A few months after 9/11, a strange message appeared on a U.S. Army computer:
“Your security system is crap.”
I left messages on almost every system administrator’s desktop,
which in a perverse way, I hope was helpful because at least it was me there,
it wasn’t al Qaeda or China, or Iran, or Korea entering these systems.
Between February 2001 to March 2002, Gary McKinnon was accused of breaking into 97
U.S. government computers within the Army, Navy, Air Force, NASA, and the Department of Defense.
From his bedroom in London, he surfed around looking for
evidence that the U.S. government was covering up the existence of UFOs.
And he couldn’t help but leave behind some silly cyber notes:
"US foreign policy is akin to Government-sponsored terrorism
these days …I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels … "
It was incredibly cheeky and incredibly stupid.
Gary didn’t bother covering his tracks.
He was soon traced to his apartment in North London,
where cybercrime specialists from British law enforcement arrested him on March 19, 2002.
They told him he’d likely get off easy because he hadn’t sent any malicious
code. He’d probably just get six months’ community service for unauthorized access.
Turns out, he didn’t face six months of community service but 60 years in prison.
Gary had underestimated the gravity of the situation and believed he’d be okay.
At 36 years old, his mother, Janis,
described him as naive yet clearly intelligent, evident at a younge age.
“...he’s always been naive and young for his age, although clearly intelligent.”
Gary was obsessed with space as a kid, wanting to know how far away the planets were.
And asking, “Mummy, was Noah’s Ark a spaceship?”
He didn’t fit in at school and was bullied because of his Scottish accent, having grown
up in Glasglow before moving to London at the age of six with his mum and stepdad,
both musicians searching for more opportunities.
He also had another reason for feeling out of place, a reason that remained
undisclosed until his troubles brought it to light…more about that later.
Gary had always been obsessed with computers.
The world of logic made the most sense to him.
Ironically, when he worked at a computer firm,
his computer skills were deemed "unremarkable,” which stood in stark contrast to U.S. Attorney
Paul McNulty's description of his actions as the “...biggest military computer hack of all time."
At one point, he is alleged to have deleted critical system files and disabled a network
of 2,000 computers in the U.S. Army's Washington, D.C. operations for 24 hours.
His mother wrote in her memoir,
“The fact that Gary had accessed Pentagon computers filled me with dread…”
“This was America we were dealing with.”
But when they heard nothing further for three years, they were hopeful that,
maybe, Gary wouldn’t be charged after all.
He never accessed any classified information.
Then, on June 7, 2005, the hammer dropped.
Gary was re-arrested.
The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service did not intend to prosecute him, but the Americans did.
They planned to extradite him to the United States.
His mother, Janis, reacted with alarm, stating: “‘Extradite!’ At that moment
I was plunged into a state of terror. Real heart-stopping terror, the kind that makes you
want to grab your possessions and bundle your family into the car and head for the hills.”
The hacks occurred between 2001 and 2002 when British authorities required
evidence to justify extradition, which the U.S. never produced.
However, the rules changed in 2003 when a new treaty came into effect,
and evidence was no longer required.
This provision under Tony Blair’s government was
meant to fast-track terrorist suspects to face trial abroad.
Washington officially requested Gary’s extradition on October 7,
2004, after the new extradition treaty kicked in.
Applying the 2003 extradition treaty retroactively was controversial.
When Home Secretary John Reid signed an order for Gary to be extradited.
Gary was terrified that he’d be hauled before an American military tribunal or sent to Guantanamo.
Two years later, in 2008, the new Home Secretary,
Jacqui Smith, declined to halt the extradition process.
And the British Supreme Court refused to hear Gary’s appeal.
But Gary’s mother wouldn’t back down.
Janis’ strategy to save her son involved keeping his case in the spotlight.
She spent hours persuading Gary to do an interview with major British TV network ITV,
hoping it would help his case as the public got to know him.
There must have been occasions where you got into a military computer, a NASA computer,
and thought, how on earth did I do this? What went through your mind?
I was amazed at the - well - not even the level of security, I mean,
there was no security. In their indictments, they said I left the networks open to further attack,
but the networks were completely open to attack. I never had to
break into them. It was like logging on with a username and no password.
Gary said more than half of the computers had no password set to log into the system.
And the ones that did were easy to guess, including the word ‘password’.
