In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, a young British intelligence officer thought she had information that could halt the march to war. To leak that information, however, would mean breaking her pledge to protect state secrets.

In the end, Katherine Gun decided to reveal what she had discovered—an illegal plot to influence the UN’s authorization of the invasion. Gun’s decision led to her arrest and sparked a legal, political, and media firestorm.

Gun’s spectacular story was big news in Britain, where it preceded the resignations of two cabinet officers. But as media critic Norman Solomon’s foreword makes clear, the maelstrom barely received a footnote in the American war coverage.

Part cloak and dagger, part courtroom drama, The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War tells the whole story. It also explores the moral dilemma of a public servant who swears to protect state secrets—even when that pledge would conceal illicit activity to push an unpopular war.

Marcia Mitchell is former associate director of the American Film Institute and a former senior executive for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She began her career as a journalist and has received national awards for writing, editing, and photography. In May 2007, Marcia testified on the Katharine Gun case to a Capitol Hill panel. She is the co-author with Thomas Mitchell of The Spy Who Seduced America: Lies and Betrayal in the Heat of the Cold War (2002).

Thomas Mitchell is a former FBI special agent whose 17 years with the bureau included counterintelligence work in New York and Washington, D.C. Throughout his intelligence career, he was associated with some of the country’s most famous espionage and criminal cases. He is a retired vice president of Georgia-Pacific Corporation in Washington, D.C.

No one has had this story to tell before, because no one else—including myself—has ever done what Katharine Gun did: tell secret truths at personal risk, before an imminent war, in time, possibly, to avert it. Hers was the most important—and courageous—leak I’ve ever seen, more timely and potentially more effective than the Pentagon Papers.
—Daniel Ellsberg, former Defense Department and State Department official

One of the crucial untold stories of the Iraq war is told with great passion and sensitivity by Marcia and Thomas Mitchell. It is fitting tribute to the courage of Katharine Gun, who blew the whistle on transatlantic dirty tricks at the highest levels of government in London and Washington. A morality tale for the 21st century.
—Martin Bright, New Statesman

Katharine Gun packs more guts per square inch than anyone I know. So far, the U.S. media have kept the wraps on her important story; now you can find it all in this gripping narrative.
—Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Beau Friedlander
simnyc@rcn.com
718.576.2573

THE SPY WHO TRIED TO STOP A WAR
Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction
the Iraq Invasion

By Marcia and Thomas Mitchell • Foreword by Norman Solomon
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“One of the crucial untold stories of the Iraq war…. It is fitting tribute to the courage of Katharine Gun, who blew the whistle on transatlantic dirty tricks at the highest levels of government in London and Washington. A morality tale for the 21st century.”
— Martin Bright, New Statesman
______________________________________________________________

The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War tells the extraordinary story of a young British secret service officer, Katharine Gun, and her courageous decision to expose a covert plot to influence the United Nations to authorize the Iraq invasion.

Written like a spy novel, this vivid nonfiction account of the illegal US-UK operation, Gun’s decision to leak a classified email concerning it, and the firestorm that followed her arrest was big news in Europe but barely registered on the U.S. media’s radar screen.

Now the whole story—including the resignations of two British cabinet officers—is told for the first time.

Marcia Mitchell is former associate director of the American Film Institute and a former senior executive for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She began her career as a journalist and has received national awards for writing, editing, and photography. In May 2007, Marcia testified on the Katharine Gun case to a Capitol Hill panel. She is the co-author with Thomas Mitchell of The Spy Who Seduced America: Lies and Betrayals in the Heat of the Cold War.

Thomas Mitchell is a former FBI special agent whose 17 years with the bureau included counterintelligence work in New York and Washington, D.C. Throughout his intelligence career, he was associated with some of the country’s most famous espionage and criminal cases.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Price and format: cloth, $23.95;
ISBN 978-0-9815769-1-6;
Page count: 256