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SHOCKING (BBC Radio): UK Minister admits spying on Annan - Katherine Gun released



 
 
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  #1  
Old February 26th, 2004, 02:41 PM
Oelewapper
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Default SHOCKING (BBC Radio): UK Minister admits spying on Annan - Katherine Gun released

Sensational. Incredible stuff... On BBC Radio this morning:

Clare Short, former UK minister, admits Britain illegally spying on the UN -
"having read the transcripts" (26FEB):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/li...t_20040226.ram
(7min01sec to 10min00sec in the interview)

, following the release of Katharine Gun (GCHQ whistle blower) (26 FEB):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/li...n_20040226.ram

---

GEOFF HOON, Britain's Defence Minister under fire for lying (BBC Radio):

Original Interview (O5 FEB):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/audio/geoffhoon.ram

Clarification and exposure of the lies (O5 FEB):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/li...n_20040205.ram

MOD statement (pitty excuse) for the minister's shameless lies (O6 FEB):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/li...d_20040206.ram

---

KATHERINE GUN:

GCHQ whistleblower cleared

Spy case casts fresh doubt on war legality

Dramatic new evidence pointing to serious doubts in the government about the
legality of the war in Iraq was passed to government lawyers shortly before
they abandoned the prosecution of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun.

The prosecution offered no evidence yesterday against Ms Gun, a former GCHQ
employee, despite her admitting that she leaked information about an
American spying operation at the UN in the run-up to the war.

She said she acted to try to prevent Britain illegally invading Iraq. But
the prosecution at the Old Bailey said there was no "realistic prospect" of
convicting her. She was arrested nearly a year ago and charged eight months
later under the Official Secrets Act.

The leading prosecutor, Mark Ellison, said it would not be "appropriate" to
go into the reasons for dropping the case.

But the Guardian has learned that a key plank of the defence presented to
the prosecutors shortly before they decided to abandon the case was new
evidence that the legality of the war had been questioned by the Foreign
Office.

It is contained in a document seen by the Guardian. Sensitive passages are
blacked out, but one passage says: "The defence believes that the advice
given by the Foreign Office Legal Adviser expressed serious doubts about the
legality (in international law) of committing British troops in the absence
of a second [UN] resolution."

It is understood that the FO legal team was particularly concerned about the
lack of a second UN resolution authorising the use of force and pre-emptive
military action.

Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a former deputy head of the legal team at the FO, has
confirmed publicly for the first time that she resigned last year because
she was unhappy with the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith's legal advice to
the government on the legality of the Iraq war.

He argued that the series of consecutive UN resolutions provided a legal
basis for the military action. But Ms Wilmshurst told the Guardian: "Some
agreed with the legal advice of the attorney general. I did not." She
refused to discuss the details of the advice.

She left on the eve of the war after 30 years on the FO's legal team, and
deputy legal adviser since 1997. She is now at the Royal Institute of
International Affairs, specialising in the legality of military
intervention.

Yesterday James Welch, a solicitor for the civil rights group Liberty and Ms
Gun's lawyer, said the final decision to abandon the case was taken after
they had warned the prosecution that they would demand the disclosure of the
attorney general's advice on the legality of the war.

"Our case was that any advice the government received on the legality of war
was relevant to Katharine's case and we were prepared to go before a judge
and argue for it to be disclosed," he said.

Ms Gun, 29, said after her brief appearance at the Old Bailey: "I have no
regrets and I would do it again."

In an interview with the Guardian she described her reaction when she first
saw the US National Security Agency email asking for GCHQ's help in bugging
the offices and homes of UN diplomats.

"I thought, 'Good God, that's pretty outrageous'."

She felt she had no choice but to do what she did. The UN was being
undermined. She thought about the destruction of people's lives in Iraq.

"I didn't feel at all guilty about what I did, so I couldn't plead guilty,
even though I would get a more lenient sentence," she said.

She remembered her husband telling her: "Do nothing and die, or fight and
die."

But the prospect of a criminal trial, "of having the whole government
machine after you", was scary, she said.

Asked at a press conference what her advice would be to anyone responding to
the recently announced recruitment to the intelligence services, she said:
"The intelligence services do important and necessary work, but listen to
your conscience is what I would advise."

