so inappropriate. But then, that seems to be the way of some of the world’s most secret enterprises, settling themselves as they do in bucolic rural or suburban neighbourhoods. Even if the mission is markedly different, one expects a place more ominous; for example, more like Russia’s infamous Lubyanka, standing meanly in the heart of bustling Moscow.
Not yet ready for occupancy this Wednesday was GCHQ’s new ‘doughnut’, a circular answer to its five-sided American counterpart in Arlington, Virginia. The new facility is located in the open, where from a short distance away one can stop and gawk at the hub of the United Kingdom’s most secret business. This morning, during the drive around Cheltenham, Katharine was thinking that she would not be with her colleagues when it came time to move to the posh new building.
Yasar both knew and understood what his wife had decided, that Katharine had to do what she firmly believed was right, a belief consistent with Yasar’s own philosophy of the human experience. This, in spite of his having told her that ‘no one could prove anything’ if she did not confess. Those were throwaway words, which they both recognized as soon as they were spoken.
The goodbye kiss and cuddle were brief, and Katharine did not look back as the Metro drove away. She knew the scene at the gate would never be repeated.
No coffee, no cinnamon roll this morning. As she entered the office, Katharine, in obvious distress, caught the attention of her manager. Concerned that the young translator was ill, she took Katharine into a side office. With no preamble, with no excuse, Katharine said simply, ‘The leak was me. I did it.’ She burst into tears.
Visibly shocked, disbelieving at first, the woman said nothing but reached out to put an arm around Katharine’s shoulder. When Katharine calmed, her manager took her arm and led her directly to the Security Department, her touch gentle, her obvious concern comforting to the frightened younger woman.
The die was cast, and Katharine’s promising future evaporated as quickly as if it had been deleted from her computer screen. Zap. Gone. Permanently, irretrievably deleted. There would be no handy ‘undo’ or ‘restore’ options.
Questioning began around ten o’clock that morning, Katharine’s interrogators GCHQ security personnel. She was comforted by the presence of her manager, who never left her side. They sat circling a round table, questions and answers posed and responded to with quiet civility. Why? Who? When? And, of course, how? It was necessary to make certain that Katharine was indeed responsible for this egregious breach of the Official Secrets Act.
Two years earlier, on 4 January 2001, Katharine Teresa Harwood signed the GCHQ Statement of Written Particulars, required of all new intelligence officers, and she accepted the terms and conditions set out for her job as a Mandarin translator. It included the paragraph below:
34. OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT
GCHQ is one of the UK’s intelligence and security services. As an employee you will therefore be subject to the special provisions of Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1989. You are required to sign a document on joining and leaving the Department to show that you are aware of the provisions of this section and of the other provisions of the Official Secrets Act which also apply.
Essentially, the Official Secrets Act makes it a criminal offence for all members, or former members, of the security services to disclose official information about their work. The areas covered by the act include releasing information on defence, international relations, security service activities, foreign confidences, and information that might lead to a crime being committed. Katharine’s release of the Koza message fit neatly into the specifically named offences.
Thirteen years earlier, almost to the day, a newly revised OSA made not only secret service officers, like Katharine, but also journalists – like Martin, Ed, and Peter at the Observer – subject to prosecution if they disclosed information the British government considers damaging to the defence of the country or to its interests abroad.
Katharine’s manager escorted her to lunch, then returned with her to the Security Department. She was not left alone at any time. When the Metropolitan Police arrived, they gave Katharine the chilling news that Scotland Yard was coming to make a formal arrest.
‘It was then that it really hit me. I had never been in trouble with the law. I had only spoken to police to ask directions, or when I had things stolen from me. I’d always been the victim, not the criminal.’
At some point, her questioners asked Katharine if she wanted to call a lawyer. She answered that she knew of no one to call and was assured that a duty solicitor would be assigned to her in due course. When Scotland Yard officers arrived, Katharine Gun was arrested for violation of the Official Secrets Act, a serious crime with ominous possibilities of punishment. She was terrified.
Katharine speaks highly of the Scotland Yard officers who arrested and interrogated her, as she does of the Cheltenham ‘regular police’ who held and confined her. The men from the Yard were thorough but kind, one in particular, whom she calls ‘Detective Inspector Tintin’, after a cartoon French boy who adventures around the world. ‘He is a little blond boy with a sticky-uppy flick in his hair,’ Katharine says of him. Because of the serious nature of Katharine’s crime, Scotland Yard conducted all post-arrest interviews and investigations.
Katharine was taken into police custody in Cheltenham, where she went through a booking process and then was led to the Custody Suite. Her personal belongings were taken from her – her handbag, watch, necklace, and her belt. There was no body search, but a female officer patted her down.
‘They were kind about it all,’ she says. ‘I knew they were just doing their jobs, and I tried to keep that in mind.’ This was not difficult to do, given that she had moved to a far distant mental place, one where she did not consider herself a criminal, where she saw herself as quite different from the usual jailhouse residents. She did not belong with the ‘addicts, drunks, and prostitutes’ who were the ‘regular customers’ of this place. Her mental and physical selves had separated.
‘Custody Suite’ was something of a misnomer. It was a single room with a bare cement floor. The bed was a block of cement holding a plastic-covered foam mattress. Next to the bed was a metal toilet without a seat, with no partition of any kind to offer privacy from police officers who opened the door without warning. ‘I was afraid I would be caught on the loo,’ Katharine says. Dinner that night was fruit juice and biscuits. She could have asked for a bowl of chilli but did not. As it turned out, this would be the menu item for breakfast.
Once the booking process was over, a duty solicitor was called on Katharine’s behalf, and she spoke to the woman over the telephone. Next, she was allowed to call her husband.
‘I guess we were both in shock at that stage, when we talked on the telephone. He had already come down to the police station, but they wouldn’t let him see me. They told him, “Oh well, we’re too busy at the moment processing this and that and whatever. Besides, we have to supervise the visit. Try later.” He was asking me on the phone if I was all right, and if I needed anything. He said he would keep trying to see me, but he had no idea what time that would be.
‘Yasar learned where I was when my manager called him. I had given her his mobile number and she called him almost straight away. From one o’clock until eight, then, he wasn’t allowed to see me. He was so worried.’
There would be no more questioning until a search of the Gun home in Cheltenham was completed, which meant not until the next morning. Yasar told Katharine that night that he found the search terribly upsetting. He had let the officers in the front door, then left the premises. Every inch of the place was searched, and only incidentals taken. These included two books in Turkish from among the dozens of
