Hello, I'm Charles Mannett with Auk column Interview I have with
me today. Catherine Gunn.
In 2003, Catherine was charged under Section 1 of the Official
Secrets Act whilst working at Government Communications
Headquarters, GCHQ. Catherine, thank you very much
indeed for joining me. Welcome to UK column.
Thank you, Charles, and thanks very much for inviting me on.
It's a pleasure to be here. Not at all.
Now there will be members of the audience that are familiar with
your case and indeed your life, since there'll be many that are
not. But I think it bears such
enormous relevance to what's going on in the world today that
I'd like to go a little bit further back to effectively the,
the, the time when you became part of the set up at GCHQ.
And if it is possible to just bring us into the picture of
your world then in terms of what it was like being in GCHQ at a
time when, you know, we were supposedly under the spectre of
global terror and all this sort of thing.
So what was it that took you to GCHQ and, and, and how was it
working there at that time? Well, I joined while I was
accepted into GCHQ in January 2001 and yeah, I was a, well,
not such a recent graduate. I'd worked in Japan for a while
prior to that, and also in the UK for about 18 months before I
started. But actually my application
process to GCHQ took about 18 months because the security
procedure, you know, from my background, because I grew up
overseas. And they want to interview
someone who's known you at every point of your life to verify who
you are, what kind of person you are.
And so because I had moved, I had lived in, I'd grown up in
Taiwan and then I'd move back to the UK for higher education and
then I'd studied, or rather taught in Japan for a couple of
years. So they basically they wanted
somebody from every part of my life.
And so the whole process took quite a long time.
And of course there are exams. And so I was accepted in January
2001 along with an, A cohort of linguists, about 11 of us.
And we were all sort of young, mid 20s recent graduates and we
all joined in into GCHQ at the, at the particular level that we,
we went into the category. And yeah, it was, it was
exciting. You know, I felt like I was
starting a proper job and I like Cheltenham.
You know, when I, when I first went to Cheltenham, I thought,
wow, you know, it's such a beautiful part of the
countryside, of the British countryside and the, the people
seem so friendly, you know, not like London or most, most of the
sort of South. And yeah, I was looking forward
to it. It was, you know, I forged
friendships immediately with the cohort of people that I joined
with. And that was the that was the
feeling. And you know, that's well, it's
great to sort of hear that background and to get the, the
feel of the place and the sort of the work ethos and work, work
life ethos. But then, of course, to bring us
up to where I had explained in, in the introduction in, I think
it was January 2003, you received an email that has in
effect changed the course of your life.
What did that email say and and what did you, what did you do in
the immediate aftermath of receiving it?
Well, so before we get to there, perhaps obviously I was already
working at C2 when September 11th happened in the US.
And actually I was at work at the time.
I was, you know, so I, I saw it on the TV screens at work.
And yeah. And at the time it was, it was
just, it was shocking. And of course, of course, GCHQ
immediately had to reorganise its workforce.
So prior to that event, GCHQ was sort of organised in such a way
that there was a heavy sort of still Soviet bloc.
So there were still a lot of Russian linguists who were
focusing on on that sphere of things.
And then there was just this hodgepodge of other linguists
who did a bit of everything and were sort of spread across the
whole globe. And after this event happened,
there was this massive recruitment process and language
training process to get Arab and Persian speakers up to speed
because there were just insufficient numbers of them.
So consequently, some of my, the cohorts, my friends who joined
in January 2001 were then rapidly, a couple of them were
rapidly retrained in these languages like in hashed
tournament, you know, in, in various various languages of the
region. And so, you know, I watched as
the invasion of Afghanistan took place and, and, and this
movement, this sort of sentiment that after 911 saw the whole
globe basically unite in support of America, in support of the
people of America and thinking, you know how this is terrible
and we feel for you and we'll do everything to help you.
And the US government, the US executive branch quickly turned
that around and created this. You're either with us or against
us. That, I mean, that's what George
Bush famously said right in his speech and divided the world
between those who support America and those who are
against America. And so this whole politicisation
of, of, of people's minds seemed to happen at that point.
And when they talked about the, you know, when Iraq first came
into, into the frame, when they were once they'd sort of
deployed to Afghanistan and there was all this, I mean, it
was terrible what they did to Afghanistan as well, you know,
but and that that sort of gets even.
I have to admit, I really didn't understand what was going on
then. You know, I didn't really pay
much attention to that. But then when they directed our
attention to Iraq, I just sort of started to think, what on
earth has Iraq got to do with 9/11?
You know, and, and I did actually in September and this
was, this is, I've mentioned it in a few of my interviews
before, but in September of 2002, yeah, I went with my line
manager to San Diego for a conference intelligence.
So all the intelligence personnel, FBINSA, CIAGCHQ, MI6,
everybody was there and it was for this big conference and, and
we were invited one day onto an American aircraft carrier in San
Diego on our day off at the Naval Air Base there, Naval Base
there. And, and you know, this was,
like I said, September 2002. And, and so there were all these
young Mariners running about on the ship, really young.
I mean, I was in my mid 20s, but they looked even younger than
me. And so we sort of asked them
like, what are you guys doing? And, and they just sort of stood
to attention and said, we're deploying to them.
