Katharine Gun

Katharine Teresa Gun (née Harwood; born 1974) is a British linguist who worked as a translator for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). In 2003, she leaked top-secret information to The Observer concerning a request by the United States for compromising intelligence on diplomats from member states of the 2003 United Nations Security Council, who were due to vote on a second UN resolution on the prospective 2003 invasion of Iraq. Early life Katherine moved to Taiwan in 1977 with her parents, Paul and Jan Harwood. Her father studied Chinese at Durham University and now teaches at Tunghai University in the city of Taichung, central Taiwan. She has a younger brother who teaches in Taiwan. After spending her childhood in Taiwan, where she attended Morrison Academy until age 16, she returned to Britain to study for her A-levels at Moira House School, a girls' boarding school in Eastbourne. Her upbringing later led her to describe herself as a "third culture kid". In 1993 she began studying Japanese and Chinese at Durham University. She graduated with an upper second-class degree, then took a job as an assistant English teacher with the JET program in Hiroshima, Japan. She left teaching in 1999, and after some temporary jobs, finding it difficult to find work as a linguist, she applied to GCHQ in 2001 after reading a newspaper advertisement for the organisation. She was previously unaware of GCHQ, and later said, "I didn't have much idea about what they did...I was going into it pretty much blind. Most people do."