Thanksgiving is just around the corner. I’ve been trying to find more work besides teaching, but without success. I’m trying to remain positive – poor hubby gets hurt when I’m miserable and worried, but it’s very hard to see any improvement in our situation.
– Katharine Gun, 2007
KATHARINE’S LEGAL BATTLE ended on 25 February 2004, but not that of her husband. Deportation had threatened Yasar Gun twice. His visa had been extended more than once but would not be again. His request for political asylum was denied. Further, he would not be allowed to apply for residence while on United Kingdom soil, even as the husband of a citizen; instead, he would be deported.
One option existed – Yasar could leave the United Kingdom and apply for residency from another country. This would not immediately ensure permanent status but would be a step in the right direction. The problem: time was very much of the essence. Visions of Yasar being picked up by law officers and put on a plane were vivid. This time, the plane might leave with him on board, with no last-minute rescue as before.
The Guns decided that whatever they would do, they would do it together. If they travelled abroad to apply for Yasar’s residency and he was denied re-entry, Katharine would remain with him and not return as well. But if they went abroad and were allowed to re-enter, all would be well. Otherwise, the United Kingdom would see the last of both of them.
One wonders if this prospect might have been extremely appealing in certain government circles.
Messages to the authors during this period revealed that Katharine and Yasar were desperately concerned about leaving the country with no guarantee of a return visa. But time was running out, and, with no other choice and with great trepidation, they hurriedly left home.
For a few days, there were no messages until, with great relief, Katharine wrote, ‘All is well!’ Legal requirements for Yasar’s UK residency application had been met; it would be safe for him to return to England in a few days, his wife at his side. The couple, for the first time since the infamous NSA message was sent, felt what had been an emotionally crippling tension slip away, replaced – at least for a time – by a soaring, absolute joy. They had a carefree holiday, a honeymoon, a celebration. They even dared to hope for a ‘happily ever after’ ending to their story.
In many ways, it has eluded them.
Returning home, the Guns faced problems like those confronting most young couples, except that theirs were exacerbated by all that had happened since Katharine’s arrest. The construct of a typical life had not been theirs, except for those few months before Katharine’s arrest, when Yasar’s work was less difficult and Katharine had a secure, well-paying job. Before the media discovered Katharine Gun.
Inevitably, as time went on, the debilitating pressure of their personal past lessened but did not cease. It is likely it never will, at least not until fallout from the Iraq War and rumblings about further conflicts in the region disappear from the international landscape – an unlikely possibility in anything like the foreseeable future.
But for now, the Guns were in a quieter space, looking around them, wondering where to begin building a normal life.
They began with the ordinary.
Yasar’s job had become increasingly pressure-filled. He was working long, difficult hours just to provide the barest essentials in a country where the cost of living is extremely high. The new house, purchased with help from the Harwoods, needed furnishings, and the Metro was not in good mechanical condition. Katharine began searching for work.
A series of jobs, not one of which fitted Katharine’s rather unique professional background, seemed at first to provide a solution to growing financial problems. But never for long. The jobs were temporary, nothing permanent, nothing offering a future, contracts that helped for a time. When applying for a more appropriate permanent position, she often found that she was considered ‘overqualified’.
Katharine told the authors, ‘I am still spending most of my time at home either online or being a housewife. It is very leisurely, but I know it is not helping my state of mind and confidence levels.’ It did not help financially.
What did help, at least in terms of spirit, was the invitation to American University’s whistle-blower seminar. With the immigration problem resolved, Katharine was finally able to accept.
‘Good news, good news, good news!!!’ she wrote to Ray McGovern. ‘We are now legitimate citizens! I am now pretty sure that I will be able to come to the United States – as long as they don’t arrest me at the border! So, you can book those tickets. I am ready,’ she assured, ‘to rock and roll.’
Katharine returned home from an exhilarating visit and a roster of new and supportive international friends to a renewed UK celebrity, which did nothing to ease the problem of earning a decent living, a problem she never thought she would have. She was a university graduate with excellent work experience. She had a career. She had had a life. But things were different now.
Excerpts from letters reveal just how different from her life before her arrest:
‘I spoke with a lady from the BBC the other day, she just wanted to meet me and chat about the possibilities of doing either a drama documentary about my case or following some new line of information from people who have contacted me because of the truth-telling project. She has approached her manager with the idea of a drama and will reply when she has more details.’