We're deploying to the Gulf, ma'am.
And, and we sort of looked at each other, me and my line
manager, and they said, yeah, we're going to whip some Iraqi
ass. And so immediately that got my,
you know, my antenna up because I was thinking, why are they
they deploying hardware, military hardware to the Gulf
where nothing's been established?
You know, they're still sending out weapons inspectors.
They're still trying to determine whether, you know,
Iraq is in fact a threat. And this is what they would they
were trying to cook up this story that Iraq was a threat.
And so we had all sorts of things going on.
But, you know, they sent UN weapons inspectors Hans Blix and
Scott Ritter at the time to go and really look in Iraq to see
what was what. And so I from that point
onwards, I was really aware and I was trying to find out more
information about Iraq and why Iraq was being targeted.
And, and so I watched the escalation.
I watched how the war propaganda escalated.
And in fact, you know, now we look at Tucker Carlson and we
see how, you know, suddenly he seems to be much more open to
dialogue about different issues. But at the time, you know, Fox
News and all these networks were pumping out all this warp.
And that was so it was appalling.
And yet it was glamorising war. It was, you know, it was this
very nauseating in my view, attempt to normalise this
military aggression against a state that had nothing to do,
nothing at all to do with 9/11 or was any threat.
And in Europe, America, So yeah, I have to say when that email,
which it was a Friday on the end of January, January 31st of of
2003, I received this email along with about 100 other
people at GCG. And by the way, all you have to
do is go on search and hi you and dirty tricks and you'll pull
up the Observer article that was published and the memo, right?
There's a link to the memo. That's all you have to do is
type UN dirty tricks and that's the first thing you'll see.
Now the email, I've got it written down here because you
know, I'm on my phone, so I can't look at my phone.
The email basically had this one quote.
It says it was from the National Security Agency in the US NSA
and GCHP obviously is the sister partner of NSA very closely
linked as you'll see from the email, you know, so it says
we're asking for the whole gamut of information that could give
U.S. policy makers an edge in obtaining results favourable the
US goals or to head off surprises.
So first of all, you've got to ask yourself, this is the
American intelligence service asking the British intelligence
service to aid them, right, to help them and and for what
reason in order to obtain results favourable to US goals
don't say results favourable to our goals, right or US and GB
goals. It's just US goals that is just
gives you a flavour of it and then it says we we also it.
So they want wanted GCHQ to provide any information they
could glean from their product lines.
In other words, the surveillance that they did on UN Security
Council members, the nations that were non permanent members
of the UN Security Council at the time were Angola, Cameroon,
Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan.
And so they wanted our assistance to spy on those
delegates and and then to use to gain, you know, any information
that we could. And so I understood that and it
said also that networks that product lines both domestic and
official. So it meant targeting their home
communication systems and their office communication systems and
basically any information that could be used.
This is how I understood it. Any information that could be
used to persuade those delegates to vote in favour of the UN
resolution 1441, which would authorise the invasion of Iraq.
Yeah. It's just that it just first of
all, what it what it did was it peeled back the curtains for me.
So for the first time I realised that we're not just here to get
information in order to advise our government officials on best
policy and so on. No, we're not just doing that.
What we're actually doing is gaining information in order to
enable them to manipulate the situation to get what they want.
And, and what they wanted in this instance was to invade
Iraq. And even though, you know, at
the time they were still publicly, they were still
claiming that, oh, you know, we haven't, we're not, you know,
all the options are still on the table, you know, and if Saddam
Hussein complied and if this and if that.
So they were they were trying to maintain this idea that an
invasion was not a feta complete.
It was they were still deciding what they were going to do.
But that's not true. We now realise, we now know that
the goal all along was to invade Iraq and how they were going to
do it. And you know, it's, it's taken
years for this information to come out.
But so that email came out on the 31st of January.
And in the email they actually talk about it says it said in
the email. I suspect you'll hear more along
these lines in terms of gathering intelligence in formal
channels, especially as this effort will probably peak in the
middle of next week following the Secretary of State's
presentation to the UN Security Council.
So what they're referring to there is Colin Powell gave a
speech to the UN Security Council on the 5th of February,
a week after this email. Where he's seen dangling some
file right talking about yellow cake, talking about weapons of
mass destruction, all of which was false cooked up intelligence
we now know from sexed up dossiers, right?
All of which has come out subsequently.
But that happened and they desperately.
So what we also know now from further revelations is that on
the 14th of January, so this is 2 weeks prior to the email that
I received on the 14th of January, the Attorney General
Goldsmith advised Blair that an invasion of Iraq would be
illegal under UN. And you know, there's no
humanitarian reasons for an invasion whatsoever.
And he submitted this five page draught legal advice to Tony
Blair and Tony Blair accepted it, but he passed it on
apparently to Jack Straw, who was foreign minister, and to Sir
Greenstock, the UN ambassador, British ambassador to the UN.
And they were not happy with this at all, apparently.
So they started to try and influence Attorney General
Goldsmith's opinion. And later it turns out that on
the 10th of February. So this is five days after Colin
Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council on the 10th of
February. Attorney General was still not
really convinced, not by the effort.
