The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War

by Marcia Mitchell

  In Taiwan, Katharine Gun’s father, Paul Harwood, read the 10 March Guardian on the Internet, intensely interested in the follow-up story about the leak of Frank Koza’s message, which had appeared the Sunday before. Now the story was linked to GCHQ, where his daughter worked.

  On the Sunday before, Harwood had seen the original Observer story, ‘Revealed: US Dirty Tricks to Win Vote on Iraq War’, and called it to the attention of his wife and son, shocked that the United States would make such an egregious, politically damaging misstep in its campaign for war.

  UK citizens, the Harwoods worried that British intelligence had joined in the spy operation, and now they wondered if the person who leaked the document was someone Katharine might know. Jan Harwood says her husband and son followed the news of the ‘dirty tricks leak like hawks’.[1]

  Paul expected to hear explosive media reaction to the GCHQ leak coming from other news sources – particularly those from the United States. He followed the story on BBC shortwave radio and the Internet, but the expected US pickup did not happen. He watched CNN. The ‘news void’, as he calls it, left him amazed and angry.

  ‘The only reference to the story that I can recall in the following days was a programme – I think it was called International Correspondent – on CNN. The presenter said there were rumours of US spying on the United Nations. It was just a very brief reference when he was talking to an ambassador from an African country.’

  Paul recalls that the interview was taking place in a conference room at UN headquarters. ‘The ambassador was asked, “Do you know anything about this?” And he made a joke of it, he laughed! He had a tape recorder on the desk, and said, “The United States is listening to me do this?” More laughter, and that was it. The whole thing took about forty seconds. I thought, What the hell’s going on here? This is a major story and why isn’t it all over, everywhere?’

  Paul wanted the world to know about the NSA spy operation. This, of course, was before he learned of Katharine’s part in it. Later, he found the prospect of publicity surrounding Katharine ‘alarming’.

  It was five days after the first story broke that Katharine telephoned and spoke to her mother. ‘She told Jan that she’d been suspended from work for something she had done,’ Paul says. ‘She didn’t say what it was, but said she thought we would approve. Then, when I saw the story about a 28-year-old woman’s arrest, it wasn’t a big leap, putting two and two together. I nearly went through the roof. I thought, my God, it’s her!’

  Katharine’s mother came home from church that Sunday to find her husband at the computer, this latest article on the screen. ‘It’s our Katharine!’ he told her. Jan Harwood says she was ‘thunderstruck’, and that she and Paul were ‘kind of kicking ourselves for not realizing immediately that Katharine was in deep trouble’. But the earlier call had not implied anything very serious, perhaps some minor infraction of employment rules.

  Once the dots were connected that day, the Harwoods wanted desperately to talk with their daughter. There were so many questions to be asked, and, of course, assurances to be given. Because of the time difference between Taiwan and Cheltenham, they suffered through an agonizing wait before placing the call.

  It was enormously helpful that Katharine did not have to say, ‘I did it,’ to her parents when they called. It was they who said the words.

  ‘We know it was you.’

  In the minutes to follow, Jan and Paul Harwood promised wholehearted support. They let Katharine know of their pride in her and in what she had done. They understood, they told her. Fully, completely. Clearly, the Harwoods’ daughter had figured her parents’ reaction correctly when, in the earlier telephone conversation with her mother, she said she thought they would approve of the ‘something’ she had done that had got her into ‘a bit of trouble’.

  ‘We did, absolutely,’ her father says. ‘We gave her full backing from the start. We knew that whatever she did she did for good reason.’ Her mother’s reaction was an enthusiastic ‘Good for her!’

  A blatant breach of international law for such a sordid purpose by the United States (and likely, they surmised, by Great Britain as well) was unacceptable; yet their daughter’s lawbreaking in protest was not only acceptable to both parents, it was also courageous, astonishingly heroic. Much later, shortly before Katharine’s 2004 appearance at the Old Bailey, her mother would speak publicly about Katharine’s leaking the infamous e-mail. ‘I am deeply proud of what my daughter did to reveal wrongdoing on the part of the US and British governments.’

