UK Translator Charged - Defends Leaking NSA Spy Efforts

A former employee of GCHQ, the signals intelligence agency, was charged yesterday with leaking details of an Anglo-American operation to eavesdrop on members of the United Nations Security Council in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Katharine Gun, 29, who was sacked from her job as a translator with the agency, is accused of passing classified information to an unauthorised person under Section 1 (1) of the Official Secrets Act.

The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham is by far the largest agency in Britain's intelligence community.

Mrs Gun was arrested in March, shortly after the publication of the article, which claimed that GCHQ's sister organisation in the United States, the National Security Agency, had asked for a "surge" in eavesdropping on UN delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan, which were members of the 15-strong Security Council.

The memo requesting the surge was said to have been written by Frank Koza, defence chief of staff (regional targets) at the NSA.

The charge follows the publication of an article in The Observer in early March disclosing a request from the Americans for GCHQ's help in intercepting diplomatic traffic to help predict the outcome of any vote on Iraq at the UN. It is understood Mrs Gun's lawyers will not dispute that she was the source of the article but will argue that she was justified in disclosing the information.

Mrs Gun, who was dismissed in June, said in a statement: "Any disclosures that may have been made were justified on the following grounds: because they exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the US government, who attempted to subvert our own security services; and to prevent widescale death and casualties among ordinary Iraqi people and UK forces in the course of an illegal war."

Shaun Williams, the director of corporate affairs for Guardian Newspapers, the parent company of The Observer, said: "The story we published exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the US government. It was a story of enormous public interest at a time of extreme international tension which was followed up worldwide."

Mrs Gun was granted bail and will appear at Bow Street magistrates' court on Nov 27.