BBC reporting on Katherine Gun, Bush War Lies

[Sgt. Peppers]

WEDNESDAY 25 FEBRUARY 22:30 GMT - BBC TWO
FROM JEREMY PAXMAN

Good evening.


There is a story of a little boy who once approached his unreconstructed father with the question, "Dad, where did all of my intelligence come from?" To which his father replied, "Well, son, you must have got it from your mother because I still have mine."

Which has nothing to do either with the protagonist of tonight's lead story, or the behaviour of the government in the affair. In a nutshell Katherine Gun, who works at the top-secret listening post, GCHQ, decided to leak the fact that the Americans had canvassed with Britain the possibility of bugging delegations to the UN Security Council, in the days of all that protracted wrangling before the Iraq war.

Mrs Gun admits the action. Yet government lawyers decided today that she would not be prosecuted for breaching the Official Secrets Act, which she had signed when she began work at GCHQ. Presumably they fear the war in Iraq is so unpopular that a jury would refuse to convict her for what she says was an act of conscience. But, if individuals can be free to act as they please, would not the entire intelligence operation become impossible? We'll be talking to her and to others.

Sorry no link, this was in the BBC e-mail

[FloridaPat]

1. Thanks to the internet, I have found out what my government

has been doing for the last 100 years. So many criminals, so many deaths, and so many citizens just watching TV and not knowing anything about what is going on. I am understanding the war in Vietnam a lot more now with the war on Iraq then when I was involved in all those anti-war demonstrations. There are a lot of people who have served or are serving in government that should be in jail.