Let’s look at one of the messages you’re said to have left. "US foreign policy is
akin to Government-sponsored terrorism these days…I am SOLO. I will continue
to disrupt at the highest levels…” What on earth were you thinking?
It’s what’s called hacktivism. It’s like hacking as a form of activism. The disruption is the
announcement of your presence there and how ridiculous the security is. And also,
if you know the history of U.S. foreign policy,
a lot of very credible peoples’ opinion is it is akin to terrorism itself.
This interview not only introduced Gary to the public but paved the way for a
revelation that changed his future. After the interview, viewers started
calling Gary’s lawyer’s office, certain he had Asperger’s syndrome.
Asperger’s is a form of autism that’s characterized by difficulties in
social interaction, which had been a challenge for Gary his whole life.
Individuals with Asperger’s often interpret language literally—a
trait that puzzled Janis during Gary’s upbringing.
Everything fell into place when Gary was officially
diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome in 2008.
The psychiatrists who assessed him made it clear that his obsession and
search for truth were connected to the developmental disorder.
Gary’s legal team, led by Karen Todner,
argued that his main motivation for hacking was indeed a quest for the truth about UFOs.
He believed that the United States had recovered alien spacecraft and
had been studying them in secret to understand their technology.
Gary claimed he saw a photograph of an exotic cigar-shaped craft that seemed otherworldly.
He was about to download it when system administrators discovered
his unauthorized access and booted him out.
He also believed he accessed a file with the names and ranks
of non-terrestrial officers - though they were deleted from his hard drive.
The threat of extradition heightened concerns about his mental health,
as people with Asperger's are prone to elevated anxiety and stress.
Gary said the worry was eating away at him so much that he couldn’t eat.
Janis reflected on his despair, writing, “He believed that death was preferable to
being removed from everyone and everything he had ever known.”
As his mental health deteriorated, Gary recalled, “My mum stepped up when I fell down.”
Janis would not give up.
Even when Gary lost his bid to avoid extradition despite his Asperger’s diagnosis.
Even when the new Home Secretary Alan Johnson announced he would not block extradition.
Janis knew she was: “I was up against UK government advisers as well as the
might of the US government…but the power of love is an awesome force, and I had that.”
She studied extradition law,
looking at other hacking cases in the belief that knowledge is power.
When a British man named Aaron Caffrey crashed the computers at America’s largest port,
Houston, in 2001, he was tried in the UK and found not guilty.
When another UK citizen, Ryan Cleary, admitted to hacking the CIA and other major institutions,
he was also tried in the UK and given a short sentence.
Why was Gary being treated differently?
Gary’s MP, David Burrowes, recounted a conversation he had with the American ambassador:
“I asked him directly why. Well, he replied, he recounted the damage to U.S. naval systems.
But then, his voice and emotions rose, and the severity rose in his tone, and he said,
referring to the comments left by Gary McKinnon on the various websites, he said, ‘He mocked us.’”
Gary had embarrassed the U.S. government.
His defense team claimed to possess evidence indicating an American
prosecutor expressed a desire to see Gary “fry”.
This evidence, however, was reportedly on a laptop stolen from one of Gary’s lawyers in a carjacking.
The same evidence also mysteriously vanished from the office of his lawyer Karen Todner.
Janis, nice to see you again
Janis did everything in her power to save her son.
Becoming his de facto spokesperson when Gary was uncomfortable doing additional interviews.
Gary sits in the dark all the time, with his cats,
he’s in terror. I wake up in terror, I go to sleep in terror.
She organized protests and even went as far as meeting the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
She ran as a member of parliament to bring attention to Gary’s plight.
Her relentless efforts garnered the support of celebrities, including David Gilmour of
Pink Floyd, Sting, and his wife, actress Trudie Styler, putting more pressure on the government.
Janis stayed up until 2 am every day writing to politicians and
was so exhausted that she often fell asleep at her keyboard.
This exhaustive campaign began to bear fruit when she won over some prominent politicians.
Boris Johnson, then the Mayor of London, wrote in the Telegraph:
“Gary McKinnon believes in little green men—but it doesn’t make him a terrorist.
During his election campaign, David Cameron said there was “no compassion” in extraditing Gary.
Janis was overjoyed when Cameron became prime minister in May 2010.
Her happiness knew no bounds when Home Secretary Theresa May paused the proposed extradition in
order to consider the medical evidence in light of Gary’s Asperger’s diagnosis.
Good afternoon, everybody. Please have a seat.
