just reassigning the robot must protect this phone existence was on exist. 2 2 for most national security whistle blowers, the most common and consequential dilemma is what to do when you become aware of waste, fraud, abuse, or illegality. but you know that exposing it will put you in legal jeopardy. this is a particularly tough question in the united kingdom, which has a draconian official secrets act. do you do what you know in your heart is the right thing and go public. do you risk spending the rest of your life in prison? or do you put your head down and just remain silent? i'm john. carry onto. and this is the whistle blowers the

. i'm a national security whistle blowers. catherine gun is quite literally a hero of gifted linguist. she was hired by britons g. c h q, to translate mandarin intelligence intercepts in the english in early 2003. she read an email from the chief of staff in the american national security agencies regional targets division, in which he asked for help in bugging the united nations offices of 6 countries that were members of the un security council. they were angola all guerria, cameroon, chilly guinea and pakistan. and the purpose of the operation was to determine these countries, potential positions on an american invasion of iraq. the bugging contravene the vienna convention on diplomatic relations and was thus illegal. catherine made a copy of the e mail, gave it to a friend who had access to the media and put it out of her mind until more than a month later, when she saw it on the front page of the observer,

newspaper british authorities immediately began an investigation and a few days later, catherine told her supervisor that she was the source of the report. that's when her long nightmare began. we're pleased to have catherine gun with us on the show. catherine, welcome. hi, thanks, john. glad to hear yours was some of the highest stakes whistle blowing possible. it was over the issue of war and peace. take us back to that day when you 1st saw that, and i say e mail, what was going through your mind? how was it that you made the decision so quickly to go to the media with the information? okay. wow. in around september 2002. i was invited along with other what colleagues at g, c, h q, to go to the us for what conference and it was in san diego. and as part of the conference on one of the free days, we were invited to go on

a us aircraft carrier and tour it. and while we were there, we saw a lot of action on, on board the aircraft carrier. and lots of young marine, navy personnel running around getting ready. and we said, i, you know, when i looked at these young guys and looks at my colleagues and i thought, wow, you know, they looked so young and even though we were not twenties, the guys looked really young. and i, i said to my colleague, i was like, well, what do you think they're up to? and so he asks them, and they said, oh ma'am, we're getting this ship ready to set, sail to the gulf. and we said really and they said, yeah, we're going out to what so me rack. yes. and i was just completely taken aback by that because you know, iraq, although it had just started to be mentioned in the news as

a possible belligerent by the us. and then you k, it was still kind of under the radar. and it made it immediately made me pick up my is and from that point onwards, i started looking into it and paying attention to what was going on. and i went and bought a couple of books from a bookshop that outlines the whole, sorry, saga, iraq over the last, previous 1020 is where it had been on the sanctions and so on. and where the un sanctions people had actually resigned in, um opposition to you know, the genocide or sanctions and so on. and how there really wasn't any evidence that iraq was a belligerent tool or a threat to the us. and then you k. and there's no allies and so i realized, you know, the media was lying, basically, everything was a propaganda. and so when i saw that email,

it just basically pulled the curtains from behind, you know, and showed the background of the santa and i so wow, they, you know, they really are serious about war. they don't actually want to paste, they want to invade iraq and they need a un sanctions to give them legitimacy as are un resolution to give them the just mercy. and the hope that email just shot me and get me and immediately was like a red flag. and i saw it. everybody knew about that. that was below the case open. you were arrested almost immediately and you spent a night in jail. it took the government 8 more months to charge you with the crime and you were charged under the official secrets act, which in many ways is far more difficult than the american espionage act. tell us about the official secrets act and about what the penalties that you were facing. well, the official secrets act has various integrations,

and the most recent was drafted in 1999. and it deals with um, basically the intelligence services, the defense industry or civil sevens, basically in anything really that is a classified or is assumed to be classified. and although intelligence and defense staff basically just by working for the government under the official secrets act, in fact, every one basically in the k is under the assumption that if they expose any type of secret so that they could potentially be charged. however, that's not happened as far as i know, it's basically only intelligence staff and defend staff. so it basically it's a restriction. it's a, it's a bit into for exposing anything,

anything about the government's behavior activities and so on. the maximum penalty at the minute is 2 years um and although they are currently and it's still not very debated, it hasn't been debated at length, but there moves to to strengthen and actually make it even more more draconian. the official secrets act by potentially increasing the extent of jail sentence to 14 years maximum sentence. uh, and in addition to there is an attempt to also include the handling of sensitive and confidential material even by journalists. so it would mean that they could potentially be tried for breaches of official

