Charges have been dropped against a British government translator accused of leaking a top-secret memo prior to the Iraq war.
Prosecutors at London's Old Bailey court offered no evidence against Mr Katherine Teresa Gun, a former employee of the global surveillance centre, GCHQ.
Media reports said Ms Gun was accused of leaking a memo from the US requesting Britain's help to spy on United Nations members in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Following her arrest last March, Ms Gun said she had "followed her conscience" in leaking the memo, which, she said, "exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the US government who attempted to subvert our own security services".
Prosecutors gave no reason in court for the decision to drop charges of contravening The Official Secrets Act but legal sources, who had predicted the move, said the British government was unwilling to have a case proceed in which the legality of the Iraq war would have come under question.
Britain's Observernewspaper, which says it saw a copy of an e-mail from a senior US National Security Agency official quoted it as stating the agency 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".