The Katharine Gun Leak: A British Whistleblower and the 2003 Iraq War

Morgan McBride
Jun 15
9 min read

How a leaked memo from a British intelligence agency shined an alarming light on the U.S. and U.K.'s approach to the 2003 Iraq War.

In early 2003, the British translator, Katharine Gun, leaked an NSA memo soliciting British intelligence collusion in eavesdropping on diplomats from several nations about to participate in the upcoming United Nations Security Council vote on whether to sanction a US/UK-led invasion of Iraq.

On January 31st, 2003, at 12:16 am, the chief of staff at the “regional targets” division of the NSA -- Frank Koza -- sent an email to the GCHQ. The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) staff received this email memo, and that is how Katharine Gun became involved.

Photo of Katharine Gun from The National News

Katharine Gun worked as a translator for GCHQ in its Cheltenham offices, translating Mandarin Chinese into English. After growing up in Taiwan with her family, she later studied Japanese and Chinese at Durham University in England. Gun’s pursuit of a linguist job led her to respond to a newspaper advertisement for open positions at the GCHQ.

What is the GCHQ? The UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) serves as a critical component of the UK’s secret statecraft. Often viewed as the UK’s version of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the GCHQ intercepts, interprets, and disrupts the information networks of Britain’s adversaries.

After working at the GCHQ for nearly two years, Gun and her co-workers received Koza’s email requesting aid in a secret operation to gather “the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises.” The email’s message focused on the six “swing nations” of the UN Security Council at the time: Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, and Pakistan. These countries had the position to determine whether the UN would approve the legality of a potential invasion of Iraq.

The clandestine intelligence-gathering request would be used as leverage to coerce the “swing nations” into sanctioning the war. Such a plan would potentially have contravened Articles 22 and 27 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which govern international diplomacy.

Email Transcript:

ToFromSent on Jan 31 2003 0:16SubjectImportance

All,

As you’ve likely heard by now, the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc - the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters.

We’ve also asked ALL RT topi’s to emphasize and make sure they pay attention to existing non-UNSC member UN-related and domestic comms for anything useful related to the UNSC deliberations/ debates/ votes. We have a lot of special UN-related diplomatic coverage (various UN delegations) from countries not sitting on the UNSC right now that could contribute related perspectives/ insights/ whatever. We recognize that we can’t afford to ignore this possible source.

We’d appreciate your support in getting the word to your analysts who might have similar, more in-direct access to valuable information from accesses in your product lines. I suspect that you’ll be hearing more along these lines in formal channels - especially as this effort will probably peak (at least for this specific focus) in the middle of next week, following the SecState’s presentation to the UNSC.

Thanks for your help

{The original text of Frank Koza’s email/memo — published by The Guardian on March 2, 2003}

The email’s contents concerned Katharine, as she had already been worried that the looming war in Iraq would be unjustified and catastrophic. She ultimately printed a copy of the email at the GCHQ offices and took it home with her. Allegedly, Katharine mailed the top-secret memo to an acquaintance, who then gave it to Yvonne Ridley -- a notable anti-war UK journalist. Unbeknownst to Katharine, Martin Bright, a journalist at The Guardian, published the leaked memo a few weeks later, on March 2nd, 2003.

At that point, she had largely forgotten about the memo until she saw the front page of The Guardian that morning. GCHQ’s internal security team questioned everyone in the office the following day about their potential involvement with the leak. In her initial interview with the security team, her instinct was to deny it and remain anonymous. However, she stated that she became motivated to reveal her identity after a White House spokesman’s refusal to confirm the authenticity of the leaked NSA memo.

On March 5th, Katharine went into the GCHQ office and confessed to her line manager, and was subsequently arrested. She spent a night in police custody; however, the court charged her with breaking the Official Secrets Act eight months later.

What is the Official Secrets Act? It is a law in the United Kingdom that makes it an offense for anyone subject to it to make a “damaging disclosure of any information or document” relating to security or intelligence. First enacted in 1911, the Official Secrets Act does not require formal signing for it to be binding, as one can merely be notified that the law applies to them.

As an employee at the GCHQ, Katharine was required to sign on to the OSA when she began her employment, which complicated her legal defense.

While Katharine awaited trial, the British government tried -- but failed -- to deport her husband Yasar Gün, a Turkish Kurd who had been awaiting permanent leave to remain in the UK.

The prominent British civil rights campaigning organization, Liberty, and her lawyer, Ben Emmerson, supported her complex defense. Her defense relied on proving that advice from Lord Goldsmith, the most senior legal advisor to Prime Minister Blair, on the legality of invading Iraq without a UN resolution had changed. Gun’s defense team and The Guardian journalists pieced together a timeline of Lord Goldsmith’s legal opinion on the matter. They learned that Goldsmith’s advice to the Prime Minister changed after a discreet visit to government and intelligence personnel in Washington, D.C.

On February 25th, 2004, thirty minutes into Katharine Gun’s trial, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped her case because the prosecution declined to offer the evidence that Gun’s legal team requested. The evidence in question sought to compel the government to turn over any records of legal advice regarding the legality of the war in Iraq. Although the British government avoids commenting on its reasons for dropping the charges, most believe it was to avoid a full trial, which would have exposed the documents to public scrutiny. To everyone’s surprise, Katharine Gun’s legal case came to an abrupt end.