secrets act as well, which, which would basically criminalize investigative journalism essentially you went to trial on february 25th, 2004. but within 30 minutes of the start of the proceedings, the case against you was dropped, because the prosecution refused to offer evidence against you. your attorney's intended to argue that trying to stop in illegal war of aggression outweighed your obligations under the official secrets act. but they never got the chance to make that argument. the government just dropped the case. what happened there was it that prosecutors were afraid to expose classified information, and they decided just to cut their losses. yeah, well it's a mystery to, to everyone on that day. really because, you know, i've confessed i confessed and um, so basically that, you know, they had case closed more or less. so i think there was

a multitude of reasons. firstly, there was an election coming up in the u. k. so in 2005, it was a, a general election and tony blah actually got re elected us or the labor party one at any rate. and tony blair was once again prime minister. and so i think they were very, very concerned about a highly political trial that would put the iraq roll at center stage at the trial . and tony blair's specifically tony pledge involvement and then secondly, i think that was still classified pieces of informational confidential pieces of information which had yet to come out, such as the attorney general's legal advice, which we had actually the legal team had asked for as part of the bundle of

information that we wanted the government to expose in order for us to make my case . and because the legal advice had changed, the attorney general's legal advice had changed prior to him presenting it to parliament. and that didn't late until a full year off to my case was dropped. and you know, i think there are other reasons as well as such as potentially and my case actually, you know, the jury potentially finding me not guilty. and then that would create a process precedent and the little web by the official secrets act would have a potential defense because currently as it stands, there is no public interest defense. there's no, we're still blowing kind of protections for the official secrets act breaches. and

so the only defense which could potentially have been opened would have been on the you know, a successful case had my case, been successful in finding me not guilty. it's catherine. i'm interested in what the year 2003 was like for you, for many of us who have blowing the whistle on national security issues, the period between arrest and trial is a nightmare. tell us about the pressure that you were under and how did the british government treat your husband during this period? he was not a government employee and he had nothing to do with your whistle blowing. yeah, that's right. it was very difficult time actually for for me i was yeah, i was quite young. i was in my mid twenties. we recently just got married. my husband is attack is code and he had applied for assign them in the u. k. but it had been rejected by the british government that was prior to we got

married. and so when we got married it was costly. the reason was to enable him to stay in the u. k with me without being deported. however, you know, we were told even at that time the marriage only delayed the process of deportation and that eventually at some point it would be deported. um, and that actually happened while i was still waiting to hear whether or not actually no, it was off today charged me up to date actually. um, charged me a breeching official secrets act that uh that they did try to to, to port him from the country. which um, that was actually the silver lining to this whole case. because had i not actually been facing criminal prosecution with my passport confiscated. and so on,

so i think he probably would have been deported. so it was, it's kind of ironic situation, but the, my criminal case actually prevented him from being deported, although they did try and, and just being sort of out of whack at the, until i was actually charged. i was anonymous. so nobody knew what i done and so i felt very alone, and i didn't know who to turn to. and i really yeah, as you say, it was a sort of limbo where i didn't know how to get on with my life basically until they charge me. and then that sort of hung over me for about 4 months until they dropped the charges. so it was a very peculiar sort of case where speaking with british national security was a blower, catherine gun stay with us. we have a lot more coming up. 2 2 2

the a yes or group of countries to call the, the european agenda i used to about the to go the, a change of the, the per section of the security in europe. but now they go see their invest security on the basis of the confrontation that was not to date, plastic phones. the main idea out there, the west of the counselors, to until 20 years ago, the the reason the problem,

the soldier monument was erected in 1947 in the estonian capital by the associates authorities origin. any bells have found the burial site of troops remains its memorials of the soldiers who gave their lives in world war 2 will say it's good. the informing service. the william forgive for really transition in 2007, the stony and government decided to relocate the monument from the city center. that's going to buy me to a to where in the sooner frustrating to move divided the population is stony, is large of russian speaking community strongly opposed to an intense rising growth, college and talent. these have since become the, as the problems night drive people across the username and a couple of years. so

what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy from foundation. let it be an arms race is on all sides. very dramatic. this the i'm going to resist, i don't see how that strategy will be successful, very unclear to get a time time to sit down and talk the welcome back to the whistle blowers. i'm john kerry. uncle were speaking with british national security was a blower. catherine gun, who revealed that the american essay was bugging the phones of united nations security council members to try to determine their position on a potential invasion of iraq in 2003. catherine, thanks again for being with us. thanks. as soon as you went public with your revelations, you guard support from some big names in the united states,

including the reverend jesse jackson, the godfather of national security whistle blowers, daniel ellsberg, and congressman dennis percentage did any of that help your situation. and what about in the u. k. what was your support like there? i definitely definitely helped me. um, because as soon as my name was out as soon as i been charged and i was more or less a public sega and i got a huge amount of support, particularly from the us. so yeah, i down alice back reached out to me personally. and um, and it was just an amazing um, amazing support for me. um and uh, and lots of people the institute for public accuracy including journalist sam hussein in norman solomon. they. um, you know, they really campaigned on my behalf and helped to get