She continued: "I know it's very difficult and people don't want to
jeopardise their careers or lives, but if there are things out there that
should really come out, hey, why not."

---

How a US bugging operation was exposed by one lone whistleblower

Katharine Gun, the former British intelligence officer, walked free from the
Old Bailey yesterday and rekindled the debate over the war in Iraq. Her
arrest for disclosing an unethical - and potentially illegal - US-British
bugging operation against friendly countries raises new questions about the
events running up to the Iraq war, the behaviour of the intelligence
services, and the validity of the legal advice given by the attorney
general, Lord Goldsmith, to the government.
Ms Gun's appearance in the Old Bailey had its origin in New York more than a
year ago. In the final fortnight before war in Iraq, six members of the UN
security council - Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Pakistan, Mexico and Chile -
found themselves caught up in a swirl of US-British diplomacy.

The British government desperately wanted them to swing behind a resolution
on Iraq. But the six were proving difficult to persuade, and the US and
British governments urgently wanted any snippets about their likely voting
intentions.

The US government opted for underhand methods and asked the British
government - and its intelligence services, including its listening agency,
GCHQ - to help out. Frank Koza, of the US national security agency, sent out
a memo and included in the recipients was GCHQ. The memo, marked top secret,
asked for information about the voting intentions of security council
members, jokingly adding "minus US and GBR of course". He asked for "the
whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in
obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises".

He asked agents to focus on what had been dubbed at the UN the U6: the
undecided six security council members.

The memo seems to have been distributed widely within GCHQ. But it is not
known whether the agency itself acted on the NSA request. Had it done so,
its role would have been to eavesdrop on foreign embassies in London.

It is commonplace, though never admitted, for the US and British governments
to listen in on friendly states. There is an ongoing row between Britain and
Pakistan, one of the six swing states, over an MI5 officer, codenamed
Notation, who posed as a builder in the refurbishment of the Pakistan high
commission building in 2001 in London in order to bug it.

Intelligence analysts said yesterday that it was not surprising that the
offices and even homes of the UN swing states were bugged - indeed, some of
them have said they assumed that was the case. It only becomes a scandal
when the eavesdroppers are found out.

The 1994 Intelligence Services Act allows GCHQ to eavesdrop "in the
interests of national security, with particular reference to the defence and
foreign policies of Her Majesty's government in the United Kingdom". The
wording can be interpreted extremely broadly.

During the fevered diplomacy in New York, the role of the six countries was
pivotal. The US public assessment was that they could be brought round. The
Foreign Office was privately more pessimistic, especially in regards to
Mexico and Chile.

James Welch, a solicitor for Liberty, the civil rights group, and Ms Gun's
lawyer, said yesterday: "Clearly what was being sought was an edge at a time
when they were trying to secure a second UN resolution to the war in Iraq.
What the US was asking Britain to do was clearly unlawful in international
law. It was a clear breach of the Vienna convention and it is also very
arguably unlawful in domestic law."

This diplomatic manoeuvring was taking place while another related row was
brewing behind closed doors in Britain over whether existing UN resolutions
provided a legal basis for going to war.

Clare Short, who was in the cabinet at the time, yesterday praised Ms Gun
for her bravery. Ms Short, then the international development secretary,
said there had been "something smelly, fishy" about the legal advice from
the attorney general. She said she suspected the case against Ms Gun had
been dropped "because they do not want the light shone on the attorney
general's advice".

At the time, Ms Short said, cabinet members had been given only two A4 pages
of advice, and no discussion was allowed in cabinet. Those pages have been
made public but, she said, lots of crucial information related to the advice
remained confidential.

She wanted to know, for instance, what Lord Goldsmith's brief had been: had
he, for instance, been misinformed by No 10 about the threat posed by Iraq?

While Ms Gun is fast becoming a cause celebre in Britain, the case has not
yet resonated in the US, where the trial has attracted scant attention.

It has been a bigger issue in Latin America. Mexico sent diplomatic notes to
the US and British government this month seeking information about Ms Gun's
allegations. A Chilean government spokesman, Patricio Santamaria, confirmed
that in early 2003 wiretaps had been found in most of the phones at Chile's
UN mission.

