So thank you for being here, it means a lot. You work for the government. Healthy mother-of-two, 32, collapsed and died from brain bleed while she led fitness bounce class. An insider with courage. Sometimes movies can be an effective way to make forgotten stories part of our national narrative, and in that sense, Official Secrets comes not a moment too soon. "Still no regrets," she said. She will not talk about it anything else. Can dementia be spotted in CHILDHOOD? But Katharine Gun, whos now the subject of a new film, the Gavin Hood-directed Official Secrets, did a lot moreand became one of the most important political whistleblowers that most Americans have never heard of. If it was, who cleared it to be passed to GCHQ? I don't think she thought they would deport her husband, I really don't think she thought that. Gavin Hood: After the spellcheck. Naturally, I was discreet. Gun disclosed details of the spying operation as it was happening to stop something she viewed as terrible happening in the future. The central issues of whistle-blower protection, public interest disclosures, journalistic freedom and the accountability of our elected representatives continue to be just as relevant today. They're more polite to their suspects. Gavin Hood: Its a great question. Direct to your inbox. Hundreds of thousands were killed. On the other hand, she and Ben, to this day, feel they never got their day in court. He was actually gone for three days. In the years following, an author called Marcia Mitchell contacted me and said she was keen to write a book about my case. The same countries demanded immediate answers from the British government about its involvement in the spying. Iraq All Over Again? For the Observer too, it was a story full of risks. Taking Vitamin D each day could cut your chances of getting dementia, study claims. And then, she said when she got in therenow bear in mind that she still is bound by the Official Secrets Act. By design. The poor woman is based on a real person. Koza was in effect issuing a direct order to the employees of a UK security agency 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". Now there is the possibility that Gun's singular life will be made into a movie. "Because I think people see thatthe leaders of both the US and the UK conceivably could be considered war criminals, and yet they are walking free.". I dont know if theyd have discovered me eventually, but the fact is I couldnt live a lie for ever. Gavin Hood: Keira is wonderful and is absolutely professional, arrives perfectly prepared, very calm, no fuss. And I thought this is going to end in the worst civil war. And it was there that, to our amazement and totally without warning, the CPS dropped the charges before the trial had even started. WebWe speak with a British whistleblower whose attempts to expose lies about the Iraq invasion was called "the most important and courageous leak" in history by acclaimed We may earn a commission from these links. Every day we worked together for about five to six hours and then I referred back to her many times, subsequently, but I had literally just said, let's start at the beginning and let me hear first-hand from you your story and then I'll tell that story. Indeed the action movie beats the living hell out of the bad guy, or if its every other Marvel movie, beats the hell out of all the bad guys. So WMD may not have been as important, had they gotten that resolution. You can look up Nicole Mowbray, she wrote an article in The Guardian a couple weeks ago, about this worst day of her life. Perhaps a plane painted in UN colors could be shot down over Iraq. The other was Coleen Rowley, former FBI special agent and counsel at the Minneapolis bureau, who blew the whistle on FBI and other shortcomings She wasnt charged for eight months a gruelling period which is depicted as just a few But she said she would still be prepared to give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. If there had been a UN resolution, there would have been no need to make a WMD argument because there are two legal ways to go to war. Following the incident, Gun struggled to find work that she That seems like the central undercurrent that is playing throughout the entire film. Does anyone have any questions? "There seems to be this blas attitude the spying goes on, everyone does it and so it's nothing to get all hot under the collar about. Because I'm not ambitious it's not paramount for me to find myself in a high-paid job. She didnt know where he was for three days and she took the train down from Charlton to London to see the MP, Nigel Jones, who said exactly what he says in the movie. I was only a junior analyst, but I knew the email was outrageous: the American government was asking Britain to spy on United Nations diplomats so they could be blackmailed into supporting an invasion of Iraq. Its Straussian, over the top and pretentious but basically amounts to this. So we just worked on the performance from the very what if it's you? The only thing that we altered in that is that I didnt have time to tell it for as long as it went on. She had been following that war, as many of us had, for a year. Gun made the choice to leak the document, which Martin Bright of The Observer in Britain published in a story on March 2, 2003. David Dayen: No problem. 