  For now, the world was still in the dark about the identity of the twenty-eight-year-old intelligence officer arrested in Cheltenham.

  Jan Harwood admitted thinking that the situation ‘could be a bit tricky’ for her daughter but was still proud and completely supportive. She would not allow herself to become consumed with worry, as many mothers might have done. No point in being frantic about what might happen.

  ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ Jan says. ‘A lot of it comes down to basic personality. I’m not a natural worrier; I only face a problem as and when it needs to be faced. I won’t waste psychic energy in thinking about what might happen.’ Her husband is ‘a bigger worrier’. She adds, ‘He was more scared than I was.’

  Less than two weeks after the Guardian story reporting the arrest of a twenty-eight-year-old GCHQ employee, a US-led token coalition launched a pre-emptive strike on Iraq. Katharine Gun would be the new war’s first British casualty.

  Legal representation was a major concern for both Katharine and her parents and the subject of frequent communication between England and Taiwan. It was clear that the duty solicitor assigned to Katharine’s case would have to be replaced by someone more experienced in this aspect of criminal law.

  During this first week after her release, Katharine learned that the Guardian news group, to which the Observer belonged, felt obliged to pay for her defence. A tempting offer, given her limited financial circumstances, but she declined. ‘I didn’t want to be beholden to a newspaper.’

  Katharine’s other option was her employee union. As a paid-up member of the Public and Civil Services Union, she was entitled to representation by the union’s legal staff. But the union solicitors were employment, not criminal, specialists, hardly appropriate for her case.

  It was at this point that Katharine learned of Liberty’s interest in her.[2] The non-profit human rights organization made contact through Katharine’s union, and a meeting with Liberty director John Wadham followed. Union legal staff would assist with employment issues, but Liberty would become her criminal case solicitors. It was with profound relief that Katharine accepted Liberty’s offer to defend her. ‘If it hadn’t been for Liberty we would have been sunk – swallowed up, chewed over, and spat out,’ Paul Harwood says. ‘And probably destitute to boot. Liberty was our salvation.’

  It was time to tell others in her family about her arrest.

  ‘And then I did tell my grandmother and my aunt, and my grandma said she would be happy to come down and stay with me, just to help keep my mind off things and to give me some company. So we agreed, and the following week she came down and spent some time with me, just puttering around the house, mostly. When Yasar had a free day, he would drive us into the country. Otherwise, we would walk into town along a pleasant tree-lined avenue with nice houses on either side.’

  Katharine’s silver-haired grandmother, her father’s mum, is short, delightfully sprightly, warm, and intelligent. She is a caring, thoughtful person, just what her frightened granddaughter needed at the moment. The authors met her in Brighton, where she and her two charming sisters, Katharine’s beloved great-aunts, were heading out for a festive lunch. Firm in their devotion to Katharine, one gets the feeling they would have taken on Inspector Tintin and the entire Crown Prosecution Service, given half a chance. It was typical of Katharine’s grandmother that she searched for comforting moments in the garden at Cheltenham.

  ‘As we foraged
around, we uncovered a lovely path that had completely overgrown, and I remember we also bought some plants which my grandma helped me put in. Now we had a bit of colour in my garden!

  ‘My grandma stayed for several days, a week or longer, and it was just so nice to have her around, to have her company. Of course, she was worried about what was going to happen to me. I was, too. At this stage none of us really knew what to expect. The limbo period had started and none of us would know how long it would last.’

  PART III

  THE WOMAN

  CHAPTER 9: Eight Months in Limbo

  Gun’s existence was reduced to staying at home with the curtains drawn, plus occasional trips to the local coffee shop.

  – Evening Standard (London), 27 May 2005, reflecting on 2003

  IT WAS THE limbo period. But the Evening Standard’s picture of Katharine in hiding over the next weeks and months was exaggerated.