---

GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun demanded an explanation today after the
case against her of disclosing information and breaking the Official Secrets
Act collapsed after the prosecution offered no evidence.
Ms Gun, a former translator for GCHQ, the security service's main monitoring
centre, had been accused of leaking a memo to a newspaper on an alleged
American "dirty tricks" campaign to spy on UN delegates ahead of the Iraq
war.

Outside the Old Bailey today Ms Gun, 29, said she was "absolutely delighted
and extremely relieved" at being cleared but said: "I would like to know why
they charged me and then four months later decided to drop it."

She said: "I have no regrets and would do it again."

During today's hearing, the charge was formally put to her that between
January 30 and March 2 last year she disclosed information relating to
security or intelligence contrary to the Official Secrets Act of 1989.

Then after she pleaded not guilty, prosecutor Mark Ellison told the court
the case would not go ahead. He said: "The prosecution offer no evidence
against the defendant on this indictment as there is no longer sufficient
evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction. It would not be appropriate
to go into the reasons for this decision."

Ms Gun, of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, had been accused of disclosing a
request allegedly from a US national security agency official for help from
British intelligence to tap the telephones of UN security council delegates
during the period of fraught diplomacy before the war.

She argued the 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".

After the prosecution offered no evidence, the judge, the Recorder of London
Michael Hyam, recorded a formal verdict of not guilty.

Then Ben Emmerson QC, representing Ms Gun, demanded an explanation from the
prosecution of why, after such a length of time, they had now decided to
drop the charge. Mr Ellison refused to say.

A full trial could have generated unwelcome publicity for the government and
GCHQ, where she had worked until she was sacked in June last year. She was
charged in November on an unconditional bail.

For her defence, she had planned to seek the disclosure of the full advice
from the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, on the legality of the war
against Iraq, which could have been potentially damaging and embarrassing
for the government.

The Guardian reported on Friday that the case against her would collapse. In
court, Mr Emmerson told the judge the first issue requiring examination was
"whether, by whom and why the decision was leaked to the Guardian six days
before it was communicated to the defence. If a decision was made last
Friday, why was it not communicated to the defence and if it had not been
taken last Friday, what has happened in between?"

He pointed out that eight months had elapsed between Ms Gun's arrest and the
decision to charge her, and another three months since she was actually
charged.

"Katharine Gun is entitled to know - and perhaps more importantly, the
public are entitled to know."

Mr Ellison replied: "You will understand that consideration had been given
to what is appropriate for the crown to say. It is not appropriate to give
further reasons. I am reluctant to go further than that unless the court
requires I do."

The judge asked whether there was "any form of inquiry which I would be
entitled to make?"

He was told by Mr Ellison that apart from making an order for the defence
costs, there was not - as the crown had offered no evidence. Outside court,
Barry Hugill, a spokesman for human rights group Liberty, said: "Why have
they waited until today? Why has she been put through eight months of hell?"

Ms Gun has recently attracted the support of Hollywood actors including Sean
Penn. He told the Observer at the Bafta awards: "It was a decision of
conscience in a world where nobody celebrates that. She will go down in
history as a hero of the human spirit. I urge the whole world to angle their
eyes in the direction of that courtroom."

---

The spy who wouldn't keep a secret

In the year since she leaked an explosive email about spying on UN
diplomats, GCHQ translator Katharine Gun has been arrested, charged with
breaking the Official Secrets Act and transformed into an international
cause celebre. As the case against her was dropped yesterday, Oliver
Burkeman and Richard Norton-Taylor met an unlikely rebel

Working for the intelligence agencies is rarely as glamorous as it sounds,
and until last year - when everything changed for ever - Katharine Gun often
found it quite mundane. On Friday January 31 2003, at the high-security GCHQ
compound on the outskirts of Cheltenham, she was doing her job as usual,
translating Mandarin Chinese into English, when an email from America came
to her attention.
"I thought, 'Good God, that's pretty outrageous'," she recalls. She printed
out a copy, put it in her bag, took it home, and spent the weekend stewing
about it. She didn't discuss it with anyone. On the Monday she was still
just as angry - "indignation was fuelling me on," she remembers - and so she
passed the email to a friend on the outside, whom she knew was in touch with
journalists. But she heard nothing more, and almost forgot about it.

