X-Message-Number: 23287
From: "Paul Pagnato" <>
Subject:   Article: Op-Ed Columnist: A Single Conscience v. theState
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 10:51:48 -0800

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 Please...pass on and stand up for your rights and freedoms.
 A Single Conscience v. the State

 Here's the truth and hard facts....
 By BOB HERBERT 



 

Katharine Gun has a much better grasp of the true spirit of
democracy than Tony Blair. So, naturally, it's Katharine
Gun who's being punished. 

Ms. Gun, 29, was working at Britain's top-secret Government
Communications Headquarters last year when she learned of
an American plan to spy on at least a half-dozen U.N.
delegations as part of the U.S. effort to win Security
Council support for an invasion of Iraq. 

The plans, which included e-mail surveillance and taps on
home and office telephones, was outlined in a highly
classified National Security Agency memo. The agency, which
was seeking British assistance in the project, was
interested in "the whole gamut of information that could
give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results
favorable to U.S. goals." 

Countries specifically targeted were Angola, Cameroon,
Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan. The primary goal was
a Security Council resolution that would give the U.S. and
Britain the go-ahead for the war. 

Ms. Gun felt passionately that an invasion of Iraq was
wrong - morally wrong and illegal. In a move that deeply
embarrassed the American and British governments, the memo
was leaked to The London Observer. 

Which landed Ms. Gun in huge trouble. She has not denied
that she was involved in the leak. 

There is no equivalent in Britain to America's First
Amendment protections. Individuals like Ms. Gun are at the
mercy of the Official Secrets Act, which can result in
severe - in some cases, draconian - penalties for the
unauthorized disclosure of information by intelligence or
security agency employees. 

Ms. Gun was fired from her job as a translator and arrested
for violating the act. If convicted, she will face up to
two years in prison. 

We are not talking about a big-time criminal here. We are
not talking about someone who would undermine the
democratic principles that George W. Bush and Tony Blair
babble about so incessantly, and self-righteously, even as
they are trampling on them. Ms. Gun is someone who believes
deeply in those principles and was willing to take a
courageous step in support of her beliefs. 

She hoped that her actions would help save lives. She
thought at the time that if the Security Council did not
vote in favor of an invasion, the United States and Britain
might not launch the war. In a statement last November she
said she felt that leaking the memo was "necessary to
prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi
civilians and British soldiers would be killed or maimed." 

"I have only ever followed my conscience," she said. 

In
1971, in what the historian William Manchester described as
"perhaps the most extraordinary leak of classified
documents in the history of governments," Daniel Ellsberg
turned over to The New York Times a huge study of U.S.
involvement in Vietnam that came to be known as the
Pentagon Papers. The Nixon administration tried to destroy
Mr. Ellsberg. He was viciously harassed. His psychiatrist's
office was burglarized. And he was charged with treason,
theft and conspiracy. 

The prosecution was not successful. The charges were thrown
out due to government misconduct. In an interview last
week, Mr. Ellsberg, who was with the Defense Department and
the Rand Corporation in the 1960's and 70's, told me he
wished he had blown the whistle much earlier on the
deceptions and lies and other forms of official misconduct
related to Vietnam. 

He is lending his name to a campaign in support of Ms. Gun.
She took a principled stand, he said, early enough to have
a chance at altering events. 

"What I've been saying since a year ago last October," said
Mr. Ellsberg, "was that I hoped that people who knew that
we were being lied into a wrongful war would do what I wish
I had done in 1964 or 1965. And that was to go to Congress
and the press with documents. Current documents. Don't do
what I did. Don't wait years until the bombs are falling
and then put out history." 

Ms. Gun is being allowed by British courts to plead an
unusual "defense of necessity." She has said that her
disclosures were justified because they revealed "serious
wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. government," and because
she was sincerely trying to prevent the "wide-scale death
and casualties" that would result from a war that was
"illegal." 

She's due in court today for a pretrial hearing. 




http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/19/opinion/19HERB.html?ex=1075563462&ei=1&en=be83460d86ddb49d



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