  Yet this was an unquestionably frightening period for her and, at times, one of near-isolation. It was especially so at the beginning, when hours were made bearable only by the presence of family and two or three close friends. Later she would function well when she was alone, but for now people around her provided distraction and kept her imagination from constantly dwelling on the terrifying possibilities that loomed ahead.

  During these early days and weeks, Katharine clung to the hope that she would not be charged and would not face prison. Perhaps, she thought, the government would not want to pursue the case, and she could ‘just slip under the rug’ of anonymity and emerge later in a different place, in a different role. No one need ever know. This was her imagination at its ultimate best, a scenario played out from time to time in an ephemeral mist of hope.

  Yasar was quietly supportive, always there, always with her, his presence warm and comforting. It was difficult each day to see him climb into the Metro and drive off to work, leaving her behind. It was a moment of sad remembrance for Katharine, forced to relive those other mornings when they would leave the house together, and he would drop her off at GCHQ, mornings when she would have her cinnamon bun and coffee before settling down to the business of Mandarin translation.

  Katharine still walked to meet her husband now and again after his workday was finished, but now she did so in a way to avoid running into former GCHQ colleagues. The couple seldom went out, except for rare occasions with a very few close friends. If anything, their marriage strengthened under the pressure of the unknown and treacherous landscape that lay before them.

  Inspector Tintin came to call one stormy day, bringing along a colleague. The entrance to the Guns’ home was at the side, a tiny space with a steep staircase leading immediately up to the bedrooms. Katharine, in her nightclothes, ran downstairs to open the door and found the two officers standing in the pouring rain.

  ‘Hello, may we step inside?’ the inspector asked.

  Heart pounding, Katharine held open the door and the two officers crowded inside. Noting Katharine’s nightwear, ever-kindly Tintin suggested she might want to go upstairs and get dressed; they would wait in the entryway until she was ready. Katharine thanked him, turned, and was partway up the stairs when the other officer, clearly looking up her gown, whistled softly. Furious, Tintin ordered him outside, where he remained, storm or no, throughout his supervisor’s visit with Katharine.

  The inspector’s questions were few, a matter of routine checking. He collected a second mobile telephone; the first was taken during the initial search of the flat. Although he was non-threatening in manner, the fact that he was present, that New Scotland Yard would keep her on its screen, was threatening in itself. It brought home the vivid reality that had faded, if only slightly, in the garden with Katharine’s grandmother.

  Katharine learned to lie about her work status. Because GCHQ staff sometimes studied little-known languages at various ‘off-campus’ locations, perhaps for months at a time, learning in family homes or elsewhere, a missing linguist did not necessarily reflect disciplinary action. Still, she stayed away from GCHQ and places where she might find herself in the position of having to repeat what was a painfully uncomfortable lie.

  ‘I continued to talk with my parents on the phone and it occurred to my mum, who wasn’t teaching full time, that she could come to the UK much earlier than usual to spend time with me. Not long after my grandma left for home, in mid-April, Mum arrived – a good time for her, because she really loves Britain in the springtime, when the daffodils and all the flowers are out. It was a really superb spring that year. In fact, I remember that on the day my mum arrived, it was so warm that she hurried upstairs and dug a bathing suit out of her neatly packed suitcase so we could sit outside in the garden and enjoy the amazing summerlike springtime. And we did that for several days because it was such wonderful weather, and my mum is the queen of relaxation. She’s quite happy just sitting and reading a book and doing very little. She thoroughly enjoyed that time I think, and also kept me – and my mind – occupied.’

  Jan Harwood’s calming presence in Cheltenham at this time was immeasurably valuable to Katharine, not only as a mother but also as a close friend, a companion with whom everything could be shared. Unflappable Jan was able to smooth some of the roughness of the pervasive not-knowing that was so depressing for Katharine.

