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 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |