Institute for Public Accuracy: Referring to Katharine Gun, who worked as a translator at Britain’s super-secret Government Communications Headquarters and now faces up to two years in prison, Benn said Tuesday in a live interview: “When somebody on the basis of moral principle puts their conscience before official secrets, they do society a -- well, they perform an essential function. And I think it does raise the question as to whether if that woman is imprisoned it doesn’t throw doubt on the whole idea of the law being concerned with justice.”
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December 17, 2003
New Developments in Case of U.S. Spying on U.N. Security Council: Former British Cabinet Minister Decries Prosecution of Whistleblower
Former British cabinet minister Tony Benn has
criticized the prosecution of a woman charged with
violating his country’s Official Secrets Act in
connection with the leaking of a secret memorandum
from the U.S. National Security Agency. The memo
described wiretaps of home and office telephones along
with surveillance of emails of six “swing vote”
delegations from nations with votes on the U.N.
Security Council early this year as the U.S. and
British governments unsuccessfully sought a resolution
authorizing war on Iraq.
Referring to Katharine Gun, who worked as a translator
at Britain’s super-secret Government Communications
Headquarters and now faces up to two years in prison,
Benn said Tuesday in a live interview: “When somebody
on the basis of moral principle puts their conscience
before official secrets, they do society a -- well,
they perform an essential function. And I think it
does raise the question as to whether if that woman is
imprisoned it doesn’t throw doubt on the whole idea of
the law being concerned with justice.”
Benn was appearing on a broadcast of the national U.S.
radio and TV program “Democracy Now.” Also on the
program was Norman Solomon, executive director of the
Institute for Public Accuracy, whose piece in The
Baltimore Sun on Sunday was the first substantive
article about Katharine Gun to appear in the U.S.
press.
The op-ed piece, distributed today by the LA Times -
Washington Post wire service, includes these
observations:
* “The case raises profound questions about democracy
and the public's right to know on both sides of the
Atlantic.”
* The targets of the U.S. spying at the United
Nations were “delegations from six countries
considered to be pivotal -- Mexico, Chile, Angola,
Cameroon, Guinea and Pakistan -- for the war
resolution being promoted by the United States and
Britain.”
* “Some analysts cite the uproar from the leaked memo
as a key factor in the U.S.-British failure to get
Security Council approval of a pro-war resolution
before the invasion began in late March.”
* "In this case, Ms. Gun's conscience fully
intersected with the needs of democracy and a free
press. The British and American people had every right
to know that their governments were involved in a
high-stakes dirty tricks campaign at the United
Nations. For democratic societies, a timely flow of
information is the lifeblood of the body politic. As
it happened, the illegal bugging of diplomats from
three continents in Manhattan foreshadowed the
illegality of the war that was to come.”
BULLETIN
Letters of support for Katharine Gun can now be sent
to: kthgun@yahoo.co.uk
Audio of the interview with Benn and Solomon is posted
at:
www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/16/164218
The Baltimore Sun article is posted at:
www.sunspot.net/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.gun14dec14,0,1102755.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines
and www.commondreams.org/views03/1214-07.htm
For more information, contact at the Institute for
Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541)
484-9167