The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War

by Marcia Mitchell

  ‘Later, everything was more or less back in the same position after the search, but you just knew things had been touched. I felt bad, because the house was a rented accommodation, rented from someone at GCHQ posted to London. I felt bad that it was his house being searched as well as our dwelling. I wanted to move after the search, but we continued to live there for over a year. The owner was very calm and dignified about it all. He didn’t say, as he could have, “How dare you get yourself in trouble while living in my property?” I think GCHQ had got in touch with him and alerted him to the search before it happened.’

  Yasar would not sleep in the house the night of the search. It was eerie, being there, and he went to stay with a friend.

  Sometime after eight o’clock Yasar was finally allowed to see Katharine. They met in a special visiting room, one where the prisoner enters one side of the room and the visitor the other. A glass partition in the centre separates criminal and visitor.

  ‘Yasar cried the minute he saw me. I would have cried if he had not, but the minute I saw him crying, I thought no, I’ve got to be strong. So I was saying, “Look, it’s going to be okay, don’t worry. I’ll be out tomorrow. Please don’t cry.” He brought me comfortable sweat pants and a jacket to keep me warm. There was only a thin brown blanket on the bed. He brought some books, but they wouldn’t let him give them to me. Anything he brought in like that had to be sealed.

  ‘We had only fifteen minutes. But because you can’t reach out and comfort each other, I don’t know if more time would be beneficial. You feel really helpless like that.

  ‘It was such a shock for Yasar. He married a nice, white, middle-class English girl, who had a nice, secure, sensible job with the government. A civil servant, well paid, and then she goes and lands herself in prison.

  ‘The police were quite considerate that night, as nice as they could be without jeopardizing their professionalism. They said to me, if I needed a cup of tea or anything like that, I could ring the bell.

  ‘The police said if I had trouble sleeping there would be a duty doctor in later that evening, and I could get a sleeping tablet if I wanted one. I did. I got a headache tablet and a sleeping tablet. I’d never taken a sleeping tablet in my life, so I was quite nervous. It worked a treat, and I didn’t wake up feeling groggy or anything. But I was thinking, if I take the tablet, will it knock me out instantly? Do I dare go to the toilet before I sleep? Suppose I end up falling asleep on the toilet? But no, it worked really well. I slept soundly, to my surprise.’

  She saw both the solicitor and Tintin the next morning, meeting in a small, windowless interrogation room. Katharine learned the solicitor would be assigned to her only temporarily, until permanent representation could be arranged. She had no idea at the time what extraordinary, world-class representation that would turn out to be. In the meanwhile, it seemed painfully obvious that the duty solicitor was out of her depth in attempting to deal with a case that was far beyond her experience. The court-appointed solicitor was accustomed to working with ‘street kids’ in trouble. Katharine Gun was something else.

  Tintin’s questions focused on the why and how of Katharine’s crime and on whether she had an accomplice. She explained her motivation, and the Scotland Yard officer seemed to accept what she had to say. Interrogation focusing on the question of an accomplice was another matter and reached a stage where Tintin, certain someone else was involved, pressured Katharine for answers. Fearful of betraying Jane, she began to cry, insisting that, ‘All the intentions were mine.’ In attempting to protect Jane, she had said at the time of her arrest and until this instant that she acted totally alone, that she had mailed Koza’s message directly to the newspaper.

  Now, under enormous pressure, she asked Tintin, ‘Am I obliged to give a name?’ He said no. He did not need a name, certain he would learn by investigating communication records and other avenues just who it was Katharine had contacted the weekend prior to printing out the memo. Katharine believes she somehow let slip enough clues, perhaps through e-mail and telephone contacts, to lead investigators to Jane. ‘You just don’t know what they’re capable of,’ she says. ‘Experienced criminals do, but not people like me.’

  Once the police identified Jane as the likely accomplice, they repeatedly questioned her, searched her home, interviewed her family. She denied everything. Without Katharine’s naming her and given Jane’s refusal to admit to complicity, she was never indicted; evidence was lacking for a conviction. She was furious with Katharine.

  ‘Jane said, “Oh, Katharine! How could you let your guard down?” She said I should have kept quiet and said “no comment,” that what I had done was “un-streetwise”. It was a bit of a tricky patch for a while, because Jane thought I had let her down, but now, in spite of it all, we are still friends.’

  While in Bahrain, Yvonne Ridley received a couple of alarming text messages saying that Katharine had been arrested and police had ‘raided a couple of homes’. Finally, after much deliberation, she abandoned thoughts of hiding out and returned to London.

  ‘Later,’ Yvonne says, ‘Katharine’s solicitor John Wadham said he would act for me as the “third person”.[1] He revealed that intelligence authorities had been monitoring my mobile phone and that is how they were able to link me to Katharine via Isobel. He contacted Special Branch and told them if they wanted to interview me, to contact him first. This, at least, would stop the prospect of a dawn swoop on my home.’

  As it turned out, Yvonne, unlike Jane, was never questioned. But she did receive another kind of special attention. ‘I discovered that what happened earned me a place on an FBI watch list, which means I get questioned about my activities and plans every time I visit America. When I am “randomly selected” at airports, fellow passengers always assume it is because I am a Muslim.’