He is sent to the US to meet with the senior government
lawyers in the US, Dick Cheney's lawyers and Donald Rumsfeld's
lawyer and Condoleezza Rice, who was the national security
advisor. And, and they, they spun it.
They spun an, a legal argument that in fact there was a reason
that it could be justified. And so consequently he rewrote
his legal advice. It went from A5 page document to
a single page document, A5 and that was what was presented to
the parliament. That was what ministers made
their decision on based on this legal advice that had been he'd
sort of he'd been strong armed into making this legal advice.
And in fact, all of his people below him in his, you know, in
the legal office, nobody agreed with him.
He was a lone voice. No one else agreed with that
advice. So this is the background that,
you know, has has emerged years after and it's been, you know,
round. Everybody's roundly condemned
it. All the anyone with any ounce of
integrity has said that the invasion of Iraq was illegal, it
was a crime against humanity. There was no justification for
it. Yeah, I mean, you're so right to
to go back and and give the the wider context, especially the
the bit that you relate in the San Diego aircraft carrier and
how well, well, before that there appeared to be any
indication that Iraq was in any way involved for a start, or
that a military, some sort of military operation was in any
way appropriate. These things were already
happening, were already in place, which is totally
fascinating. Just just a quick 1.
And I don't know whether you'd necessarily know the answer to
this, but but given what you said about that OFT quoted sort
of phrase of Bushes, you know, you're either with us or you're
against us. The email that was received by
you and your colleagues at GCHQ. Are you aware of any such
similar email, or indeed the same going to the security
services of any other country? You mean this this precise
email? Yeah.
I mean, were, you know, for example, were the French or the
Australians or the, you know, Canadians asked to do a perform
a similar service? I have no idea.
It's quite possible that the
email went out to the Five Eyes community.
So that would be including New Zealand and Canada and
Australia. Whether they.
Yeah, I think it would have been a very limited one because I
think certainly not the French or because the French and the
Germans and, well, the Russians at the time, who were not as
much of A foe to the, you know, Anglo American Empire, they were
very much against it. They were against it.
However, apparently these American senior lawyers,
government lawyers who persuaded the British attorney general,
they intimated without proof that the French would go along
with it without aun resolution. Now, they apparently provided no
evidence for this, but they claimed it.
And so he, apparently Goldsmith believed it.
And all of this, you know, I mean, it's just incredible that
you could talk in such cavalier terms about the destruction of
an entire state. And, and I mean, they made no
bones about it. They talked about the military,
the generals and all these figures who who salivated the
idea of dropping bombs on people.
You know, they were gleeful about bombing Iraq and
Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.
Yeah, absolutely. You're quite right.
And, you know, it is extraordinary to think
specifically about the role of the attorney general, somebody
who has within their gift the ability to be able to direct as
to whether there is a legal case for war or not.
So in some senses, he he wields, he or she would wield enormous
power. But by the same token, by being
one individual, as you've just articulated, he or she is of
course, terrifically vulnerable. Goldsmith himself afterwards in
relation to this said having regard to the information on the
negotiating history which I have been given and the arguments of
the US administration which I heard in Washington, which is
the the visit that you're talking about.
I accept that a reasonable case can be made that Resolution 1441
is capable in principle of reviving the authorization in
678 which approved of military force in the first Gulf War.
Sorry, that's that's it should be in brackets that bit.
He didn't say that without a further resolution.
He said that and then and then to your point of those being in
disagreement with him, I think the most notable was Elizabeth
Wilmshurst, the deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office
who who resigned and she wrote, she wrote, I regret that I
cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq
without a second Security Council resolution to revive the
authorisation given in Security Council Resolution 678.
So it, it, it remains incredibly murky.
Obviously there's so much to cover What, what, what we should
get to really is how the Official Secrets Act was
wielded. And not just that, but how you
were dealt with as a result of what you did.
So just to, to now go into what it is that you did decide to do
with this being the background first of all, in your sort of
state of mind and what you'd seen going on around you as in
building a case for a war apparently or nothing.
And also the thing that we must remember to cover is the in
terms of subsequently the defence and indeed the element
of public interest because of course that that does form such
a large part of it. I don't want to overload the
question, but, but yeah. So, so you received the email
which, as you say, you felt made very clear that GCHQ was going
to be asked to do something, first of all, that it should not
be asked to do in the 1st place, but secondly, specifically for
US interests, not for allied interests.
So. So what did you do after you'd
received and sort of considered the contents of the email?
I went away and thought about it over the weekend and I, I, I
didn't consult anybody, but I had already decided that I, I
felt something had to be done about this email.
It needed to be made public. And as it happened, I had a
contact who, so I contacted this person.
I've never named them. I contacted them and I said,
look, I've seen something very, very significant.
I think it needs to be released to the public.
And they said, OK, send it to me.
I have an idea who I can send, you know, give it to.
But whatever you do after this, don't ever contact me again and
and never speak to this, never speak of this to anyone ever
again. And I was like, yes, OK.
And so the following Monday I went into work and I printed off
a copy. I was not working at my usual
desk. I was at a different desk on
Mondays I went to work in a different area.
So I thought this is a great opportunity.
I can print it off a different computer.