265 ratings46 reviews British secret service officer Katharine Gun's only crime was telling the truth, but she paid a steep price when she exposed a U.S.-U.K. spy operation to secure UN authorization for the Iraq invasion. Its had far reaching and very negative impacts in all aspects of our institutions and our public life," Gun says. Whistleblower Katherine Gun, right, is played by Keira Knightly in the movie Official Secrets, Gun was outraged after she learned - as part of her job with GCHQ - that the United States wanted Britain to assist in spying on fellow United Nations Security Council members to win a vote in favour of a planned war in Iraq. You dont have to agree with what she did, Im just telling you what she did. When I got to the interview thats when they told me that its for GCHQ, I didnt know what GCHQ did. So, I think she entered the world out of a sort of strange curiosity. And people do this in every country; they spy, they listen to what are the Chinese going to do when they get to this conference. And she said, Yep, I have no problem being asked to listen in, in instances where I might help prevent a terror attack. What this memo suggested was neither of those things it was a bridge too far for her. Why did the British authorities wait eight months before charging me and then drop the charges, claiming there was insufficient evi-dence for prosecution when I had confessed to the leak from the start? When Katharine Gun came across a memo while working for the British government in 2003, her whole world changed. WebKatharine Guns husbands photo revelations are not made by her yet. These superheroes, and I don't just mean superheroes in the movie sense, but larger-than-life big political figures, or Edward Snowden is almost mythical in his brilliance whether you like what he did or not, he is sort of not me. "But the more I think about what happened, the more angry and frustrated I get about the fact that nobody acted on intelligence. The decision to leak it was almost instant I felt I had no choice. Maybe thats rewarding. David Dayen: And you were dealing with a story that was about a leak that didn't stop a war and leading to a trial that didn't happen. Seven times I've submitted articles to you with an alternate point of view, and seven times you've turned me down. Before 1989, there had been a Public Interest Defence to protect whistleblowers, but that was altered amid the furore surrounding the sinking of the Argentinian Navy cruiser, the General Belgrano, in the course of the Falklands War. Webdeport Guns husband, Yasar (Adam Bakri), a Muslim Kurdish Turk who was awaiting permanent leave to remain in the U.K. The work shed signed up to do was covered by British law, and would be something to do with whatever that was necessary to keep British lives safe. The memo, however represented the actual twisting of diplomatic arms in order to secure a war which [was] based on lies., But it also represented an opportunity to show the world the tactics American and British officials were willing to employ in their push for an invasion. WebWhistleblower Katherine Gun, right, is played by Keira Knightly in the movie Official Secrets View gallery Gun was outraged after she learned - as part of her job with GCHQ - that We were to target such things as phone calls and emails from their homes as well as their places of work. This meant that a lot of the things that we see Gun go through in the film actually took far longer in real life. According to the Guardian, ", As for her own story, she recognises that 10 years on it scarcely registers with the public. Gavin Hood: Hes not in journalism. To me, it was a way of showing that Iraq cannot be dismissed as a horror show of suffering, but is an ancient and sophisticated culture that goes back thousands of years. Iran, meanwhile, says it doesn't want war, but will defend itself. Then, we all started watching the invasion and we werent how we got into the war. To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page. The true story of a British whistleblower who leaked information to the press about an illegal NSA spy operation designed to push the UN Security Council into sanctioning the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Abandoned blue sleeping bag, tents and several wooden shelters are found in woodland close to where police Don't just stick to the Malbec! David Dayen: How did you think Keira Knightley was an asset in showing that emotional journey throughout the movie? It was both exhilarating and just a little uncomfortable. The comments below have been moderated in advance. Gun sacrificed so much when she decided to leak and has worked only intermittently since. Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). However, she is not without disappointment about how little obvious difference she made. I got that from Yasar. However, the Pentagon says the US deployment is "in response to indications of heightened Iranian readiness to conduct offensive operations against US forces and our interests.". She now has a four-year-old daughter who she is bringing up in Turkey. This and her other writings about intelligence issues have been critically acclaimed. WebGun, then 28, received an email about a U.S.