1 Boring Old Man

Finally, the Story of the Whistleblower Who Tried to Prevent the Iraq War

^{Of course, Katharine Gun was free to have a conscience, as long as it didn’t interfere with her work at a British intelligence agency. To the authorities, practically speaking, a conscience was apt to be less tangible than a pixel on a computer screen. But suddenly – one routine morning, while she was scrolling through email at her desk – conscience struck. It changed Katharine Gun’s life, and it changed history…}

^{The emailed memorandum from the US National Security Agency (NSA) that jarred Katharine Gun that fateful morning was dated less than two months before the invasion of Iraq that was to result in thousands of deaths among the occupying troops and hundreds of thousands more among Iraqi people. We’re told that this is a cynical era, but there was nothing cynical about Katharine Gun’s response to the memo that appeared without warning on her desktop…}

^{The import of the NSA memo was such that it shook the government of Tony Blair and caused uproars on several continents. But for the media in the United States, it was a minor story. For The New York Times, it was no story at all.}

^{At last, a new book tells this story. "The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War" packs a powerful wallop. To understand in personal, political and historic terms – what Katharine Gun did, how the British and American governments responded, and what the US news media did and did not report – is to gain a clear-eyed picture of a military-industrial-media complex that plunged ahead with the invasion of Iraq shortly after her brave action of conscience. That complex continues to promote what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism"…}

^{… Katharine Gun’s response was disarmingly simple. She activated her conscience when clear evidence came into her hands that war – not diplomacy seeking to prevent it – headed the priorities list of top leaders at both 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and 10 Downing Street. "At the time," she recalled, "all I could think about was that I knew they were trying really hard to legitimize an invasion, and they were willing to use this new intelligence to twist arms, perhaps blackmail delegates, so they could tell the world they had achieved a consensus for war."}

^{She and her colleagues at the Government Communications Headquarters were, as she later put it, "being asked to participate in an illegal process with the ultimate aim of achieving an invasion in violation of international law."}

^{The authors of "The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War," Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, describe the scenario this way: "Twisting the arms of the recalcitrant [UN Security Council] representatives in order to win approval for a new resolution could supply the universally acceptable rationale." After Katharine Gun discovered what was afoot, "she attempted to stop a war by destroying its potential trigger mechanism, the required second resolution that would make war legal."}

^{Instead of mere accusation, the NSA memo provided substantiation. That fact explains why US intelligence agencies firmly stonewalled in response to media inquiries – and it may also help to explain why the US news media gave the story notably short shrift. To a significant degree, the scoop did not reverberate inside the American media echo chamber because it was too sharply telling to blend into the dominant orchestrated themes…}

^{"Journalists, too many of them – some quite explicitly – have said that they see their mission as helping the war effort," an American media critic warned during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. "And if you define your mission that way, you’ll end up suppressing news that might be important, accurate, but maybe isn’t helpful to the war effort."Jeff Cohen spoke those words before the story uncorked by Katharine Gun’s leak splashed across British front pages and then scarcely dribbled into American media. He uttered them on the MSNBC television program hosted by Phil Donahue, where he worked as a producer and occasional on-air analyst. Donahue’s prime time show was canceled by NBC management three weeks before the invasion – as it happened, on almost the same day that the revelation of the NSA memo became such a big media story in the United Kingdom and such a carefully bypassed one in the United States.}

^{Soon, a leaked NBC memo confirmed suspicions that the network had pulled the plug on Donahue’s show in order to obstruct views and information that would go against the rush to war. The network memo said that the Donahue program would present a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war." And: "He seems to delight in presenting guests who are antiwar, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives." Cancellation of the show averted the danger that it could become "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity"…}

And when our first whistle blowers emerged, Paul Oniell and Richard Clarke, we sort of ignored them. And when Joseph Wilson’s New York Times op-ed appeared, it went largely un-noticed [except by the Administration insiders who ‘knew’ what was being hidden]. And even now, except for the minor conviction of Scooter Libby and the firing of Judith Miller from the New York Times, the criminality has not really been prosecuted.