Katharine Teresa Gun (née Harwood;[1] born 1974) is a British linguist who worked as a translator for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
[5] She graduated with an upper second-class degree, then took a job as an assistant English teacher with the JET program in Hiroshima, Japan.
[5] Less than a week after the Observer story, on Wednesday 5 March, she confessed to her line manager at GCHQ that she had leaked the email, and was arrested.
Among them, from the US, were the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Daniel Ellsberg (the US government official who leaked the Pentagon Papers), and Congressman Dennis Kucinich.
A full trial might have exposed any such documents to public scrutiny, as the defence was expected to argue that trying to stop an unlawful war of aggression outweighed her obligations under the Official Secrets Act.
[13] Speculation was rife in the media that the prosecution service had bowed to political pressure to drop the case so that any such documents would remain secret.
[14] On the day of the court hearing, Gun said, "I'm just baffled in the 21st century [that] we as human beings are still dropping bombs on each other as a means to resolve issues.
"[12] In May 2019 The Guardian said the case was dropped "when the prosecution realised that evidence would emerge ... that even British government lawyers believed the invasion was unlawful.
In September 2019, Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, confirmed the case against her was dropped because a fair trial would not have been possible without the disclosure of information that would compromise national security.
[21][22] Gun received the Sam Adams Award for 2003 and was supported in her case by the UK human rights pressure group Liberty and in the US by the Institute for Public Accuracy.
[24] Daniel Ellsberg praised the swiftness and importance of Gun taking action, saying it was in some ways more significant than his own whistleblowing on the Vietnam War.