Customer Reviews

The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion

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... those in Congress and the Executive office, anyway, needed to be stopped! I'm glad that Katharine had the guts to say, "Wait a minute ... that's a bald-faced lie." As those were the very same words I was uttering during the whole lead-up to the invasion, although I didn't have the proof sitting in my hands. If I knew then (or knew that I knew) what I know now about the stupidity of the whole fiasco, I would have done the same thing! Although the book, as Pen Name states, is basically built on the sensationalism of the British press, if you are any kind of writer, you know that there are very fine lines that can be crossed without being put on the block yourself. The authros did a fantastic job of pointing out just how creepy government can be (British or American) when the attack is on them.

Even though this book is being published five years after GCHQ Chinese linguist Katherine Gun leaked an American government memorandum calling for a joint British-American "surge" in electronic espionage directed against some countries who were sitting on the United Nations Security Council, there is precious little new in this book. One could get most of the gist of this book merely by reading back issues of British newspapers. This book really should have been just a long magazine article. What's more, the full, leaked memorandum itself is not even included in the book. (If you want to read the original memo you can find it at: [...]).

It is only in the second half of the book that we find out much about Katherine Gun's rather unique background. While Mrs. Gun publicly claims that if she had to do it all over again she would still leak the memo - and is hailed by many for her stance - I believe that she really would not do so, especially knowing now how much pressure she and here husband would be under. Mr. Gun (I expect his name is pronounced "goon") is an ethnic Turk who married Mrs. Gun only a few months before her getting caught up in a violation of the Official Secrets Act. In what seems like retaliation for his wife's actions, he was arrested for violating his visa and came witin an inch of deportation.

Inflamed by moral outrage at what the US Government was proposing to the British, Mrs. Gun was obviously not aware that at the United Nations, itself, most UN representatives automatically assumed that they were spied upon. And despite her own job in Signals Intelligence, Mrs. Gun apparently believed - sometimes, at least - that "gentlemen do not read each other's mail." Now that really is naive.

Ultimately, Mrs. Gun is a very lucky young woman. If she had been in the old Russian intelligence service she would very likely have been executed for what she did. As it is, she risked years in British prison. In retrospect, her gesture seems to have been misguided, Quixotic, and rash, and ultimately had almost no effect on the British-American rush to war. It does not - and did not - take a rocket scientist to understand that the US and Britain were committed to attacking Iraq, UN Security Council resolution or not.

I also believe that Mrs. Gun is being used, not least by the people who are profiting from this book and from her appearances on the lecture circuit. I wish Mrs. Gun all the best, but I think she should return to life as a teacher, linguist, and mother, and not be drawn in by all the hype about what a heroine she was. In all honesty, I believe it's time for this young wife and mother to thank her lucky stars and stand back from the fray.

Taut, crisp, and intriguing. I enjoyed it as an exercise in psychology. What motivates someone to throw the wrench into the process?