So I was scheming already, you know, I was trying to avoid
detection, but I'm obviously I was a complete naive and you
know, totally technical, technically not savvy as all I
did was what I new thought I could do, which was just to copy
paste and print off this email. And then I posted it the, you
know, I took it snuck it out of work in my handbag.
I was absolutely petrified and then I posted it as soon as I
got home into a letterbox and then I was out of my hands.
You know, I, I basically, I didn't know what was going to
happen to it after that. I didn't know who my contact was
going to give it to. I had no idea what was going to
happen. And then on the 15th of
February, I went on the anti war March, the big, the big, you
know, million and a half or whatever person anti war March
in London. And like many people there that
day, I felt that wow, this really had the potential to
change things. You know, it was such a
historic, historic March and even political savvy people
believed at the time that it would have an effect on Tony
Blair anyway. So then we move forward another
couple of weeks and on the 5th of March, I went to buy my
Sunday copy of the Observer and not expecting anything, you
know, I'd already sort of resigned myself to thinking that
it wasn't going to come out because I'd, you know, been sort
of waiting for this revelation, but nothing had happened.
So I'd kind of thought it's not going to happen.
And then on the 5th of March or second of the March, I can't
remember which, I got this observer and it was on the front
page UN or US dirty tricks on the front page.
And so immediately when I saw it, because it even had a, a
slight, a photocopy or image of the email that I'd photocopied,
you know, and my heart just sank into my gut where I sank
probably down to my feet. I mean, I was just absolutely,
utterly, completely terrified. And I, I ran home to my husband
and I basically, he was still sleeping and I threw the
newspaper on the bed and burst into tears.
And he, you know, that was the first he'd ever heard of it was,
you know, he. So I had to explain to him.
And and so the ordeal began. What was I going to do now that
the information had come out? And of course, my first instinct
was not to say anything. And of course, my husband kept,
he said don't, don't say anything coming from his
background, which was also one of authoritarian regimes that,
you know, disappear people and so on.
But you know, that burden, that burden of not telling the truth,
that's a very big burden. And it's not one that I take
easily, especially when it relates to such a massive issue,
you know, of going to work every day, living a totally
duplicitous life, pretending I had nothing to do with it and
potentially allowing other people to take the blame.
I mean, that wasn't necessarily my concern because I thought, if
they're innocent, nobody's going to, you know, they're not going
to charge an innocent person. I was afraid of being found out.
And I thought I, you know, I can't, I just literally couldn't
function normally at work knowing that I was the one who
had done it. So having denied it on, in an
interview on the second day of interrogations, on the third day
or Wednesday, I went back in this time to confess and, and
that's what I did. And so they immediately, you
know, took me away from the office, took me to the security
personnel and then eventually I was transferred to Cheltenham
Police station where I was held for just under 24 hours in the
cells below the station and and interviewed by Special Branch
the following day, having had my house turned upside down and
searched. Which by the way, was a property
that we were renting from somebody who worked at GCHQ but
lived in London. So, you know, they were very
good about not complaining and actually not intervening at all
and not kicking us out because we stayed there for a few more
months afterwards. They charged, they didn't.
They arrested me first on suspicion of breaking Section 1
of the Official Secrets Act and then released me on bail and I
felt very vulnerable and very alone.
I didn't want to tell anybody. I didn't want anybody to know.
I don't know who to turn to. As it happened, the organisation
Liberty, at the time, it was a different person who was heading
it. He kept his eyes on these issues
and he kept his ear to the ground and as soon as he saw
somebody had been arrested from GCHQ, he contacted my union,
the, the union at GCHQ, the public civil service union,
whatever, and said I understand, you know, you have somebody
who's been arrested. I'd like to get in touch with
them. So thankfully he got in touch
within the week. I think of me being arrested and
speaking to him in a coffee shop in Cheltenham was the the most,
you know, it really was such a relief to to have somebody on my
side. It was incredible.
And and so they they said, you know, think about it.
But we would like to work with you on this and represent you if
necessary and so on. And so that's what happened.
I had other offers, but I declined.
I'm glad that I declined those offers because I felt that they
weren't as altruistic as Liberty's offer was.
And we'll just come on to the detail of that in a second.
I think having mentioned the official secret tax, obviously,
you know, understandably is is little used compared with a lot
of other pieces of legislation, but I think it would be a good
time just to remind people exactly part, well, certain
parts of it. I mean, Section 1 in particular.
But just to go back through the history, I mean, but the first
Official Secrets Act was in 1889 and then it was updated in 1911
and 1920 and a few times since most recently in 1989.
And it was under Section 1 of the 1989 Act that you were
charged and that they have. But there's been an evolution
over time, and I think one of the things that is not widely
understood is that it is not only people who have signed the
Official Secrets Act that are bound by it.
In fact, everybody is bound by it.
I'll just come on to that in a second.
But Section 1 of the 89 Act states that a person who is or
has been a member of the security or intelligence
services is guilty of an offence if, without lawful authority, he
discloses any information, document or other article
relating to security or intelligence which is or has
been in his possession by virtue of his position as a member of
any of those services or in the course of his work while the
notification is or was in force. Obviously her possession in this
case, but so that's so that's that's how section one sets it
out. And This is why, you know,
earlier I referred to the issue of of public interest because of
course the attorney General states that when making
decisions about whether to consent to a prosecution, the
the attorney general makes his decision in the public interest
and not in the interests of the government.