In February, as an opponent of the looming war, she travelled to London, to
take part in the march. She bought books about Iraq. But it wasn't until a
month later, on Sunday March 2, that a customer visiting Gun's local
newsagent would have witnessed a small woman with shoulder-length blonde
hair, holding a copy of the Observer newspaper and unable to stop herself
shaking.

The email, splashed across the paper's front page, came from a US National
Security Agency official named Frank Koza and was marked "top secret". As
much of the world now knows, it requested British help with what amounted to
a dirty tricks campaign: a plan for the bugging of offices and homes in New
York belonging to UN diplomats from the six "swing states", countries whose
support would be vital if Washington and London were to win a Security
Council resolution authorising the invasion of Iraq. Within a week, Gun had
confessed to her role as the leaker, left GCHQ, been arrested, and spent a
night in police custody. Eight months later, she was charged with breaking
the Official Secrets Act, facing the threat of a trial and a two-year prison
sentence. Yesterday, at the Old Bailey, the case was finally dropped. The
prosecution declined to offer any evidence, prompting speculation that the
government was desperate to avoid being forced to reveal, in the course of a
trial, details of its own legal advice on the war.

"I saw the headline and I was just going 'Oh my God, oh my God,'" Gun says.
Today, standing in the cramped south London kitchen of the pressure group
Liberty, which took on and fought her case, the 29-year-old is the model of
composure. But at the time, she says, she felt physically sick. "This is my
doing," she told her husband when she got home. She knew GCHQ would carry
out an immediate investigation, and it did. The first time she was
questioned, on the Tuesday, she failed to admit her involvement, but by the
Wednesday her conscience was preying on her. She found her line manager and
told her the truth.

Not many months afterwards, of course, David Kelly was to make a similar
approach to his employer. But the style of GCHQ's response could hardly have
been more different to the Ministry of Defence's. Gun's manager, she
recalls, literally let her cry on her shoulder. "We're all humans at the end
of the day. She could see how distressed I was. But she obviously knew what
her professional duties were, and since I'd come forward, we went ahead and
told the security division about it." More GCHQ officials - also "very
nice" - took her to lunch in the canteen, as her friends looked on from
other tables, wondering why she wasn't joining them as usual. Then she was
driven in an unmarked car to Cheltenham police station and formally
arrested.

Gun was to prove a particularly credible - and therefore, from the
government's point of view, dangerous - kind of whistleblower. Unlike some
earlier intelligence-agency leakers, she showed no signs of having been
attracted to the job because of its cloak-and-dagger aspect. After spending
much of her childhood in Taiwan, where her parents still live, she had
studied Chinese and Japanese at Durham. Finding language work proved hard,
she had responded to a newspaper advert for GCHQ. ("I didn't have much idea
about what they did," she says today. "I was going into it pretty much
blind. Most people do.")

Nor was there anything particularly complex about the case, from the point
of view of public understanding ("Blonde who's likely to be a bombshell,"
screamed Bristol's Western Daily Press, arguably missing the point). You
didn't have to be an international lawyer to smell the dodginess in Koza's
email - although if you had been, you might well have decided that it seemed
in clear contravention of the Vienna Conventions, which regulate global
diplomacy.

The night in custody was bad enough. "The custody doctor prescribed a
sleeping tablet, because I didn't think I'd get through the night without
it," Gun says. But there were times during the months afterwards, waiting to
discover if she would be charged, that were worse: "I'm a fairly
happy-go-lucky person, generally fairly optimistic, but there were points
when I was down. For about a week, I was really quite miserable. But I was
on the phone to my parents almost every day, and they kept encouraging me,
telling me I'm a survivor, all the rest of the stuff parents tell you to
keep you buoyed up. So in the end I got through it. I was a housewife, I
suppose, and luckily I have a very high boredom threshold." Eventually she
enrolled on a postgraduate degree course at Birmingham University, studying
global ethics. Some of her friends dropped all contact with her, but her
"real friends", including some still working in GCHQ, are "still there".

