The leaked memo took several weeks to find its way to The Observer newspaper in London. Investigative reporter Martin Bright, working alongside colleagues Ed Vulliamy and Peter Beaumont, immediately recognized its seismic implications. Yet publishing an authentic NSA document directed at British intelligence carried grave legal peril.
The paper spent weeks vetting the email. Foreign desk editors verified the address headers, confirmed the existence of Frank Koza within the opaque corridors of Fort Meade, and cross-referenced NSA nomenclature. On March 2, 2003, three weeks before coalition forces crossed the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, the paper ran the headline across its front page: "Revealed: US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war."
The revelation provoked outrage at the United Nations in New York. The targeted delegations registered fury at the breach of diplomatic protocol, and the political consensus for a second resolution collapsed. Washington and London were forced to abandon the UN authorization track altogether, choosing instead to launch the invasion without explicit Security Council backing. Inside Cheltenham, the leak sparked a ferocious mole hunt.