And another example:
‘I was approached by IPA [Institute for Public Accuracy] to be a contact on their news release re the indictment story. So far, two radio stations have contacted me about doing an interview on Monday. I don’t know if they’ll both happen, but as usual, I’m slightly nervous about going on air! I’m almost always nervous, it seems.’
Requests for interviews came not just from the United Kingdom, but also from the United States, including New York, Atlanta, and Phoenix. Interviewers, she said, were ‘really supportive and wonderful’. But of a North Carolina interviewer she wrote, ‘He was quite antagonistic, and I didn’t expect that at all. I don’t know if it was his personal opinion or whether he was playing devil’s advocate, but he was certainly doing a damn good job if it was the latter. I felt that I really had to defend my position and the whole anti-war mentality. It was a bit uncomfortable, but I hope I got my point across. It’s always easy to preach to the converted, so hopefully I may have induced some people to rethink their positions.’
And later, ‘Yesterday, I did an interview for a Greek TV channel. The hot topic in Greece at the moment is the bugging of the Olympic committee. The programme is going to compare that with previous buggings, like Watergate and my story.’
The week following the Greek programme, Katharine spoke to the National Union of Journalists with Observer editor Martin Bright; their topic was the Official Secrets Act.
Media attention did not bring financial rewards. A journalist friend told Katharine he thought she had a talent for writing, and she began doing articles – principally on Iraq. She hoped doing so would help financially and make her hours ‘spent at home with my laptop’ more productive.
The Gun marriage was healthy, despite every reason for it not to be, despite the real-life roller coaster their lives had become. Testing the relationship were difficulties more compelling than lack of money, employment problems, and the pressure of media attention. Most significant was the unsettling change in personal relationships. Closest friends remained loyal and supportive, but they were very few, and reinforcing social activities were dramatically curtailed. Once surrounded by colleagues in the intelligence community, Katharine was now very much alone in terms of professional contact, except for a very few GCHQ staffers who dared to continue a friendship with her. And Yasar, the vibrant Mediterranean, was dealing with a sense of suffocation in the cool atmosphere of England.
Katharine found herself more and more concerned about her husband’s homesickness: ‘It occurred to me yesterday that we should save up for a real visit with his family. Each time he speaks on the phone to his mum, she ends up crying and asking him to come home. It breaks his heart. It shouldn’t be a problem now that his status is valid here and he can travel without worry. Perhaps it is something we can aim for some time next year. His parents aren’t getting any younger, that’s for sure.’
Despite ‘being legal’, the thought of going abroad likely always will bring with it just a tinge of concern about safe travel and safe return. The prize, this trip to Turkey, seemed worth the emotional price (forget the financial). When it finally happened, Katharine wrote:
‘You will be happy to hear that we are safely in Turkey. We got here with no problem at all, which was a huge relief. We were awake for over forty hours due to travelling at funny times of the night, but the pace is so relaxed here that Yasar feels quite at ease.
‘Yasar’s family are lovely, very welcoming. They live in quite humble surroundings, but it’s a nice, friendly environment. We’ve just been spending the day walking around and greeting all Yasar’s old friends in town, having lots of cups of tea (which Yasar tells me is good for me in hot weather).
‘There were a lot of tears when we arrived yesterday. Yasar was crying more than anyone else. Please don’t worry.’
Katharine wrote of a beautiful country and beautiful people, of nights sleeping on the roof to take advantage of fresh, cool breezes. Deliberately, they distanced themselves – and still do – from Turkish political issues.
At home once again, Katharine finally found employment that was satisfying and appropriate – teaching Chinese. It was (and still is) only part-time, but she enjoys every moment in the classroom. She also has designed simple language lessons for a general audience, lessons she hopes to market in newspaper or magazine format.
Katharine writes:
‘The lessons have been going well. I have nineteen for the evening class and five for the afternoon one. As long as the total is over twenty-one, both classes will be viable, so I’m excited about that and the extra bit of cash that will be coming in. My evening class is mostly youngsters, a lot of them are my age or younger, but there are also a couple of over-fifties. The afternoon class is somewhat older, although not by much. The slightly strange thing is that two of the ladies in the afternoon are from GCHQ; in fact, I know one of them, not well, but her name was familiar and when I saw her, I realized that I did know her. I just carry on as if our paths have never crossed.
‘Apparently, a French teacher at the college teaches about five people from GCHQ, and when they had their first class, one of them said “One of us is one of you,” the French lady asked, “Oh? What do they teach?” and when she learned that it was Chinese, she immediately realized that they were talking about me. When she told me, I felt quite sad, the fact that they still refer to me as “one of them” … I don’t know how widespread that feeling is; it’s almost as if once an intelligence officer, always an intelligence officer.