Well, that's highly questionable for one.
But the point is it's a one way St in that he gets to decide
what is in the public interest rather than in your case, the
defendant. So we'll come on to this in a
second. The other thing is that Section
5 of the 1989 Act with regard to members of the public states
that it is also an offence to make a damaging disclosure of
information relating to security or intelligence, defence or
international relations if the information has come into the
person's possession without the authority of that state or
organisation. And I think that's just one to
bear in mind. I'm not trying to put wind up
people, but just the I think it's a common misperception that
the official secret act only binds people that are part of
the intelligence and security community or that have signed
the official secret act. It's not actually the case and
just gives a good insight into how like so many pieces of
legislation, it's evolved over time to be used as a catch all
if necessary, with very little recourse if if indeed you are
ever charged with it. But so to go back to then your
dealings with liberty and indeed putting forward some sort of
defence, obviously public interest was something was a
course of action that wasn't actually open to you.
So, so how did your discussions evolve and and and how you know
where did you arrive with a with a defence?
Well, of course they didn't charge me for eight months.
So for eight months I was on tenterhooks.
And now I understand that this could be described as law fair.
So, you know, this is deliberate.
It's a deliberate part of the process of making life difficult
for you, making an example of you, basically of retaliating
against you. So rather than swift justice,
they draw it out. And so for eight months, I, you
know, I was just, I didn't know, I didn't know what was going to
happen to me. And this happens to a lot of
people. And then so in November, they
finally, they bring charges and, and of course, by this time, you
know, we, we've, me and the team at Liberty, you know, we'd had
several conversations, I'd gone up to London, I'd met with them
several times. And you know, they were as much
in the dark as I was. But when the charges came, we
sort of that put the wind in our sails, you know, so now we can
finally get our teeth into this thing.
And so we had discussions and I, I explained to the lawyers and I
said, look, I really, I don't want to do any sort of plea
bargaining. I don't want any mitigating, you
know, circumstances based on a guilty plea.
I don't feel guilty. I don't want to say I'm guilty,
you know, because I think I did the morally right thing, the
ethical thing. And and so they they agreed,
they said yes, OK, you know, we stand, we stand by you on that.
And so we must now think of a way to defend you because
unfortunately there is no defence.
There is, you know, Official Secrets Act has no defence apart
as they sort of came to the realisation after a while, apart
from the defence of necessity, which isn't quite the same as a
public interest defence. But the defence of necessity is
one in which you could claim that you break the law in order
to save lives, right? So I mean, there are common,
common practises. You know, the most obvious is
breaking, breaking the speed limits or crashing through red
lights in order to take your wife to the hospital because
she's in labour, you know, or something like that.
Or saving a life, trying to save a life to get to hospital in
time. This was obviously a much more
difficult proposition whereby we were attempt, we were going to
attempt to prove that what I had been doing was attempting to
stop an illegal invasion of a country and saving British
military personnel lives and also Iraqi lives in doing so.
And so trying to make that case would have been quite a
challenge, but we were prepared to do it.
And the team had at some point heard that Elizabeth Wilmshurst
had resigned. And the reason for her
resignation was this apparent difference in opinion.
But it that was not well known and it was very hush hush.
But they got wind of this somehow and they started
digging. And that's when it sort of came
to light that in fact there had been a difference of opinion and
that possibly the legal opinion had changed at some point the
legal team set out a request and said we want to see all
available legal advice presented to the government as part of the
defence. And then quite extraordinarily,
quite out of the blue shortly thereafter, and can't recall
exactly how many days it was, but I do believe it was after
the request for legal advice that they set a date for me to
attend at the Old Bailey. And at that date they said we
offer no evidence we're dropping the charges.
So, yeah, in February they dropped the charges against me.
So, you know, I was suddenly, I was a free person, that that
thing that been looming over me, oppressing me, it was gone just
like that. It's all gone, forgotten.
And it was just incredible really, because on the one hand,
once again, I, I felt this enormous, enormous amount of
relief. But on the other hand, it was
sort of an anticlimax because I had girded my loins, as they
say. You know, I was prepared for
this conflict. And it was going to be a
massive, massive trial. If it had gone ahead
potentially, you know, with putting the whole Iraq war on
trial, putting those who prosecuted the war on trial, how
different things would have been if that had actually gone ahead.
You know, even if, even if the jury found me guilty, how
different that the whole lay of the land would be now
potentially. Absolutely, Yeah.
I mean that that's a very, very sort of profound consideration,
of course. And unfortunately a hypothetical
1, because it seems that no matter how hard anybody might
try trying to stick that particular Jelly to the wall is
is seems to be beyond everybody's wit or capability so
far. Of course, we will hold out
hope. Actually, just just to talk
about the defence, you know, using the defence of necessity,
I think it's really worth stating or making it clear
that's a common law defence. And just to go back to the
legislation and how it's manipulated and wielded, you
know, you use the word manipulation and we see so much
legislation coming out now with the specific purpose of
repealing or to replace parts of common law.
