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Katharine Teresa Gun (born 1974) is a former employee of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British intelligence agency. In 2003, she became famous for leaking top-secret information to the press concerning alleged illegal activities by the United States and the United Kingdom in their push for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (the link is to a full 1974 calendar). ...
The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is a British intelligence agency responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance. ...
An intelligence agency is a governmental organization devoted to gathering of information by means of espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public sources. ...
This article covers invasion specifics. ...
The leak Gun, who was raised in Taiwan, worked as a Mandarin Chinese to English translator for Britain's Government Communications Headquarters. On January 31, 2003, she received an e-mail from a United States National Security Agency official named Frank Koza. This e-mail requested aid in a secret and illegal operation to bug the United Nations offices of six nations: Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Pakistan, Mexico and Chile. These were the six "swing nations" on the UN Security Council that could determine whether the UN approved of the invasion of Iraq. The plan clearly violated the Vienna Conventions, which regulate global diplomacy. This article is on all of the Northern Chinese dialects. ...
The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is a British intelligence agency responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance. ...
January 31 is the 31st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...
2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...
NSA seal The National Security Agency / Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) is believed to be the largest United States government intelligence agency. ...
United Nations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ...
A session of the Security Council in progress The United Nations Security Council is the most powerful organ of the United Nations. ...
The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations is an international treaty on diplomatic intercourse and the privileges and immunities of a diplomatic mission. ...
The United Nations, with its headquarters in New York City, is the largest international diplomatic organization. ...
Gun admitted leaking the email to the Observer but said she did it "with a clear conscience," hoping to prevent the war. "I have no regrets and I would do it again," she said. After her revelation, she was fired from the GCHQ. In general, an observer is any system which receives information from an object. ...
Fallout On November 13, 2003, Gun was charged with an offense under section 1 of the Official Secrets Act. Her case became a cause célèbre among anti-war activists, and many people stepped forward to urge the government to drop the case. Among them were the Rev Jesse Jackson, Daniel Ellsberg (Marine who made public the Pentagon Papers), and actor Sean Penn, who described her as "a hero of the human spirit". Gun planned to plead "not guilty", saying in her defense that she acted to prevent imminent loss of life in a war she considered illegal. November 13 is the 317th day of the year (318th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 48 days remaining. ...
2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
The Official Secrets Act is any of several Acts of the United Kingdom Parliament for the protection of official information, mainly related to national security. ...
A cause célèbre (of which the plural is causes célèbres) is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning and/or heated public debate. ...
The Rev. ...
Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is a former American military analyst who precipitated a national uproar in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, the US militarys account of activities during the Vietnam War, to The New York Times. ...
The Pentagon Papers is the colloquial term for United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, a 47 volume, 7,000-page, top-secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States political and military involvement in the Vietnam War from 1945...
Sean Penn at Cannes, 2000 Sean Justin Penn (born August 17, 1960) is an Academy Award-winning American film actor. ...
The case came to court on February 25, 2004. Within half an hour the case was dropped because the prosecution declined to offer evidence. The reasons for the prosecution dropping the case are unclear. The day before the trial Gun's defence team had asked the Government for any records of advice about the legality of the war that it had received during the run-up to the war. A full trial may have exposed any such documents to public scrutiny as the defence were expected to argue that trying to stop an illegal act (that of going to war) trumped Gun's obligations under the Official Secrets Act. Speculation was rife in the media that the prosecution service had bowed to political pressure to drop the case so that any such documents would remain secret. However a Government spokesman said that the decision to drop the case had been made before the defence's demands had been submitted. (The Guardian newspaper had reported plans to drop the case the previous week). On the day of the court case Gun was quoted as saying: February 25 is the 56th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ...
2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
The Guardian is a British newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. ...
- "I'm just baffled in the 21st century we as human beings are still dropping bombs on each other as a means to resolve issues."
Gun was supported in her case by the UK human rights pressure group Liberty and the international pressure group MoveOn.org. Following the dropping of the case, Liberty commented: An advocacy group, interest group or lobbying group is a group, however loosely or tightly organized, doing advocacy: those determined to encourage or prevent changes in public policy without trying to be elected. ...
Liberty is a pressure group based in the United Kingdom. ...
A group of MoveOn volunteers helped the get-out-the-vote drive in Cincinnati in the run-up to the 2004 U.S. presidential election. ...
- "One wonders whether disclosure in this criminal trial might have been a little too embarrassing."
Two years after her trial, Katharine Gun has written an article Iran: Time To Leak (20 March 2006) which asks whistleblowers to make public information about plans for a potential war against Iran. She states: - "I urge those in a position to do so to disclose information which relates to this planned aggression; legal advice, meetings between the White House and other intelligence agencies, assessments of Iran’s threat level (or better yet, evidence that assessments have been altered), troop deployments and army notifications. Don’t let 'the intelligence and the facts be fixed around the policy' this time."
See also In March 2003 the US government announced that diplomacy has failed and that it would proceed with a coalition of the willing to rid Iraq of its alleged weapons of mass destruction. The 2003 Iraq war officially started a few days later. ...
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