‘I liked the community feeling at GCHQ, the sense of belonging you get working at that place, but I can’t condone everything they do. When I go to teach, the college buildings are a stone’s throw away from the new “doughnut” GCHQ. Funny that.
‘I am enjoying the classes. Everyone I’ve met in the foreign languages department is lovely. I’m taking Turkish on Tuesday afternoons so I’m in the department three days a week. Starting soon I’ll be taking the Certificate for Further Education Training, which will continue for several months and takes place once a week. I’m looking forward to doing that as well.’
At the time Katharine wrote these words, her husband was back visiting his family in Turkey. Lonely, missing him terribly, Katharine prepared for his return with the eagerness of a child waiting for Santa. Except that the gift giving would be reversed.
‘Hubby is coming home tomorrow! I’m so excited. I got all prepared last weekend. Thinking that he would be back last Tuesday, I bought this piece of pink cloth with little hearts and kisses on it and wrapped some little presents up which I was going to hide around the house for him to find when he came home.
‘One day when we were at the beach in Turkey, he went off diving to the bottom of the water and resurfaced with a stone the shape of a heart. He gave it to me and I’ve kept it by my side ever since, so I wrapped that up, too. Ah well, I’ll be here to welcome him home now, so that’s all that matters.’
Not all that mattered. Katharine and Yasar wanted a child, but it took a while for her to become pregnant; possibly, they think, because of all the stress that had so filled their lives. When it finally happened, she wrote of her condition and the continuing financial issues that shadowed it:
‘I am now ten weeks pregnant. I’m extremely lucky that I don’t suffer from sickness. My mum didn’t and had two very smooth, easy births (except that Mike was nearly two months early), but apart from that, easy births seem to run in the family (fingers crossed). In the first few weeks I was definitely grumpy, moody and very tired. Poor Mum had the brunt of that since she was here right around that period. It now seems to have lifted, and I have more energy than I’ve had for ages and generally feel quite optimistic.
‘Ma says that the pregnancy hormones tend to cocoon a woman and prevent her from worrying. They seem to be doing the trick now, but while she was here, I did have a panic over our finances. She reminded me that our mortgage payments would be going up this summer, and after calculating what our essential outgoings are, it made me realize that we can’t really afford a leap in mortgage payments. I think dealing with finances is incredibly difficult, especially when the man is doing all he can and working like the devil. Still, at the moment, “cocooned”, I’m not letting myself worry.
‘On the positive side, my employer is very helpful and said that I could certainly take a term or more off from teaching if that fitted better. Most of my department colleagues are women and a lot of them are mothers, so I’m sure I’ll get plenty of advice and support there.
‘I have a scan in about two weeks which will be my first. That will be really exciting, and hopefully Yasar will be able to bunk off work for a few hours to see the scan. I think it must make it so much more real when you can see the little wiggly thing in your belly.’
Katharine’s next letter was tragic:
‘I had a miscarriage yesterday/today and the pregnancy is over. It was confirmed at the hospital this morning. I’m all right, just coming to terms and of course I’ve had a good cry … I’m thinking that it’s nature’s way, and perhaps it just wasn’t the right time.’
There was the miscarriage and then a devastating flood, one that washed through their house destroying floors and furniture and wreaking a havoc that moved them out of their home for months. The present was nearly unbearable and the future far from promising.
And then, unexpectedly, there was reason for hope, a small but tentatively viable reason. Katharine was once again expecting a child. She continued to teach and took leave when the baby was due. Yasar, who had yet to find the kind of employment that was both economically and emotionally satisfying, was thrilled at the prospect of becoming a father.
Katharine wrote to the authors in February 2008:
‘Gong Xi Fa Cai (pronounced gong shee fa tsai). That’s the proper Mandarin Chinese greeting for New Year. This lunar new year, which starts tomorrow, is the year of the Golden Rat. In college tonight all the language teachers were gathered around as we figured out which animal of the Chinese zodiac we were.
‘I’m a tiger, the French teacher is an ox and so on. I don’t think I’m much of a tiger, but this stands out (bearing in mind what’s happened in the last 5 years!): “Tigers like people, involvement, and dedication to humanitarian causes. They seek out adventures, and at certain points in their lives, they will be very rebellious. They must act out some of their ideals and lash out at the wrongs of society”.’
Sounds a lot like Katharine Gun.