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, intercept and 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 in gola ball, 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. a. hi thanks, johns. 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 store lots of action on, on both 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 now twenty's the guys up to a young. and i, i said to my colleague, i was like, what do you think they're up to? and so he asks them and they said, oh ma'am,

that sale to the goals just started to be mentioned. and then over the last, previous 10 to 20 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 to 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 peace. 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 it may end immediately was like a red flag. and i saw, as 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 inspirations and the most recent was drafted in 1999. and it deals with um, basically the intelligence services, the defense industry. also 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 u. 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 defense staff. and 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 that link. 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 and 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 price keeter's were afraid to expose. busy was 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. um 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 blair actually got re elected us or the labor party one at any rate. and tony blair was once again prime minister um and so i think

they were very, very concerned about a highly political trial that would put the iraq roll at center stage of the trial . and tony blair's specifically tony plas involvement in that role. and 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. but 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 need 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. katherine, 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 a very difficult time actually for, for me i was young, i was quite young. i was in my mid twenties. we recently just got married. my husband is a tech 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 partially 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, charge me a breeching official secrets act that uh that they did try to to, to port him from the country. which um 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 history.