US stars hail Iraq war whistleblower

[kskiska]

GCHQ worker Katharine Gun faces jail for exposing American corruption in the run-up to war on Saddam. Now her celebrity supporters insist it is Bush and Blair who should be in the dock. Martin Bright reports


She was an anonymous junior official toiling away with 4,500 other mathematicians, code-breakers and linguists at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham.

But now Katharine Gun, an unassuming 29-year-old translator, is set to become a transatlantic cause célèbre as the focus of a star-studded solidarity drive that brings together Hollywood actor-director Sean Penn and senior figures from the US media and civil rights movement, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Gun appears in court tomorrow accused of breaching the Official Secrets Act by allegedly leaking details of a secret US 'dirty tricks' operation to spy on UN Security Council members in the run-up to war in Iraq last year. If found guilty, she faces two years in prison. She is an unlikely heroine and those who have met her say she would have been happy to remain in the shadows, had she not seen evidence in black and white that her Government was being asked to co-operate in an illegal operation.

The leak has been described as 'more timely and potentially more important than The Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg, the celebrated whistleblower who leaked papers containing devastating details of the US involvement in Vietnam, in 1971. Ellsberg has been vocal in support of Gun. She was arrested last March, days after The Observer first published evidence of an intelligence 'surge' on UN delegations, ordered by the GCHQ's partner organisation, the National Security Agency.

more…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1125854,00.html

[Cocoa]

1. this story is back!

let's see how long the U.S. press can avoid covering it now. They did a n unbelievable job when it first broke, I don't think a single American paper picked it up.

Now, with Jesse, who knows...

[shockingelk]

2. the coverage was so minimal

That I had completely spaced it out. This may be one of the only instances we see the Right urging Gun control.

[priller]

3. I remember what minimal coverage there was in the US

And most of the right wing talking heads dismissed it with, "Oh grow up, of course we spy on UN delegates. Everyone does."

But the fact that the US was asking the Brits for assistance shows that this kind of spying was NOT in fact routine or normal.

It's also amazing that the Brits were and are so concerned about the legality of the war, when in this country it's not even an issue -- although it should be.