Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Hey How Come the British Can Find Leakers?
Apparently, one only gets arrested for leaking information that is detrimental to the Bush administration (even in other countries). From The Guardian)
A sacked GCHQ employee charged yesterday under the Official Secrets Act said last night that her alleged disclosures exposed serious wrongdoing by the US and could have helped to prevent the deaths of Iraqis and British forces in an "illegal war".
Katharine Gun, 29, of Cheltenham, was charged by Metropolitan police special branch officers under section 1 (1) of the act. The section states that any serving or former member of the security and intelligence agencies is guilty of an offence if they disclose "any information" about their work without official authority.
In a statement last night, Ms Gun said: "Any disclosures that may have been made were justified because they exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the US government which attempted to subvert our own security services. Secondly, they could have helped prevent widescale death and casualties amongst ordinary Iraqi people and UK forces in the course of an illegal war."
Gun exposed the US government's plot to bug the phones and intercept the emails of the UN security council delegates who were considered swing voters in the run up to the war in Iraq. Maybe, at least, the story of this arrest will help shine the media spotlight back on the US's dirty tricks operation which has fallen down the memory hole. Anyway, Katherine Gun deserves support and a lot of respect. What she did was pretty brave.
