A matter of conscience

Norman Solomon reminds us of how last spring, during the UN Security Council debates over Iraq, it was revealed that the US had been spying on

a half-dozen delegations with swing votes on the U.N. Security Council, noting a focus on "the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policy-makers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals" - support for war on Iraq.

The NSA memo said that the agency had started a "surge" of spying on diplomats at the United Nations in New York, including wiretaps of home and office telephones along with reading of e-mails. The targets were delegations from six countries considered to be pivotal - Mexico, Chile, Angola, Cameroon, Guinea and Pakistan - for the war resolution being promoted by the United States and Britain.

The source of that leak was a British intelligence employee named Katharine Gun. She was quickly arrested and fired. On November 13, the Blair government announced she was being charged with violating the Official Secrets Act, with a possible penalty of two years in prison.

Ms. Gun, who is free on bail and is to appear in court Jan. 19, has responded with measured eloquence. Disclosure of the NSA memo, she said Nov. 27, was "necessary to prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed or maimed." And Ms. Gun reiterated something that she had said two weeks earlier: "I have only ever followed my conscience."

While the case has been ignored by the US media, she is not without her supporters.

Former British cabinet minister Tony Benn has criticized the prosecution of a woman charged with violating his country's Official Secrets Act in connection with the leaking of a secret memorandum from the U.S. National Security Agency....

Benn said Tuesday in a live interview: "When somebody on the basis of moral principle puts their conscience before official secrets, they do society a - well, they perform an essential function. And I think it does raise the question as to whether if that woman is imprisoned it doesn't throw doubt on the whole idea of the law being concerned with justice."

As Solomon poignantly notes, "Why is it so rare that conscience takes precedence over expediency?"

Audio of the interview, which was on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! is here.