Katharine Gun, Who Came Closest to Stopping the Occupation of Iraq: The Invasion was a Success

Interview with Katharine Gun on Iraq Invasion "Anniversary", Her Upbringing in Taiwan, Christianity, Pandemic, Geopolitics and the Future of Humanity

Daniel Ellsberg: “No one else -- including myself -- has ever done what Katharine Gun did: Tell secret truths at personal risk, before an imminent war, in time, possibly, to avert it."

My just-completed audio interview with Katharine Gun is available on Rokfin and here:

Every time I think of Katharine I’m reminded of the Rumi line: “This is the sound of your own voice echoing off the walls of God.”

This is because she exposed “the most important leak", in the words of Daniel Ellsberg, an NSA memo showing the US and British governments were attempting to blackmail or bribe the UN Security Council into granting authorization for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. She may well have prevented such authorization but Bush, with Blair and Biden’s backing, started the invasion nonetheless with contradictory demands and the “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign 20 years ago.

What I didn’t know until 2019, when the film “Official Secrets” about her came out and I actually met her for the first time, was that she was partly inspired to expose the document because of work I’d done. She’d read Target Iraq (which I’d contributed to) as well War Plan Iraq one weekend in early 2003 and that “basically convinced me that there was no real evidence for this war. So I think from that point onward, I was very critical and scrutinizing everything that was being said in the media." And she’d then expose the secret document. See piece I wrote about her work and the film in 2019.

In the film, when her character, played by Keira Knightley, under questioning from Scotland Yard — “You work for the British government?” — she replied: “Not really. I work for the British people. I gather intelligence so the government can protect the British people. I don’t gather intelligence so the government can lie to the British people.” With “Charles’s” coronation soon upon us and mass protests in France, one can’t help but think that should the British people insist on having a monarch that they could choose one more worthy.

“A Secret Path” 2016 Acrylic. Hydrangea invisibly present. By the author.