BRITAIN: The British government dropped charges yesterday against a translator accused of leaking a top-secret US memo widely reported to have been seeking London's help in spying on UN members in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Ms Katharine Teresa Gun (29), a Mandarin Chinese speaker, had been charged with breaching Britain's Official Secrets Act. Saying they did not anticipate winning, prosecutors at London's Old Bailey court withdrew their case against Ms Gun, an ex-employee of Britain's global surveillance centre GCHQ.
After her arrest last March, Ms Gun said she had "followed her conscience" in leaking the e-mail, which, she said, "exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the US government, who attempted to subvert our own security services".
Britain's Observer newspaper saw a copy of the January 31st, 2003 e-mail it said was from a senior US National Security Agency official. The newspaper quoted the e-mail as saying it sought to gather "the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises".
The newspaper reported that the US intended to bug the offices of the Security Council's "swing nations" - Chile, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Angola, Guinea and Pakistan - whose votes were crucial to authorise military action against Iraq.