A 28-year-old woman employee at GCHQ was arrested last week by Gloucestershire police and released on bail. A GCHQ spokesman declined to give further details … The leak of the memo reflects deep unease throughout Whitehall about the Bush administration’s conduct in the growing Iraq crisis. It is severely embarrassing to GCHQ and to Tony Blair at a time of widespread doubts about the morality of an invasion of Iraq.
– Jeevan Vasagar and Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian, 10 March 2003
THE WOMAN ARRESTED was not publicly named. Her identity was kept secret for months – at first, even from her family.
‘I was released from police custody on Thursday at lunchtime. I went home and immediately called my parents in Taiwan and told them that I was in a bit of trouble, but I didn’t tell them that I had leaked the memo or that I had been arrested. It was only when they read the Guardian story about the arrest of a 28-year-old woman at GCHQ the next week that they put it all together. I didn’t tell my grandmother or any of my relatives until at least the day my parents realized the truth and called me.’
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.’