-led operation enlisting the help of Britain to spy on other countries, in an attempt to blackmail them into supporting the Iraq War. The truth was that in April of 2002, the two world leaders secretly had agreed on a plan to take out Saddam, all the while giving speeches insisting that the only motivation for even considering war was that horrific stockpile of deadly weapons. Id immediately be transported back to GCHQ and that email the anger I felt and the decisions I made. Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer, en years ago, a young Mandarin specialist at GCHQ, the government's surveillance centre in Cheltenham, did something extraordinary. I don't know that consciously it did, it's just that I didn't know the story and so, for me, it was I asked Katharine, I flew to London, I met her for five days. We go to the canteen and we talk.. The more we find out that in fact the million-person march was a real cause of worry for Downing Street and for Blair personally, it makes you think we were so close and yet so far.". Anyway, the Office of Special Plans and Abram Shulsky make an interesting Wikipedia read, it won't take you very long. The legal case against Gun was eventually dropped by the British government in 2004, after her lawyer, Ben Emmerson QC (played in the film with fabulous charisma by Ralph Fiennes), threatened to use disclosure to put the legal basis of the war itself on trial. And for her, this was too much. That kind of propaganda has to stop. Warning: The following contains spoilers for Official Secrets. Twenty-eight, pretty naive. So I said to her at one point, and its in the movie because her interrogator said it too and you would ask her the same question, which is Katharine I hear all this, but it was a little muddy, you worked as a spy, you hacked peoples phones and computers, you do dirty tricks. And I went, Oh, that's how much that superhero myth is in our system. We didn't end up making it with that studio. The paper had taken the controversial decision to back intervention in Iraq. It is written by Sara and Gregory Bernstein, a California-based husband-and-wife writing partnership who have worked with British director Jonathan Lynn. The invasion was a huge blow, says Gun. It was almost as if that request was asking for someone within their own nation to do this work; it wasn't asking another completely independent state for co-operation.". Gavin Hood: Thats such an interesting statement, I mean, I just took it at face value that papers take an editorial position, but youre right. Then, the world is safer until the sequel when it all happens again. With the operation blown, the chances of George W Bush and Tony Blair getting the consensus for a direct UN mandate for war were now near zero. We typically, in the movie business, ever since Joseph Campbell wrote The Hero of A Thousand Facesand Im not meaning to be sarcastic because thats a great piece of work, but it spoiled the idea that every development executive is reading these books because the hero we meet and then something upsets their world and the antagonist that must equal the hero, and eventually we go through these loops and the hero triumphs in the end. Though celebrated Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg would later call Guns actions the most important and courageous leak in history due to her efforts to save lives through preventing a war, she obviously didnt succeed in stopping the invasion. So she said, Can I just do nothing with my hair, put on the jeans like Katharine wore? So the wardrobe is accurate to Katharine's style. "One of the things that we discovered quite early on when he was interviewing me was that a lot of stuff was just happening in my head. This included a particular focus on the "swing nations" on the security council, Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, "as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters". But I talk to people and there does seem to be a sense of failure that, despite all the campaigning and all the marching and all the protesting and everything they did, it made not a ha'porth of difference. WebThe Katharine Gun Case. WebI disappeared with my husband down to the coast in Brighton, on the coast of England, and spent some time away from the limelight, Gun said in the interview. Now the goal is not truth, it is victory. But this specificinstance is the ugly truth of what goes on.". For several years, just recalling the events would set my heart racing and my hands trembling. One by one, all those who received the email approximately 100 people were taken in for a grilling. Those are compelling and important qualities to see in characters that move through a story, and I feel like especially for women it's an under-valued active engine. So somehow in my rolodex, sometimes they sought me out. Sixteen years ago, I became headline news after I leaked an internal email from GCHQ, the communications intelligence gathering centre near Cheltenham. Now, Trump says, he wants to see Iran back at the negotiating table. Then, the following November, after eight months of worry, I was finally charged. For example, a scene where Gun tries to get her husband out of an immigration detention center actually played out over three days during which she did not know where he was. But I know some folks because of films I made like Eye in the Sky, and before that I made a film called Rendition. Gavin Hood: I asked her the same questions, and on about my second day interviewing