And you can see with a defence like necessity, which is a
common law defence, exactly why the establishment would want to
change it because of course it may be applied regardless of the
particular piece of legislation. That's a very good point that
you make. Now.
You spoke about lawfare. I think one part of probably
many is during the 8 month period before you were actually
charged and I think I've got the chronology right.
Would you just describe the treatment of your husband as a
as a foreign national and and what happened to him during that
time? Well, actually this happened
after I was, I was charged. So that that is interesting, but
I don't think it was deliberate. So I don't think that was, I
think it was 2 strands, two different parts of the
government doing their own thing and however it worked in our
favour. So my husband was at the time of
an asylum seeker, his asylum claim had been rejected and so
for many months he had been signing on at the police station
on a weekly basis. And so after, after I had been
charged, one of these days, I drove him to the police station
and for this signing on process. And then all of a sudden he
didn't come out. And I waited and waited.
And then I went into the police station and said, well, actually
a girl had come out from the police station, a young girl,
and said, oh, something like, are you waiting for that, that
tall man in the police station? And I was like, yeah.
And she goes, they've taken him. And I was like, what?
And so I dashed into the police station, and he wasn't anywhere
in the entrance. And so I said, you know, what
have you done? Where's my husband?
And they said, oh, you know, nothing to do with us.
It's border control. And, and they're deporting him.
So he's going to be sent back to Turkey.
Yeah. And I was just.
I was like, Oh my God, what, what do I do now?
What do I do now? But luckily I'd got prior to all
of this, I'd been in touch with our MP at the time and a Lib Dem
MP, Nigel forgot his last name at the minute.
Brilliant. Really lovely chap.
And so he knew us. He knew us because I'd
approached him before to talk about our, you know, asylum and
this sort of thing. And, and it was only through his
intervention. So he contacted the minister,
Home Affairs, I think it was Beckett at the time.
No, not no. Anyway, I can't remember who it
was, but she said he said something like this looks like
state bullying, you know. And by this time he was already
at some detention centre in Heathrow, right in the vicinity
of Heathrow Airport. And they were about about to
place him on, on the plane. And you know, I had no money on
him, no money. He didn't have a jacket or
anything because he'd gone in the car and it was middle of
winter. He'd gone in the car to sign on,
He had only the clothes he was standing in, and they were just
going to deport him with no ID, no money, nothing to not even
the airport closest to where any of his relatives live, just to
anchor, as far as I understand. And you know, what was he going
to do there? And anyway, with no documents,
how would the Turkish authorities deal with him?
You know, this is the other thing when they deport people.
So she intervened and said this looks like he said.
He intervened and said this looks like state bullying.
You know, don't you think it's not not a good look?
And so she literally called the detention centre and said, have
you got this person in your waiting room?
Can you release them please? And actually they don't release
them. So he was put into another
detention centre in Oxford. And he was there for about 3
days before they finally released him back.
Only because, only because they'd taken my passport,
because I was facing a criminal prosecution, you know, so I
couldn't leave the country and join him if he was deported.
So it was against our human rights, the rights to a family
life that literally at that point they intervened and
stopped him from being deported. And then we had to go through
the laborious process of applying for a spousal visa,
which we did. Nigel Jones, I think was it?
Yeah, I think, yeah, I think Nigel Jones, yeah.
I mean, you know, that that does illustrate, I would say beyond
reasonable doubt that that there was anything accidental about
it. I mean that that is and I think
that's a very relevant part of the story, particularly as you
know, in this day and age. OK, as I say, far less so
obviously the Official Secrets Act.
But certainly the in 2024 we saw this done a lot with terrorism
legislation and how how bits of law are are being used sort of
well outside of their usual or perhaps intended intended
consequence or sorry intended purpose rather with with very
poor consequences for for all involved.
Now the other point to make, which we spoke about just before
we started recording, is that by extraordinary coincidence, the
then Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken McDonald has
recently recorded a podcast in which he spoke about your case.
And I think there were two extraordinary things that
dropped out that first of all, his, his utterly glib reference
to the timing of it. And he I wrote it down.
He's, he's described that period, early 2003 as being at a
time we and the Americans were trying to persuade the Security
Council to back an invasion of Iraq.
And as we said earlier, this was just such an extraordinary thing
to hear because this was just a springboard into his story, as
though it merited no further consideration to talk about
something of of such significance.
I mean that I would like to hear your your comment on, but also
his refusal to accept that the Goldsmith advice and indeed how
it may have changed on his visit to Washington was in any way
relevant or or worthy of any further discussion.
Certain people in this story who are most culpable and who are
probably the least savoury of characters.
You know, I'm thinking Tony Blair for instance, principally
above all else. And you know, I think it was the
one of the editors at the Observer, Kemal Ahmed.
I think it was very pro the invasion and others, you know,
various others who really seem to have no conscience.
I mean, I don't really know what goes on in these people's heads,
but they somehow, you know, there's been no repercussions,
no repercussions at all for any of these people.
In spite of the things that have become so apparent subsequently
that it was in fact an illegal invasion, that there were no
weapons of mass destructions, destruction, none whatsoever.
