On 31 January 2003, Katharine Gun, a Mandarin-to-English translator at the UK intelligence agency GCHQ, read an email from Frank Koza, chief of staff of the U.S. National Security Agency’s regional targets division. The message requested assistance with a secret operation to obtain compromising intelligence by bugging the UN offices of Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, and Pakistan—six Security Council members whose votes could determine whether the UN authorized a second resolution supporting the prospective invasion of Iraq. Gun printed the email, passed it through a friend to The Observer, and the newspaper published it on 2 March 2003.
Gun admitted the leak to her manager on 5 March and was arrested. On 13 November 2003, prosecutors charged her under Section 1 of the UK Official Secrets Act 1989. The case collapsed on 25 February 2004, within half an hour, after the prosecution declined to offer evidence. The precise reason remains disputed: former Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald said in 2019 that a fair trial would have required disclosure of sensitive material, while Gun’s defense argued that prewar legal advice on the Iraq invasion could have been exposed. The proceedings nevertheless highlighted how intelligence operations targeting diplomats intersected with secrecy laws, national-security claims, and public accountability.
