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SHE LEAKED THE MEMO THAT COULD HAVE STOPPED THE IRAQ WAR. In January 2003, Katharine Gun was a Mandarin translator at GCHQ, Britain's signals intelligence agency. She showed up to work one morning, opened her email, and found a memo that would destroy her career, threaten her marriage, and land her in court facing two years in prison. The email was from Frank Koza, chief of staff at the NSA's regional targets division, asking GCHQ to help spy on the private communications of six UN Security Council nations whose votes would determine whether the world approved an invasion of Iraq. The goal was to gather intelligence that would give US policymakers leverage over smaller nations. Angola. Cameroon. Chile. Guinea. Pakistan. Bulgaria. Countries with no dog in this fight, being bugged so Washington and London could fix the result. Gun printed the email, slipped it into her handbag, and eventually passed it to a journalist. In March 2003 the memo was published by The Observer, creating a media firestorm and raising serious questions about the legality of the Iraq War. Then they came for her. She was charged under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act in November 2003. She refused to plead guilty. Her legal team decided the best defence was to prove that the war itself was illegal, and demanded the government hand over its own legal advice to Tony Blair. And here is the part that tells you everything you need to know about how power actually works. The case came to court on 25 February 2004. Within half an hour it was dropped. The prosecution offered no evidence. In May 2019 The Guardian reported the case was dropped because the prosecution realised that evidence would emerge showing that even British government lawyers believed the invasion was unlawful. The government could not prosecute the whistleblower without putting the war on trial. So they quietly walked out of court and hoped everyone would forget. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, called Gun's action the most important and courageous leak he had ever seen. Three UK inquiries into the Iraq War never once examined her case. Sources: The Observer / The Guardian