You know, even if they had any, they were completely degraded
and wouldn't, you couldn't use them and they certainly didn't
have a 45 minute range of whatever they were trying to
claim. And, you know, any of the human
humanitarian reasons that they tried to gin up to, to persuade
the public. The, the, the, the result is
that, you know, Iraq is still reeling to this day from the
consequences, you know, and in fact, it was, I think recently
revealed by an Iraqi minister or some insider that in fact, the
Iraqis are not in control really of their own country,
principally because their oil revenue is held in an American
bank. You know, it's not even in their
own country. They don't have access to their
own funds. And there are numerous military
bases, U.S. military bases still in Iraq.
You know, the country at one time prior to the first Gulf War
and then the 10 years of egregious genocidal sanctions,
which, you know, again, there's just something else that's just
brushed over. Even though that awful, awful
woman said she thought it was worth it.
You know, the deaths of half a million Iraqi children.
Albright with Madeleine Albright.
Yeah. Oh, we think it's worth it.
Worth it for who? You know, it just these people
make me furious. And so this Ken McDonald
character who apparently is a Sir, well, I don't think I need
to say what my feelings are about people like that.
No, we are drawing towards the close of what is a completely
compelling narrative and chapter in your life.
But of course what you've done is, is bring us up to speed.
And I was minded of the parallels when you were
describing the aftermath of September the 11th and, and sort
of whether you were with us or against us.
And how in effect it gave America carte blanche to to do
what they wanted as far as the international community was
concerned because of the sympathy for them.
And we think back to October the 7th, 2023, and how the world has
reacted to Israel's actions following that moment.
I mean, there are parallels without a doubt.
How do you see things going from here, particularly with the
Trump presidency about to begin again?
And indeed, Starmer and you know, who's very much obviously
pro Israel and not that I want to concentrate particularly on
Israel, but but how do you see things?
Going from here and and what influences are sort of
especially at play? Well, that's a very big, big
question. I think we could go on for
another hour. But you know, really what I I
think is happening globally, there are so many different
angles. For me, I've come to the
conclusion that most of everything is economic and
control and power. It's about economy, power and
control. And I've recently come to the
realisation, so I'm going to start a lecture now.
But I've recently come to a realisation and I'm still trying
to feel my way. And it's maybe completely
obvious to a lot of people, but I think there are people who've
begun to explore this is the fact that at the dawn of the
industrialisation of Europe, where it started and the sort of
liberal capitalist marketplace, the economy that was evolving at
that time. What happened was it seems as
sort of the Marxist critique then of what was going on, was
this a modification of land and labour.
So prior to that, there are people who argue in the
mediaeval period, even though there was a marketplace and
there was trade and so on, but in industrialised world it
rapidly changed into something else.
And so the things that had never really had a sort of value
attached to them suddenly had value attached to them.
So land and labour or other work time, human time and skill was
commodified and financialized. This then accelerated and by by
doing that wealth, enormous wealth was generated.
Enormous wealth was generated by the commodification of land and
labour. And then subsequently this has
accelerated to the point where other things were commodified
and financialized in the 20th century.
So throughout the 1900s, this commodification process of
everything, everything became commodified, financialized.
And so this sort pyramid Ponzi scheme has developed in this
financial world that's basically it's just rapidly expanding all
the time. And yet it's really based on
nothing, nothing of real value. And because it is this
completely disproportionate Ponzi scheme where it's all now
sort of debt based and imaginary fanciful schemes that they cook
up, where they derive profit from all these schemes.
They have to create other things, they have to commodify
other things. And so now what they're
commodifying is data while they've done it already.
So, you know, we are the new oil, as they say, our data is
the new oil. So they've commodified data.
And of course, as part of the climate thing, they're
commodifying, financializing nature.
So all of nature, which previously had no value attached
to it, right? And it never entered our
consciousness that you could attach value to nature, but
they're doing it. And furthermore, they're going
to financialize, I believe, our genes and ourselves, you know,
so they're constantly creating new markets whereby they can
commodify everything attached value, rent it or sell it back
to us. And that's what they're trying
to they've, that's what this beast has become.
And anybody who tries to resist it in any way.
So countries like Iraq, like Syria, like North Korea, like
China, like Russia, who finally come to the realisation, they
don't want to become, they don't want their countries to be
controlled by this. However, I think to some extent
those global S nations, those they're BRICS nations, they're
not critiquing it in this way. So for them, tech, you know,
technology and the future of all this biotech and all the rest of
it, AI and so on, is this bright new future with so much
potential and they want to be part of it.
But the danger is that the people manipulating this market,
the people who are in control of it at the moment, are people who
are simply trying to extract more value from it and further
to control and dominate those of who they're extracting it from.
So I'm just exploring this, but I think, you know, this is the
nature of the conflict and some and so some people are still
stuck in the commodification of land and resources Fight.
So there's a fight over who can control those things in our
world. It's moved on, you know, to this
new type of commodification which I'm talking about.
And so the, I think maybe I'm deluding myself, maybe everybody
knows about this, but I think it needs to be something that more
of us are aware of and to critique what's going on from
that angle. Because the traditional left, I
think don't get it. You know, they're stuck in this
critiquing of land and labour and not realising that things
have moved on much, much further.
