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522 GCHQ GOES GLOBAL
Nations. Her response to this was that the memo exposed a lie.
London and Washington claimed to be working for a diplomatic
solution, but in fact they seemed to be trying to avoid one. 40
They also seemed to be trying to manipulate the key vote in the
Security Council by 'bullying' the smaller members. She recalls
being horrified and angry.4!
The Monday morning after the story broke, GCHQ began an
immediate leak inquiry, interviewing over a hundred staff who
had seen the email. Gun had not expected the Observer to reproduce
the entire text on the front page, and had been 'absolutely
terrified' when she saw it. Although she denied her action during
her security interview, a few days later her nerve crumbled and
she confessed to her line manager. She was taken to GCHQ's
Security Division, then interviewed by Special Branch from
London. She never returned to GCHQ. 42 The case, which ran
for over a year, was headline news. To her supporters she was
the 'the spy who tried to stop a war'. Others were less complimentary.
David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, insisted that the
NSA memo had been 'doctored' before publication, and believed
that Gun was motivated by the fact that her husband, a Kurdish
asylum-seeker, was being removed from the countryY
No less significant than the leaked email from NSA was
another message that had been sent to all staff in GCHQ the
previous week. The issue of possible war against Iraq was causing
growing anxiety among staff at Cheltenham, and a senior official
had tried to address their concerns, assuring them that they
would not be asked to participate in anything unlawful, and
that British troops would not go into action unless the Attorney
General, Lord Goldsmith, had advised the Prime Minister that
it was legal. This was to prove important nine months later,
since Katharine Gun's acquittal of charges under the Official
Secrets Act turned precisely upon the Attorney General's legal
opinion on military action. Because of the GCHQ email underlining
the importance of lawfulness, Gun's defence team asked
to see the full text of Goldsmith's opinion on the legality of the
Iraq War. At this point the government's lawyers crumbled.