When the charges came, she was shocked, she says - and scared about "having
the whole government machine after you" - but still she did not doubt what
she'd done. "Do nothing and die, or fight and die," she remembers her
husband telling her, but the way she tells it, she never really had much of
a choice. "I didn't feel at all guilty about what I did, so I couldn't plead
guilty, even though I would get a more lenient sentence," she says. Of
Koza's email, she explains, "I wanted to get it out. And I would do it
again." A string of US celebrities stepped forward to urge the government to
drop the case, among them the anti-war actor Sean Penn, the Rev Jesse
Jackson, and Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, who called
the Koza email potentially more important than the documents he made public
during the Vietnam war. Gun had her defence ready: she had broken the terms
of the Official Secrets Act out of necessity, to prevent imminent loss of
life in a war she considered illegal.

Her decision to follow her conscience sounds almost unthinking - "I didn't
want to step back and think, 'But, hey, what happens if I do this, and then
this happens and then that happens?'" she says. But she has clearly thought
in detail about what made her that way. She calls herself a "third culture
kid", using a term first coined by the writer Ruth Hill to describe children
raised by expat parents. The lack of belonging that can result is
heartrendingly summarised in the title of a guidance document prepared by
the US state department, "According to my Passport, I'm Coming Home". But it
can also lead to the development of something more positive. "One of the
things the research says is that third-culture kids tend to be extremely
empathetic, and because they've usually lived in at least one other foreign
country, they somehow feel a global alliance, almost ... " Gun tails off, as
if embarrassed to make too grand a claim for herself.

The last few hectic days have left her relieved and happy, she says, but
completely uncertain as to her future. "I jokingly said to somebody the
other day that I'll start making babies, but I don't think I'm ready for
that yet," she says. Her only certain plan is to go on holiday with her
husband.

Meanwhile, she seems to have no particular burning desire for the government
to apologise to her. "I understand that they felt they had to charge me,
because obviously I hadn't denied breaking the Official Secrets Act," she
says. "But, you know - apologies to me? What's that going to achieve? I've
been through what I've been through already. And now I'll just carry on from
here."

---

GCHQ case to be dropped

State prosecutors will today ask an Old Bailey judge to drop secrets charges
against a GCHQ whistleblower who challenged the legality of the war against
Iraq.
The unprecedented decision - which has widespread implications for the
Official Secrets Act - was taken after it seemed clear that the attorney
general, Lord Goldsmith, would have been asked to release his advice on the
legality of the war.

Katharine Gun, 29, was charged last November - eight months after she was
arrested following the leak of information about a "dirty tricks" spying
operation in the UN involving the US National Security Agency (NSA),
America's equivalent of GCHQ.

In a statement when she was charged, Ms Gun said: "Any disclosures that may
have been made were justified because they exposed serious illegality and
wrongdoing on the part of the US government, which attempted to subvert our
own security services.

"Secondly, they could have helped prevent widescale death and casualties
amongst ordinary Iraqi people and UK forces in an illegal war."

Ms Gun, a fluent Mandarin speaker, was a translator at GCHQ, the
government's electronic eavesdropping centre based in Cheltenham.

The Guardian reported exclusively last week that the prosecution was
preparing to abandon the case. There was concern in GCHQ about the unwelcome
publicity from a trial of a former employee who has made it clear she acted
out of conscience.

Prosecutors were worried she could not get a fair trial because of the
refusal of the attorney and GCHQ to disclose relevant evidence to the court.

Last Monday, Harriet Harman, the solicitor general, told MPs that the
government had no intention of publishing the attorney's advice on the
legality of the war.

---

Thursday February 26, 2004 (The Guardian newspaper, UK)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...155681,00.html




  #2  
Old February 26th, 2004, 02:53 PM
t_mark
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Default SHOCKING (BBC Radio): UK Minister admits spying on Annan - Katherine Gun released

Um, in the interview she notes that she doesn't think the spying is illegal.
She also notes, however, that Iraq is a mess by noting "10,000 Iraqis dead".
Apparently when exponentially fewer people are killed under the new 'regime'
than the old one, it's a disaster.