  It was especially ironic that Katharine was incarcerated in the Cheltenham jail and her Turkish husband left outside, when the situation had been reversed less than a year earlier. For two ‘ordinary’ young people in love, the Guns had had enough excitement to last a lifetime. Unfortunately, it had only begun.

  And Katharine, in the months ahead, would see Inspector Tintin again.

  PART II

  FALLOUT

  CHAPTER 5: Detour on the Secret Road to War

  It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action … But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.

  – Matthew Rycroft, memo to David Manning, 23 July 2002

  PUBLICATION OF THE Frank Koza message created an unexpected detour on the Bush–Blair road map to war. In truth, there were two maps, one public and one secret, parallel routes with quite different landmarks along the way. As was known at the time, the stubborn group of swing nation UN Security Council members – Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, and Pakistan – along with troublesome sceptics like France, China, and Russia, were already creating disappointing, highly publicized roadblocks.

  A proper trip to Baghdad, charted on the public map, required the United Nations’ authorized support of military force; it required a broad-based, approving coalition. However, standing in the way was the uncooperative behaviour of the anti-war bunch, a collection of mischief-makers waving Caution and Detour signs. The stalemate led to the cartographers deciding that covert intervention was called for, that it was necessary to switch maps. To purchase clandestine travel insurance, as it were. They would buy it from the NSA.

  The next-to-last historic marker on the public map was to have been a new UN Security Council resolution, with the final destination the strike itself. Now, there would be no second resolution. It was necessary to bypass that marker post-haste and travel directly to Baghdad, ignoring the niceties of UN resolutions and world approval.

  No magic carpet ride to Persia was planned for this perilous secret trip. No yellow brick road leading to Oz, but rather to a mythical destination at least as im
aginatively conceived (a quick, easy, slam dunk of a war), a destination sought by a cast of peculiar and intriguing characters doing business in London, Washington, and Crawford, Texas.

  The world had come to know the supposedly legal – if, to some, alarmingly accelerated – trip to Baghdad. But as of 2 March, when the Koza message was revealed, the existence of the secret map was, at least in part, also revealed. The world – at least those who took notice – learned that an ugly, illegal business was being conducted by the Baghdad-bound. While open, above-board debate continued with the swing nations, below-board dirty tricks were being played on them.

  Those in the know understood that enticements of various kinds were quietly being offered in exchange for pro-war commitments; they also understood that non-compliance with United States wishes could be unhealthy for smaller nations dependent upon US largesse for certain essential needs. But for others, naïve about the art of bully diplomacy, the Koza revelation was shocking.

  It was shocking as well to unsuspecting members of Congress and of Parliament, even to those who understood that spying on the United Nations was nothing new. What was new was an obvious and blatant attempt at manipulation of UN votes. This was a different matter entirely.

  Together, the United States and the United Kingdom had been travelling a secret and deliberately deceptive route for at least eleven months before the Koza message was leaked. Alone, America had been following the course for several years, if one includes the team of advisers who had been pushing for an invasion of Iraq since the late 1990s. Now, there was George W. Bush, in whose craw Saddam had been residing since the early 1990s – although not nearly as irritably as in that of Dick Cheney, who had been Secretary of Defense during George H. W. Bush’s presidency.

  The new vice president was in the game for the first Iraq War. Unfinished business could be troubling to a man like Cheney.

  All the way around, for both the jaded and the naïve, there is no question that publication of the NSA message to GCHQ was politically and diplomatically explosive. As for the perpetrators, one can only imagine the reaction of NSA director Michael Hayden when he learned of the Observer story, which must have happened before the London ink was dry on page one. For Sir Francis, still at the GCHQ helm, the revelation also must have been a moment of horror, the single bright spot the fact that only a handful of insiders knew at the time whether the British had responded to the US invitation to conspiracy. Worldwide outrage would focus on the chaps across the Atlantic. But Richards, and Pepper to follow, would have their competent hands full at home, not only in finding the detestable culprit who leaked the Koza message, but also in dealing with elements of the UK government who would be asking embarrassing questions. Parliament, unaware of the full extent of Blair’s commitments to Bush, clearly would become a horrendous headache.

  It would be two years before the world learned additional details about the secret map that had charted the course from the beginning or, indeed, about the lies and deceptions related to its existence.

  Volumes have been written about America’s run-up to war in Iraq. It is a sad and tawdry tale, but not one to be repeated in detail here, with all the characters, telephone calls, meetings, and pleadings. Instead, focus is directed toward certain British–US aspects that seem particularly significant to this story. Included is mind-blowing information from a 21 July 2002 UK Cabinet Office briefing paper, and a now-notorious ‘Downing Street memorandum’ dated two days later, both essential in understanding the context and motivation for a very risky illegal spy operation.

  The leaked information helps in understanding why a young woman’s effort to avert a war was futile, given the secret war planning already under way. The armoured train had left the station, and there would be no stopping it until it reached its final destination.