And you know, most of them support the climate narrative
and, you know, net 0 policies because that got hijacked like
like every good movement, it gets hijacked by the, you know,
status quo executive, the power elites, and they turn it to
their advantage. And so Israel basically doesn't
want to have any neighbours, it doesn't want to have palace.
If you look at the size of Israel, if you look at, you know
what they envisaged at the time of A2 state solution, In
reality, no state can really function in that way.
You can't have a state with such Julia borders with a neighbour
that is antagonistic or there is some antagonism between the two
neighbours. So, and I, I've heard this
somewhere recently in a, in a video where the, the guy was
suggesting that once again, you know, just like the invasion of
Iraq was decided and they wanted, they would do whatever
they could to get achieve that. He suggests that in Israel, the
Israeli goal is to basically annex Gaza, annex the West Bank,
make it their own, and, and to define new Israeli borders,
excluding Palestinians from those places.
And, and that the US and the UK have agreed and have basically
given them certain amount of leeway to achieve it.
And when you look at how things are panning out, that's how it
looks to me. You know, that, that, that, that
looks like how they're going forward with this.
But also I, I did want to bring up and I hope it's not going to
make this too long, but the, the British state is, has always
been very secret. You know, the Brit, the British
state is renowned for its obsession with secrecy.
And in fact, what it also is exceptionally good at doing is,
as one academic in the US has described it, a process which
she's coined it as legalising lawlessness.
And she explains this in her book Legacy of Violence, which
is about the British Empire, is that the state deploys underhand
criminal means or it uses underhand illegal criminal
behaviour. And when it's found out, it
quickly legislates in order to legalise it, Right?
And so we've seen this happen with Snowden's revelations back
in 2015 about mass surveillance and how it, you know,
intelligence services was hoovering up data on everyone.
And what do they do? They go ahead and legalise it
with the Investigatory Powers Act.
And then what happened with most recently when they passed this
awful, awful, the worst piece of legislation in the UKI believe
is this Chase Act, which is the Covert Human Intelligence
Sources Act. Now, why did they make that
piece of legislation? Because the spy cops scandal.
And what was the spy cops scandal?
I'm sure UK column viewers are well aware, you know, the the
way the police force, undercover police force were infiltrating
these totally innocuous organisations by animal rights
activists and so on. And So what do they do when this
scandal arrives? They develop a piece of
legislation that goes way beyond what spy cops was, to the point
where every single, virtually every single government employee
now more or less is legalised to use criminal behaviour in terms
of grooming or, you know, entrapping or what the heck you
want to think of for national security, serious crime,
economic well being of Britain. I mean really, talk about the
ends justifying the means. It's the absolute worst piece of
legislation in the UK because it's giving the UK government
and any Tom, Dick, Harry, Jill and Jane to do anything really.
And then they can point their finger at somebody else and said
they did it. So can we really trust anything
that happens now? This is what I'm really worried
about. Can we trust any event that
happens where they point their finger at somebody else and said
they did this and we must do this because they did this.
And they start passing more legislation on the basis that,
oh, this happened and that happened when in fact, you know,
they set them up to do it. And this has happened in the
past. Of course we know.
I think, you know, we need to really the best thing we can do,
I'm beginning to think now is to use the legislation against
them. Absolutely.
I think an awful lot of people would agree with you.
And of course, the the irony and what you've just been discussing
is that your charge under the Official Secrets Act was in
effect sort of the opposite of that.
I mean you, as you said, as you described, you know, you broke
the law wilfully, deliberately in order to prevent a
catastrophe from from unfolding. And yet now we have specific
legislation to enable people to break the law with absolutely no
such consequence. Now, Catherine, unfortunately we
are out of time. But as you say, we could easily
go on for another hour. Now, what we must mention at
this point is that the story of your case was turned into a film
in 2019 called Official Secrets. So I'll put a note to that.
Oh, sorry, link to that in the notes for this interview.
And also, please tell us where we can find you.
I know you have an excellent Telegram channel, so please just
tell us quickly about that. Yeah, well, you know, I've
always been a big, I've been a follower of UK column for a long
time and you know, it's thanks to UK column that I've become
more aware of a lot of issues. So, you know, unlike UK column,
I don't have a website or a channel or anything like that.
But I like you said, I do have a Telegram channel under my name,
but I'm not sure how you find it really on Telegram.
Well, that's fine. I can put AI can put a link to
that in in the note. So that'll that'll direct people
towards your Telegram channel. Well, there are a couple of
other things that I'm doing, but one thing I'm doing is teaching
Chinese. So, you know, we need more
people, more people who understand Chinese these days
because obviously China is a massive powerhouse.
And, and on the on the other hand, I'm also involved in an
organisation called the Institute for the Public
Interest. And again, this is a fledgling
organisation, so we'll see how it goes.
Perfect. And I will include details of
that. Now, if you are in a position to
support UK Financial UK column financially and you're not doing
so already, then may I urge you to take a look at our Support UK
column pages in order to set up a donation or perhaps a
membership. And it just remains for me to
thank Catherine Gunn very much indeed for an absolutely
fascinating interview. Catherine, thank you.
Thank you, Charles. It was my pleasure.