  #3  
Old February 26th, 2004, 03:16 PM
Oelewapper
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default SHOCKING (BBC Radio): UK Minister admits spying on Annan - Katherine Gun released


"t_mark" wrote in message
news:eTm%b.2347$Pc.171@okepread02...

There's too much spin already,... no need for you to add more. There's more
than enough as is.

Um, in the interview she notes that she doesn't think the spying is

illegal.

Actually she says: "I don't know, I presume so. It is odd, but I don't know
about the legalities."
Here is part of the transcript:

---

JH: Pressure is one thing, you expect that I suppose, spinning is another
thing - you expect that I suppose, spying, spying in the United Nations is
something quite different isn't it?
CS: Well indeed, but these things are done. And in the case of Kofi's office
it's been done for some time.

JH: Let me repeat the question then, do you believe Britain has been
involved in it?

CS: Well I know, I have seen transcripts of Kofi Annan's conversations.

Indeed, I have had conversations with Kofi in the run-up to war thinking 'Oh
dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he and I
are saying'.

JH: So in other words British spies - let's be very clear about this in case
I'm misunderstanding you - British spies have been instructed to carry out
operations inside the United Nations on people like Kofi Annan?

CS: Yes, absolutely.

JH: Did you know about this when you were in government?

CS: Absolutely, I read some of the transcripts of the accounts of his
conversations.

JH: Is this legal?

CS: I don't know, I presume so. It is odd, but I don't know about the
legalities. But the major issue here is the legal authority for war and
whether the attorney general had to be persuaded at the last minute -
against the advice of one of the Foreign Office legal advisers, who then
resigned - hat he could give legal authority for war and whether there had
to be an exaggeration of the threat of the use of chemical and biological
weapons to persuade him that there was legal authority - that's the big
question.

---

She also notes, however, that Iraq is a mess by noting "10,000 Iraqis

dead".

---
JH: What should happen now?

CS: I think the good old British democracy should keep scrutinising and
pressing to get the truth out.

JH: How? There's been a lot of it and a lot of people are beginning to say
look we've heard it all, we've had the war let's put it behind us, Tony
Blair certainly wants to put it behind us.

CS: Yes, but the tragedy is that Iraq is a disastrous mess. Ten thousand
Iraqis have died, American troops are dying, some of our troops have died,
the Middle East is more angry than ever.

I'm afraid that the sort of deceit on the route to war was linked to the
lack of preparation for afterwards and the chaos and suffering that
continues, so it won't go away, will it?

---




  #4  
Old February 26th, 2004, 03:39 PM
Thomas J. Paladino Jr.
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Default SHOCKING (BBC Radio): UK Minister admits spying on Annan - Katherine Gun released


"Oelewapper" wrote in message
...

"t_mark" wrote in message
news:eTm%b.2347$Pc.171@okepread02...

There's too much spin already,... no need for you to add more. There's

more
than enough as is.

Um, in the interview she notes that she doesn't think the spying is

illegal.

Actually she says: "I don't know, I presume so. It is odd, but I don't

know
about the legalities."
Here is part of the transcript:


Actually, if she 'doesn't know about the legalities' then why is she
commenting on them in the first place? And even more importantly, why is the
disgraced Brit media making so much of a story around someone who,
admittedly, is not qualified to comment?

You would think that they would have learned their lesson by now.


  #5  
Old February 26th, 2004, 05:23 PM
Howard Long
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Posts: n/a
Default SHOCKING (BBC Radio): UK Minister admits spying on Annan - Katherine Gun released

"Thomas J. Paladino Jr." wrote in message
...

Actually, if she 'doesn't know about the legalities' then why is she
commenting on them in the first place?


I think you are missing the point. The reality is that the UK government
have as good as admitted that they spied on Annan. Sure, they use weasal
wording to try to put a spin on it by saying that they never did anything
illegal, but most importantly they are not denying they did it.

This is at odds with the UN who state that it would be illegal.

Claire Short left government (she is an ex-minister) under a cloud because
she did not think going to war was legitimate.

She is well known in the UK as hot head who shoots from the hip. That's the
way she is. I don't share her politics, but at least I feel I could trust
her far more than the rest of them.

