US stars hail Iraq war whistleblower

[Judi Lynn]

US stars hail Iraq war whistleblower

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

Sunday January 18, 2004
The Observer

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.
(snip/...)

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,1125812,00.html

[ant]

1. I don't understand

I realize that the leak was embarrassing to the US, but I don't understand why the spying was illegal. I kind of assumed most countries, especially the US, would spy on diplomats and representatives this way - that's kind of why I didn't consider the leak such a big deal. Is there something in the UN charter that forbids spying there? I haven't been able to find out much more about this.

[R Hickey]

2. Doesn't look like anything major to me, either.

Just one more thread in a vast tapestry of deception. I've seen the Bushovics do worse dirty tricks every other week.