  Jan’s motto, ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ was serving her well. Her refusal to deal with a potential evil clouding their days and haunting their nights gave her the strength and forbearance to keep Katharine from succumbing to despair. ‘There was absolutely no point in worrying about problems or disaster.’ Whatever lay ahead for Katharine would be faced together. If Jan Harwood had any serious worries that spring, they were focused on her husband and his fear for Katharine. Jan would not anticipate the evil that might be ahead for all of them, but Paul would – and did.

  While criminal court issues in the Gun case would fall under the aegis of the Crown Prosecution Service, employment issues would be adjudicated by the government’s human resources administration at GCHQ. That the issues so categorized, employment and criminal, were essentially identical made the whole business infinitely more difficult for the offender. A single act would be judged in two different spheres.

  On 5 March, the day of Katharine’s arrest, she was suspended from duty ‘pending the outcome of the police investigation’. She was kept on the payroll. In its formal but courteous notice of Precautionary Suspension from Duty, dated 6 March, a personnel officer writes, ‘I am sure that you will appreciate that it would not be appropriate for you to attend work at this time.’

  On 9 May, Katharine was formally notified by GCHQ of disciplinary charges against her and invited to respond. On the twenty-second of the month, John Wadham wrote to the agency’s Mr Stephen Gale, who was assigned Katharine’s case. Wadham’s letter was cautious, acknowledging GCHQ’s requirement that any response to the formal notification must come directly from Katharine ‘without assistance from a legal advisor’. The solicitor emphasized that his correspondence was not intended to serve as her response, but rather to raise questions about certain concerns. Those concerns dealt directly with the entangled nature of the specific employment and criminal issues involved with Katharine’s violation of the Official Secrets Act.

  ‘Our central concern,’ Wadham wrote, ‘is that any submissions or statements that Katharine makes in these [employment] disciplinary proceedings are likely to be based on exactly the same material as her defence in any criminal proceedings.’ In order to defend her job, Katharine might have to disclose material that could prejudice her criminal trial. Care must be taken, advised Wadham, to prevent this sort of prejudice. His lengthy and detailed letter, with specific citations and references to case law, concludes by asking for a suspension of disciplinary procedures ‘subject to the determination of any criminal proceedings’.

  Should Katharine not be charged, should there be no criminal case, such a delay could prove to be extremely helpful – in the unlikely poss
ibility that anything could.

  Fortunately for Katharine, her mother was still with her during these early days of dealing with the GCHQ administration. While there was no real hope of reinstatement or clearing of her record, Katharine knew the process of filing statements and making an appeal was necessary.

  ‘I knew they wouldn’t reinstate me, but it was a matter of following procedure. Liberty advised me to follow the routine that was open to me. They did, however, try to prevent GCHQ from dismissing me because they argued that it would prejudice a trial.’

  Less than a week after Wadham wrote to GCHQ, the agency met with government lawyers in charge of the criminal case; the following day, Liberty was notified that Wadham’s request for delay had been denied and the agency would proceed with the internal disciplinary hearing. It was 29 May.

  That same evening, Katharine heard BBC broadcast journalist Andrew Gilligan quote a ‘senior government source’ who claimed that Number 10 Downing Street ‘probably knew’ the now-suspect 45-minute claim was wrong. The broadcast would launch an intense political storm, with fervent denials, over manipulation of intelligence to support the Iraq War. Tonight, one listener painfully familiar with the concept of intelligence manipulation was especially interested in Gilligan’s report. She was about to be ejected, formally, eternally, from the intelligence community.

  On 11 June, the GCHQ disciplinary board convened, with Katharine present. On the advice of counsel, Katharine refused to answer the board’s questions. Her position, as presented to those who would judge her, was that participation in the hearing could jeopardize her criminal trial. Made clear from the beginning was a line carefully drawn on the basis of the distinction between employment and criminal issues.

  Thus, agency disciplinary action against employee Katharine Gun was not that she had breached the Official Secrets Act, but rather that she had acted ‘in contravention of service as a GCHQ employee’. The distinction was hardly helpful. In any event, what was happening now was only phase one, loss of her job. In a sense, it was a rehearsal for what would be in store for her down the line, perhaps loss of her freedom.