This wave of optimism reached a peak in July 2010 during the first
joint press conference between Prime Minister Cameron and President Obama.
Tom Bradby: Mr. President, Tom Bradby,
ITV News. Do you think it’s time now to consider some leniency on this case?
Cameron: “It is something we discussed in our meeting. Clearly there’s a discussion
going on between the British and the Americans about this and I don’t want
to prejudice those discussions….and I hope a way through can be found.”
Obama: “I trust that this will get resolved in a way that underscores the seriousness of the issue,
but also underscores the fact that we work together and we can find an
appropriate solution. All right? Thank you very much, everybody.”
Janis called Gary, and said: “It’s going to be OK!!! You’re going to be OK!!!”
The UK Home Office called for additional assessments of Gary’s mental state.
Janis boldly refused a particular medical evaluation because one
psychiatrist chosen by the Home Office had no experience with Asperger’s syndrome,
and Janis feared the expert could not properly assess Gary’s condition.
Gary ended up undergoing a new assessment by Dr. Jan Vermeulen,
a psychiatrist endorsed by both the Home Office and the National Autistic Society (NAS).
In April 2012, Dr. Vermeulen concluded that Gary was “UNFIT FOR TRIAL”.
Two other leading experts in Asperger’s supported that assessment.
Subsequently, two other psychiatrists, who had initially considered McKinnon
at moderate risk of taking his own life, revised their opinion
to 'significant' after reviewing the reports from the Asperger's specialists."
Theresa May carefully read all the medical reports before coming to a conclusion.
We were now into 2012 when London was hosting the Summer Olympic Games.
Janis felt she was running her own Olympic marathon:
“I couldn’t afford to take my eye off the finish line for a second,
as the life-saving marathon I’d been running had yet to be won.” (page 262)
She wrote a public letter appealing to the prime minister and Theresa May:
“Please have the strength to do what is right and to give my son his life back.”
On October 16, 2012, Theresa May announced her decision.
Mr McKinnon is accused of serious crimes. But there is also no doubt that he is seriously
ill. He has Asperger’s syndrome and suffers from depressive illness. The legal question before
me is now whether the extent of that illness is sufficient to preclude extradition. As the House
would expect, I have very carefully considered the representations made on Mr. McKinnon’s behalf,
including from a number of clinicians. I have obtained my own medical advice from practitioners
recommended to me by the Chief Medical Officer, and I have taken extensive legal advice. After
careful consideration, I have concluded that Mr. McKinnon would give rise to such a high risk of
him ending his life that the decision to extradite would be incompatible with Mr. McKinnon’s human
rights. I have therefore withdrawn the extradition order against Mr. McKinnon.
Before her statement in the House of Commons, 10 Downing Street briefed Gary’s legal team.
When Gary’s lawyer Karen Todner rang up Janis’ home with the news,
Janis’ husband Wilson picked up.
And upon learning the decision, he looked up at Janis with tears in his eyes.
“It’s OK, Janis. It’s over.”
Janis cried in absolute relief.
When Janis called Gary to tell him the news, she described how:
“Gary sounded like a wounded animal as he covered his face and moaned with relief.”
His partner Lucy cried with him. Sorry. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster
so not really articulate today. I’m overwhelmed and incredibly happy. I want to say thank you,
Theresa May, because it was an incredibly brave decision to stand up to another
nation as strong and powerful as America. It’s rare. And she had the guts to do it.
Janis also thanked the Daily Mail for taking up the fight for years,
and announced May’s decision with the headline: At last! A minister stands up to Uncle Sam.
Gary's case resulted in new rules that allow British judges to block
an extradition request if they believe the suspect should be tried in the UK.
At the end of 2012, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS ) announced it would not prosecute Gary
domestically, as it didn’t have evidence that it felt would lead to a conviction.
However, Gary’s legal counsel strongly advised him against ever leaving England or Wales, as the U.S.
could have him arrested and extradited. That meant he could never visit Scotland, where he was born,
and where his father still lives. Although Scotland is part of the UK,
it has its own separate legal system. Despite these restrictions, Janis expressed
relief and gratitude: “Nonetheless, Gary is free, and for that we are eternally grateful.”
Gary McKinnon now runs a search engine optimization company in Leicester,
about 100 miles north of London. He has also started writing and
recording music again. Gary McKinnon's story
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Thanks for watching. For Newsthink, I'm Cindy Pom.