her, I said to her, because I wasnt sure if I should make the movie; I mean, I needed to know whose story I was telling and if she was batshit crazy. Progressive values. Director Gavin Hood Writers Sara Bernstein Gregory Bernstein Gavin Hood Stars Keira Knightley Matt Smith Matthew Goode A script has been doing the rounds in Hollywood for five years. It is to say that a government, for its own reasons may, either by design or through miscalculation, lead a country into an unnecessary and brutal war. Which is to say that GCHQ was being asked to dig dirt on foreign officials so that they could be blackmailed, bribed or both in order to secure a UN resolution authorising an invasion. That's the memo. Would you risk your job? The point of all of this is painfully obvious. Hood said that this was a purposeful choice by Knightley. WebWhen the film opens, Gun (Keira Knightley) is happily married to Yasar (Adam Bakri), a Turkish national living in the UK on a temporary visa, and passionately invested in Her story, which reveals what a country will do when it wants war and claims it does not, is told in an updated book and a major motion picture soon to be released--Official Secrets (Keira Knightly is Katharine). Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture. Rishi Sunak is urgently reviewing his private exchanges with Matt Hancock after bombshell leak of ex-Health 'Drinks cold in fridge at DH!' It was what I was thinking, what I was feeling. It was like a neon sign that was flashing at me, Gun says. You see it most vividly in that scene where everybody stops calling Martin Bright, or they start canceling all the interviews. When you support The American Prospect, youre supporting fellow readers who arent able to give, and countering the class system for information. But depicting that climate, people who were not aware or active at that timedidn't realize how difficult this was to talk against the war both from the journalist's perspective and obviously someone who's in the intelligence community. The story of Katharine Gun, a whistle-blower who exposed NSA spying in the lead-up to the Iraq War, gets the Hollywood treatment. And when we got to that point in the movie, I had to start montaging it because it was just taking too long to get to the end. She could easily have been me or you at your place of work, where something comes across your desk and you go, This doesn't smell right. Please help keep the independent journalism of Common Dreams strong. Questioner: It was so heartening to hear you talk about that hero's journey because I feel like we so often take compassion, passion, integrity for granted as a call to action. It sounds big with Katharine but that's what inspired me. Surely, she thought, when people realised that the UK was being asked to collaborate in an operation to find out personal information that could be used to blackmail UN delegates, they would be outraged and the UK government would halt its slide into war. Keira said no one knows Katharine, and that's not an insult to Katharine. Daniel Ellsberg, the celebrated American whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers about the build-up to the war in Vietnam, described it as "the most important and courageous leak I have ever seen".He added: "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.". She said, I was naive. I didn't plan to have this movie out today and know what was going to be going on. Ed, I know some people have said that Rhys Ifans [who plays Vulliamy] is slightly over the top. He is wonderfully articulate but super pissed off, and his PTSDbecause hes been in Iraq for yearsmanifests at just disdain for that certain person you mentioned. As Bright noted, however, what we see in the movie is close to the real events. He said she didnt even know what the job was. Everyone involved assumed the project had run into the dust, but then it appeared on the Black List, a Hollywood website for unmade film scripts, which has featured Slumdog Millionaire and The King's Speech in the past. '", "The scene where all of us receive this email and we're discussing the memo, that never happened. Liberty, the civil rights organisation, and Ben Emmerson QC had already agreed to defend me and we prepared for trial. By the way, I know some amazing people in the intelligence services. I know what it is like to watch the system become completely authoritarian. She thought wow, they need a Mandarin translator at GCHQ. His philosophy comes from a military intelligence model, which actually, by the time you go to war, now it's about winning. WebHer late husband, Tom, a former special agent of the FBI and one-time head of counter-intelligence in New York, co-authored the Gun story. Who, one must ask, is provoking whom? When Official Secrets received its British premiere at Londons BFI Film Festival earlier this month, I was determined to wear something that held a special meaning and settled on a dress by an Iraqi designer. What It Feels Liketo Survive a Chemical Attack. That would be awkward. the waning support for public institutions today. Pretentious but basically amounts to this gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where focuses. Is urgently reviewing his private exchanges with Matt Hancock after bombshell leak of ex-Health 'Drinks cold in at. 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