It's another embarrassment for the UK government, especially in the manner
they let the case drop on the GCHQ whistleblower yesterday. They suddenly
realised that they would have to disclose the findings of the lawyers
investigating the legality of going to war in order to win the case. Funny
they then promptly dropped the case.

And even more importantly, why is the
disgraced Brit media making so much of a story around someone who,
admittedly, is not qualified to comment?

You would think that they would have learned their lesson by now.


Interestingly, that is not the view in the UK. Here it is generally believed
that the 'disgraced Brit media' aka the BBC was a victim of the government
whitewash called the Hutton Report.

Quite honestly, the British electorate feel patronised by their own
governent. The spin doctors still think we're stupid. Sadly there is little
viable opposition.

Wasn't it Rumsfeld who stated "it's completely clear to me that these are
weapons of mass destruction" when showing satellite pictures trying to
convince the US and the world that war was justified? Still waiting to see
those nearly a year later...

Regards, Howard


  #6  
Old February 26th, 2004, 07:12 PM
Mike O'sullivan
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Default SHOCKING (BBC Radio): UK Minister admits spying on Annan - Katherine Gun released


"Howard Long" wrote in message
...
"Thomas J. Paladino Jr." wrote in message
...

I think you are missing the point. The reality is that the UK government
have as good as admitted that they spied on Annan. Sure, they use weasal
wording to try to put a spin on it by saying that they never did anything
illegal, but most importantly they are not denying they did it.


They "as good as" did nothing of the sort. Blair followed the normal policy
of not commenting one way or the other about any allegations relating to the
security services. Once ministers start commenting about such drivel, there
is no end to it.


  #7  
Old February 26th, 2004, 11:45 PM
Simon Robbins
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default SHOCKING (BBC Radio): UK Minister admits spying on Annan - Katherine Gun released

"Thomas J. Paladino Jr." wrote in message
...
Actually, if she 'doesn't know about the legalities' then why is she
commenting on them in the first place? And even more importantly, why is

the
disgraced Brit media making so much of a story around someone who,
admittedly, is not qualified to comment?


The only people who consider the BBC disgraced is the incumbent government.
They think if they by trying to make someone else look bad it can only serve
to make themselves look better.

Si


  #8  
Old February 26th, 2004, 11:47 PM
Simon Robbins
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default SHOCKING (BBC Radio): UK Minister admits spying on Annan - Katherine Gun released

"Mike O'sullivan" wrote in message
...
They "as good as" did nothing of the sort. Blair followed the normal

policy
of not commenting one way or the other about any allegations relating to

the
security services. Once ministers start commenting about such drivel,

there
is no end to it.


Rather he used a weasley excuse to dodge an awkward question. He owes his
public an answer on something that is very definitely in the public interest
to know. He's a snake, and not even a very convincing one.

Si


  #9  
Old February 27th, 2004, 12:41 AM
Howard Long
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default SHOCKING (BBC Radio): UK Minister admits spying on Annan - Katherine Gun released

"Mike O'sullivan" wrote in message
...
Once ministers start commenting about such drivel, there
is no end to it.


But they already did...

Regards, Howard



  #10  
Old February 27th, 2004, 03:24 AM
Brian Colwell
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default SHOCKING (BBC Radio): UK Minister admits spying on Annan - Katherine Gun released


"Simon Robbins" wrote in message
...
"Mike O'sullivan" wrote in message
...
They "as good as" did nothing of the sort. Blair followed the normal

policy
of not commenting one way or the other about any allegations relating to

the
security services. Once ministers start commenting about such drivel,

there
is no end to it.


Rather he used a weasley excuse to dodge an awkward question. He owes his
public an answer on something that is very definitely in the public

interest
to know. He's a snake, and not even a very convincing one.

Si

It just amazes me how everyone seems to be surprised by these recent
events, every country is constantly carrying out security (spying)
operations on a continuous basis. The only thing different in this case,
was the leakage of information.

I find it very disturbing that someone employed in a highly sensitive
occupation would go public. The ramifications of this type of behavior in a
world that is vulnerable to terrorist attacks is, in my opinion, criminal.

BMC


 




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