The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War. Thomas Mitchell M.

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СКАЧАТЬ them ‘controlled leaks’ – are for the most part institutionalized. A selected journalist, one from each major news entity and each category of news within that entity, communicates directly with his or her assigned contact within an intelligence service. There are unwritten ground rules. The intelligence contact is never named and the information provided is reported to have come from ‘known reliable’ or ‘unnamed government’ sources. The arrangement is mutually beneficial; journalists get information for their stories, and the government releases certain information it wishes to get to the public without having it attributed to a specific individual. Amateurs like Katharine are not allowed to play the game.

      There was a caution that kept returning, a fear that had to be placed into the emotional conflict of indecision. Or, perhaps a decision made but not yet wholly accepted. It was the critical matter of Yasar’s safety.

      They were wildly in love, these two, the blonde, petite Englishwoman and her ‘beautiful, beloved’ husband. Just six months earlier, Katharine had married the man of her dreams, the tall, dark Mediterranean charmer with finely chiselled features and a quick, expansive smile. They met at the café where he worked, where she would go for coffee in the evenings after leaving GCHQ. He would wink from across the counter, and she was enchanted. ‘He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen,’ she says.

      The café, small, unpretentious, was a comfortable, intimate place, ideal for chatting after work, when the chat had to be about anything but work. Filled with light, the café was perfect for people from GCHQ, whose days were spent in a darkness that had nothing to do with either natural or artificial illumination.

      Most evenings, Katharine was accompanied to the café by a male GCHQ colleague. Yasar, eyeing pretty Katharine seated with her companion, assumed she was ‘taken’, which was not true. The man with her was a friend, not a boyfriend. Since Yasar made no advance other than a wink now and then, Katharine assumed he was not interested. This, too, was not true. Finally, unaccompanied to the café, Katharine winked back. He came to stand beside her.

      ‘I’m going to the cinema,’ she said, and then, surprising them both, ‘what are you doing later?’ He had a break, he told her. Would she like to go for a walk? Yes, she would very much like that; she had time for a walk before the picture started. From that moment on, Katharine Harwood had no space in her life for any other man. Winking led to frequent evening walks, which eventually led to dating. They were married in an intimate ceremony attended by a small group of friends and her parents, newly arrived from Taiwan. The family met the enigmatic young man for the first time the night before the wedding.

      ‘I felt better after meeting him,’ Katharine’s father, Paul Harwood, says. ‘He obviously adores her.’

      Weeks after they first started dating, Katharine discovered that Yasar, still learning English, often communicated with customers in the café by winking. It was a way of greeting people. ‘He winked at everyone,’ she laughs.

      There was little to laugh about when, two weeks after the marriage ceremony, Yasar was picked up by immigration authorities and taken into police custody, where he was held incommunicado until the following morning. Rushed to Heathrow airport, he was prepared for deportation to Turkey. In their home with her family now up in the north of England, Katharine was on her own and near panic. The fear that she would never see her husband again was suffocating.

      Katharine made an urgent call to a solicitor, begging, ‘Please help us.’ They were legally married, she explained. She was a UK citizen! How could this happen? With help, the mess was untangled, government officials called officers at the airport, and the bridegroom was released just moments before the plane bound for Turkey left the gate. A devastatingly close call.

      Yasar’s visa, extended, was still temporary. He had asked for asylum, given unsettled political issues in Turkey. They were awaiting an answer. Finally, eventually, Katharine put her money – and Yasar’s safety – on anonymity. It was an egregiously unfortunate wager.

      By the afternoon Katharine had decided to make one call, to tell one person about the Koza message. (She has guarded that person’s identity throughout the whole affair.)

      ‘I called the person that I ultimately sent the e-mail to. I haven’t named her in public and I won’t. Let’s just call her Jane. She was the only person I talked to about this, and I could trust her. I knew how she felt about the war, about the impending invasion of Iraq. We both felt pretty much the same way about the whole issue. I also knew that she had been in contact with a member of the media who probably would help. I didn’t know anybody else whom I could trust and who had a contact like that. So I called Jane to tell her what I’d seen. I didn’t go into details; I just said that I’d received an e-mail I thought was damaging enough that, if it were leaked, might have the effect of preventing the war – or at least delaying it until other options had been exhausted. I asked her if I could send it to her, or perhaps she suggested that I could send it to her.’

      On Sunday morning, Katharine and Yasar had a ‘lie-in’, then a big Turkish breakfast of olives, cheese from his home country, tomatoes, cucumbers, lots of toast, and a big pot of tea. Together they cleared away the breakfast things, chatted easily, read the voluminous Sunday newspaper. Later they took a ride out into the countryside, stopping at a picturesque little village for afternoon tea. It was all so deceptively normal.

      As usual, Yasar fell asleep to soothing music, drifting off long before his wife on Sunday evening. This night, it would take Katharine an uncharacteristically long time to fall asleep, music or no. She was remembering the GCHQ staff memo of one week ago.

      ‘Concerns from a moral or ethical standpoint [regarding war against Iraq] are a personal matter,’ it acknowledged. Worries shouldn’t be kept to oneself. Anyone having reservations about what they were asked to do should contact the Welfare Office, the staff counsellor, or one of three specifically named senior officers. No, she thought. A slow-moving, red-taped, and supremely protective bureaucracy was not the answer.

      Unwritten, but clear in its intent, was a warning to GCHQ staff. And that was what was keeping her awake.

       CHAPTER 3: Four Weeks That Changed Everything

      More of a concern to us was that we would be joined in the prosecution. To publish is an offence under the Official Secrets Act as well. We were as culpable as Katharine. But they’re cowards. So they preferred to take on the little guy – in this case, little woman – rather than us big guys.[1]

      – Martin Bright, Observer editor

      What I hoped was that people would see what was happening and be so disgusted that nobody would support the war in Iraq. And if anybody would go to war it would be the United States going it alone. And I even hoped that the US general public would somehow realize that they were being dragged hook, line, and sinker into the war.

      – Katharine Gun, to the authors

      AN UNSUSPECTING YASAR drove his wife to work on Monday morning, stopping at the GCHQ gate long enough to give her a quick squeeze and a kiss before reaching across to open the passenger door for her. She gave him a smile, climbed out of the car, and stood watching until the red Metro was out of sight. As she turned to enter her secret world, she felt transparent, as if everyone around her would see through her and into her. Would see the pounding heart and knotting stomach. Would see into her mind and be appalled by the conspiracy of her thoughts.

      The final decision to act had been made. When? She wasn’t certain. Possibly in those first few minutes on Friday, when Koza’s СКАЧАТЬ