  It should be noted that publication of these secret documents, two and three years after the war began, received little follow-up attention in the US media. A yawn, a ho-hum view prevailed in the weeks following their disclosure. Enough had been said in print and on broadcasts. After all, everyone knew, or should have known, what the Bush camp was up to when it was spinning the WMD story and hiding its real motive for war; they knew, or should have known, that no one really believed Saddam Hussein had WMD. In fact, a Harris poll challenged that position, noting that the share of Americans who believed Saddam possessed WMD at the time of invasion was on the rise; by February 2005, 50 per cent were believers.[1] Following up on these stories would have been helpful to a public’s understanding of the magnitude of the deception involved.

  Typical was the opinion expressed on 12 June 2005 by Michael Kinsley, Los Angeles Times editorial page editor and columnist, who gave the memo short shrift. Who needed a secret memo to know that war was inevitable, that ‘the administration’s decision to topple Saddam Hussein by force’ was decided by the fall of 2002? Kinsley was off slightly; the decision to invade was made in the spring of 2002.

  Katharine Gun will not tell how much she knew of what was going on in her secret world and has spoken publicly only of her outrage at seeing the Koza message, of understanding its meaning, and of her reaction. It is safe to say, however, that she (otherwise naïve) and many of her fellow intelligence officers troubled about the war were aware of at least some of the truth.

  Gobsmacking stuff, as it were.

  To begin at the beginning, America’s future president was alleged to have referred to Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s as ‘the man who tried to get my dad’. Campaigning in 1999, he told his audience that he would ‘take out’ Saddam. By the time he became president, it is not unreasonable to conclude that some sort of amorphous map leading to Baghdad already existed in the mind of George W. Bush, for whom taking out the Iraqi leader seemed an excellent idea.

  A map to Baghdad more exact, more elaborate than Bush’s existed in the minds of members of his inner circle, the colourful characters who were on the scene well before Bush took office. In addition to Cheney, they include I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, convicted of leaking the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Libby’s planned leak was an apparent payback for her diplomat husband’s disputing White House claims that Iraq was purchasing yellowcake uranium from Niger. Those who assumed Libby leaked Plame’s name on instructions from a get-even Cheney were surprised when Libby corrected the record by identifying his source as George W. Bush, who later commuted Libby’s sentence.

  Among other members of the hawkish circle were Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard L. Armitage, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, John Bolton, and Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush.

  All were a part of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a right-wing think tank and source of a letter to President Bill Clinton in 1998 demanding military action to remove Saddam Hussein. Signatures on the letter included those of Abrams, Armitage, Perle, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz.[2] At the time, Clinton’s interest in getting rid of the Iraqi president was mainly expressed in dollars filtered to the opposition in support of efforts to topple Saddam. This was not nearly aggressive enough.

  In Great Britain, Tony Blair and Foreign Office officials, noting a September 2000 PNAC document titled ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’, and familiar with its origin, worried about a secret US map to Iraq – and to other destinations in the Gulf region. PNAC obviously wanted to get rid of Saddam, by whatever means. Perle, however, has been quoted as saying that Saddam was only the first target – nothing short of ‘total war’ would do the trick.

  ‘No stages. This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq … this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war … our children will sing great songs about us years from now.’[3]

  Former UK cabinet minister the Honourable Clare Short was one of those in Blair’s government w
ho doubted that the future held the promise envisioned by Perle. She was desperately worried about what appeared to be a disastrous policy born in the project, and now PNAC members were among President Bush’s closest advisers. America was on the wrong path and attempting to drag the United Kingdom along. It was abusing its power, seeking to dominate, heading for certain downfall.

  ‘This is a mad administration! It’s the Roman Empire all over again,’ she told the authors. ‘It was the world’s most powerful empire, and then it crumbled. I think America has gone barmy; it is misusing its power, it’s spending too much on arms, making itself hated.’[4] Short quotes polls indicating the extent to which hatred of America has increased worldwide in recent years; most significantly, the Iraq War years.

  The outspoken British lawmaker strongly cautioned Blair against ‘making serious mistakes’, against going along with what appeared to be a frightening Bush-led trip to Baghdad. He told her not to worry; he would not blindly follow the American president – not walk the Bush walk. She should be assured, he said, that Parliament would be kept in the Iraqi loop.

  It was not.

  Clare Short was not alone. A number of her colleagues believed George Bush to be truly obsessed by the idea of being the war president who would rid the world of Saddam Hussein. They counted on Blair to deal with the obsession, and the prime minister continued to insist that nothing was decided upon, that no agreements had been made about joining the United States in going after Saddam. At the time, there was strong feeling that the Palestine state issue must be settled before Blair even thought about Saddam. Blair said he agreed. Palestine first.

  On the weekend of 6 April 2002, Bush and Blair met at the president’s ranch in Texas. This is where Blair agreed to go along with a military strike against Iraq for ‘the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime followed by elimination of WMD’.[5] Here was the secret, number-one, primary reason for war, a reason later deliberately buried under a ton of frightening WMD rhetoric, and with good reason. Regime change was outlawed by international accords binding both the United States and the United Kingdom.