A sacked GCHQ employee charged yesterday under the Official Secrets Act said last night that her alleged disclosures exposed serious wrongdoing by the US and could have helped to prevent the deaths of Iraqis and British forces in an "illegal war".

Katharine Gun, 29, of Cheltenham, was charged by Metropolitan police special branch officers under section 1 (1) of the act. The section states that any serving or former member of the security and intelligence agencies is guilty of an offence if they disclose "any information" about their work without official authority.

Ok my opinon on this;

Katharine you signed up to the offical secrets act, what is the point of this act if you can't keep your mouth shut? Should we tell our enemies everything we are going to do before doing it? Come on Tony sling her in jail!

If this gets moved into Flambe I'm quitting this site!

the government bottled out on prosecuting her because they didn't want the details to all come out.

she's guilty under the official secrets act, right or wrong, and should be in jail by all rights

That reeks of David Shaylor.

In the end of the day, it's no surprise to anyone that the government or security services have had plots to kill people such as Gaddafi, but is it really worth losing your job over?

Only if you have PR like Shaylors, I'm not entirely convinced this Gun woman isn't trying to do something similar and secure a few publishing contracts.

It's kind of tough for someone to build a defence case around the alleged diclosure of information that may or may not be true, but cannot be repeated because the alleged employee may have signed an act which prevents said information from ever being disclosed.
Case dissmissed.

It's a tricky one this. If you don't pass on informationa about a crime you can be guilty of being an accessory. This means either way she was guilty of something.

I agree she did break a rule which is very important to national security but I also think given the circumstances I would do the same. Bear in mind she did try to keep it confidential by talking to the UN and not individuals or making the information public. She gave no information to 'our enemies' at all.

Perhaps a revision of the OSA is in order?

under the OSA, your motive matters not a jot, if you spoke to someone you shouldn't have, you're guilty

But at some point you reach the principle that you cannot allow a crime to go unpunished because you signed some document. The war crimes commission at Nurnberg decided that being ordered to break the law was not sufficient justification, therefore, how can an act which prevents someone from reporting criminal activities be justified?

As for the OSA, I signed it once and technically, if I tell you the colour of the carpet in the canteen where I worked, I'd be guilty of an offence. The act is wide open to interpretation and both the nature of the exclosure and the motive are relevant when it comes to a prosecution.


P.S. Jason, do you really think your threat to leave the site would change anybodys mind about whether to flambee a thread or not? Don't be ridiculous.

A good post if I may say so, well said.

If the Spin Doctors in government thought there was an ounce of positive PR to be gained they would have crucified Mrs Gun. The fact they've kept schtum speaks volumes about the legality of what happened irrespective of the interpretation of the OSA.

I fully agree that any Act that protects those seeking to indulge in an illegal activity is a sham.

disclosing 'any info' is a rather broad term. in real terms you would have to proof that the 'info' being leeked is of a damaging nature to the government,security, or intelligence agencies. to prove the 'any info' they would have to bring everything in relation to the case out in the open and they wouldn't do this.

didn't tony blair release intelligence to the media with the hutton inquiry and all that stuff though.? he should be done too. it seems it's one rule for one and another for every one else.

The reason why all charges against Ketherine Gun were dropped was simple, prosecutimng her would have released embarrasssing or damaging information for the Government (my money's on embarrasing)

More people should come forward with information regarding high-level law-breaking. Its easy to hide behind a law that enables you to break a different law. If our countries are gonna make out that we are more civilised, perhaps our governments should behave accordingly. We've already seen Teflon Tony lie his way all through his premiership, why shouldn't we consider him to be a dodgy bastard?

clueless