspect is the underlying knowledge that absolutely nothing has changed on any level of power, in any way, since this extraordinary deception. And, if the invasion was unlawful, Britain could be guilty of war crimes.If you want to become freshly enraged about the massive war crime we call the Iraq war, go see this film.
Katharine’s lawyers had evidence that Lord Goldsmith initially thought the war might be illegal. Lord Goldsmith, Britain’s then-attorney general, declared the war legal but it wasn’t straightforward. In February 2004 - with the casualties multiplying into the thousands in Iraq - Katharine finally had her day in court. That’s when Katharine did something extraordinary: “I just blurted out that it was me.” She was interviewed, charged, and given bail. The war was imminent and GCHQ had a traitor in the ranks. His advice? “Keep schtum.”īut the news went viral. “I felt like I had a target on my back and a neon sign on the front of my forehead saying ‘Guilty’”. GCHQ on the warpath over leaked Iraq memo But what if the memo was real? Martin also risked prison for breaching the Official Secrets Act just for having it in his possession. Who sent it? Who received it? Was it even real? Anyone could have conjured up a fake email to stop the US and Britain from putting boots on the ground in Iraq. The fallout could be huge, but the email header was knocked off. “This was one of those moments where you get a tingle up your spine,” Martin told the True Spies podcast. The memo eventually made its way into the hands of Martin Bright, a London reporter for The Observer. Once it was printed, Katharine slipped it into her purse: “For the rest of the day, it felt as though it was burning a hole through my handbag.” Bag searches were rare and Katharine was relieved to sail through security at the end of the day, but now what? Secretive spies don’t often socialize with nosy journalists, so Katharine posted a copy of the email to a friend. The GCHQ translator sat down in another section of GCHQ, clicked on the NSA email, then copied and pasted it into a note document. Katharine Gun printed the NSA memo but wasn’t sure what to do next Her plan took shape over the weekend: “Once I started thinking - and, if you like, conspiring to commit a crime - I felt as though I had a target on my back.” She was prepared to break Britain’s Official Secrets Act if necessary, and leak the email. “The stakes were so high, and the cost to innocent life was so high, that I had basically a duty to get it out to the public,” Katharine said. In other words, intel to blackmail diplomats from smaller nations - Mexico, Chile, Pakistan, Angola, Cameroon, and Guinea - so they’d agree to support the Iraq invasion. It was January 2003, two months before the war started, and the NSA wanted Britain’s help spying on six UN Security Council diplomats, requesting “the whole gamut of information that would give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US interests or goals”. “I actually had access to information that was explosive enough to derail the potential invasion of Iraq.” “I almost felt like I'd entered a parallel universe,” Katharine said. She was also cleared to read sensitive GCHQ emails, which is how she stumbled on a memo from the US National Security Administration (NSA). Katharine’s job at GCHQ was to gather signals intelligence - emails and phone recordings - to translate into English, then supply any intelligence to the UK Foreign Office and Ministry of Defense. Listen to Katharine Gun's podcast: The Spy Who Said No
0 kommentar(er)