a lot of people interested in my case. so i got hundreds and hundreds of supports of emails from people in the us. oh basically, you know. yeah, hailing me for what i done and so it was, it was really good. you know, i was just overwhelmed by the the support i got from the us that wasn't the same type level as co ordination in the u. k. and i and i didn't apple from people in the u. k. um, no, as far as i from the u. s. in fact that i got my, the most support. one of the things that is often surprising for national security whistle blowers is that the mainstream media are not supportive of our whistle blowing despite the fact that in many ways they're the ones who are the recipients of the information, the observer. publish gear information. how did the observer and other british outlets treat you as a whistleblower where they support is?

did they help you in any way? is you prepared to go to trial? well, it was the guardian group, the observer being parts of the guardian group, and that broke the story. and so at one point they did suggest that they would pay for a pay for my lawyers. basically, this was before i had decided on who you know, who would represent me. i had several offers. one of them, as i say, was uh and also by the guardian to pay for my lawyers. but, you know, i, i didn't want to be such a tied by the apron strings to a newspaper group. so, and i did end up going for liberty, which is a campaigning organization. much like a c, l, u,

and the u. s. and they were absolutely, you know, a fantastic they were really great. they sort of, they were my p r team. they were my, basically, um, legal advice team and, and they blocks any type of unwanted attention that i may have had from people who just wanted to say horrible things to me. i'm the media apart from the guardian. yeah, i mean, as i say, i didn't get a, any sort of outspoken political support from the u. k. at that point, even from anti will groups and it's possible they may have reached out and i rejected them because i think at the time i was very wary of becoming a sort of a light thing point for any type of um,

campaigning or pressure group. i, i didn't want to be a so one to the back to would use by anybody else for that alteri a motives however good they may have been. um so yeah, i maybe did actually push away support this high. i could have had and one way or another way. a highly regarded feature film was made about you and your case starting keira knightley. a book was written about you called the spy, who tried to stop a war catherine gun and the secret plot sanctioned the rock invasion. daniel ellsberg said that your whistle blowing was more important than his revelations of the pentagon papers. that's all very high praise. but how is the british government treated you in the intervening years? and were you ever able to establish a career again? uh, well, i think the british government has essentially wiped me,

you know, of the us out just the boats in terms of the eros. so i was never consulted, i offered to give evidence that the child caught inquiry and that was 10 down. so my evidence was never presented at the child support chill, co inquiry into the illegal invasion of iraq am. and subsequently it just doesn't come up. it doesn't come up a tool in any type of iraq, you timeline, you know, it's just, it's, it's a non non event. it's almost like it's been wiped up, wiped off the, you know, the history folks that it didn't occur. and i think this is very disturbing. because in fact, that email the iris revealed, you know, a lot of people sort of, uh,

very ballasa about these sorts of things said, oh wow, this goes on all the time. you know, what's the big deal? everybody knows the u. n is spied on, you know, but i think there wasn't a lot of angles. you could go into that email a lot of digging. they could have gone into the background of that e mail. i'm a why and how when, who and basically none of that was done no further investigations were done into it . um, and it seems like it was the whole thing was a cover up basically it was uh they, they needed to shut it down and they did, they did by dropping the charges against me. they, they did shut it down. what advice would you give to somebody considering blowing the whistle within the national security community, especially in the u. k, where they would have to contend with the official secrets act? that's a very, very tricky question. um, it's because you know,

things are very different today than they were even when i blew the whistle. you know, 20 years ago. i did it with absolutely no idea of what i was getting myself into. i was not a politically motivated person, a total. i never dreamt of becoming a whistle blower and i just did it in a sort of instant and one moment of a kind of zeal with no real thoughts to what, what was gonna come next. i didn't seek any type of legal advice or, or any a, get anybody on board who i knew i could rely on. and i think that's, that's a very risky thing to do. so i think nowadays there's so many

groups and people that you can find in various ways. um, who will protect your identity? well, um give you the advice um, i mean look at cmo hash for example, you know, i mean he has these leaks such as the, the infamous, the north stream bombings and, you know, nobody is aware of the way his source is coming from. so he's protecting his sources, guessing the information out. and i think really in the u. k, that's your only option these days because as a intelligence or defense whistle blower, there is no legal defense for your whistle blowing. and it's an absolutely appalling stage of us, as i'd like to thank our guest catherine gun for joining us and thank you to our

viewers. one of america's founding fathers, james madison said that, quote, freedom may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power and quote, he was right when he said that nearly 250 years ago. and those words hold true today. that's why we need people like catherine gun until next time. thanks for joining us. 2 the

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