Katharine Gun outside the Old Bailey after charges had been dropped against her, 2004. Photograph: David Sillitoe/The Guardian

In numerous interviews over the last decade, Katharine explained that her motivation for leaking the memo was as much about the actions on the U.S. side as on the U.K. side. She had no ambition to overthrow her government; she just wanted people to question what the United States was asking her country to do. Gun argued that her actions were “necessary to prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed or maimed.” Unfortunately, her leak failed to prevent the Iraq War, and Katharine repeatedly berates her “failure in this regard.”

Katharine Gun received the 2003 Sam Adams Award, which recognizes an intelligence professional who takes a stand for integrity and ethics. Since work was hard to find after her acquittal, she has lived in Turkey with her husband and daughter for the last several years. Although she has been generally off the radar, the movie based on her leak, Official Secrets, temporarily brought her back into the spotlight.

The Iraq War

March 20, 2003: U.S. Marines prepare themselves after receiving orders to cross the Iraqi border at Camp Shoup, northern Kuwait.

The Iraq War largely stemmed from the outcry after the September 11th attacks in the United States orchestrated by the terrorist group Al-Qaeda in 2001. The notion that the incredible global power of the United States could be attacked on such a magnitude on its own shores made governments reassess the threat of international terrorism.

On September 20th, 2001, U.S. President Bush announced that America would go to war with terrorism, including both the terrorists and any nation that harbors them. In the subsequent months, U.S. troops were sent to Afghanistan to chase out the Taliban. In the subsequent months, U.S. troops were sent to Afghanistan to chase out the Taliban. However, Bush expanded the scope of the “Global War on Terror” by January 2002, when he proclaimed that Iran, Iraq, and North Korea all existed on an “axis of terror” that harbored terrorists.

The U.S. government swiftly moved toward the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on the idea that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that there was a link between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Al-Qaeda. The U.S. did not want to go to war alone, but the U.K. wanted the war's legality to derive from the United Nations. In November 2022, the UN passed Resolution 1441, giving Saddam Hussein -- then President of Iraq -- one last chance to give up his weapons of mass destruction and to re-admit UN weapons inspectors to Iraq.

March 21, 2003: Fires burn in and around Saddam Hussein's Council of Ministers in Baghdad, Iraq, during a wave of attacks in the "shock and awe" phase of "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

What are Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)? According to the United Nations’ Office of Disarmament Affairs, a weapon of mass destruction is a nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon that, once released, is indiscriminate and uncontrollable in its effects. They cannot be targeted exclusively at combatants, as they will affect civilians as well.

At the time, it was unclear if Saddam and Iraq even had any remaining WMDs, but his lack of transparency on the issue led to other nations interpreting what they wanted. President Bush issued an ultimatum to Hussein on March 17th, but their refusal led to the start of the US war in Iraq on March 20th, 2003.

Through numerous military offenses, Saddam Hussein was captured by American troops on December 13th, 2003. Saddam Hussein was convicted of crimes against humanity by an Iraqi Special Tribunal and was executed on December 30, 2006.

After a relative decline in violence in 2007, the United States gradually reduced its military presence in Iraq, leading to a formal withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011.

The Katharine Gun leak appeared to highlight the illegality of the attempts by the US and the UK to invade Iraq, which unfortunately led to the war efforts prevailing.

U.S. - U.K. Relations

The United States and the United Kingdom have maintained a special diplomatic and military relationship for many centuries. At the time of Katharine Gun’s leaked memo, the UK government under Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared to offer seemingly unconditional support for American foreign policy initiatives.

Britain provided tens of thousands of British soldiers and intelligence support throughout the United States’ invasion of Iraq. While this action was largely unpopular throughout the United Kingdom, it marked a significant component of the US-UK ‘special relationship.’ This relationship continued with the U.S.’s military campaign in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s as well.

Now, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke at the United Nations on February 5th, 2003, claiming that, “What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid evidence.” Powell’s statement raised a red flag in Katharine Gun’s mind, and she referred to this as her point of no return.

At multiple levels, the British officials had centered their actions leading up to the Iraq War on the US government's wants and needs.

Diplomatic Implications

The affected “swing countries” in the NSA memo demanded immediate answers from the British government about its involvement in the spying; however, very few were provided. The US and UK governments both avoided the questions thrown around in the media and in public opinion. It also doesn’t appear that any official inquiry or investigation into the memo itself occurred in either nation. Although the story made a few global headlines around the time of Katharine Gun’s trial, the consequences and implications of the leak remain absent from the official narratives of the build-up to the Iraq War. The leak drifted into the background as the Iraq War heated up, creating new problems.

Based on reporting from NBC News, 4,492 American service members lost their lives during the Iraq War, and 32,292 American service members were wounded during the war. Approximately 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed during the war as well. The grave ramifications of the U.S and U.K.’s military involvement in a prolonged conflict in Iraq had extensive harmful ramifications for hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

Katharine knew she would be guilty based on the facts of her case, but she still felt she had done the morally right thing. Gun believes that far too much is classified. Also, she states that the increasing number of non-civil-servant contractors required to sign the Official Secrets Act will only lead to a lack of accountability and transparency. There remains no word on Frank Koza's identity or the broader operation within the American administration. On the other hand, the British government continues to avoid providing concrete answers on why it dropped Katharine Gun’s legal case. Although many unanswered questions stem from Katharine Gun’s leak, she made a valiant effort, risking her safety and security, to provide British citizens with the facts of the matter.

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