"I never aligned myself specifically with the anti-war movement. 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. Actually, there were two incidents at sea, blamed originally on the North Vietnamese. The contents were explosive, implicating America in a blackmail plot to swing UN votes in favor of an invasion. 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. Gun made the choice to leak the document, which Martin Bright of The Observer in Britain published in a story on March 2, 2003. And isnt it also time to re-examine the Official Secrets Act? Gun said that the UK government still had some explaining to do: "I thinkthere need to be more questions asked about whether they responded to that request, why they felt it was within their scope of work to respond to that sort of request, and what is the manner of the relationship between UK politics and US politics. 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.". It was an interesting experience because you couldn't really go bending things the way you thought would be more dramatic, you just have to make the story itself and hope there was enough drama there. Not only was the cable the most sensitive ever to be disclosed on either side of the Atlantic, it was also unique in its timing. And that I think was the motivation. You are sitting in the intelligence services, and Ive spoken to many now because Ive made other films in that world and I have some interesting folks that Ive been able to talk to, and the struggle was were being disloyal if you dont toe a party line, as it were, but we know this isnt right. ", Keira Knightley and Katharine Gun at the London premiere of "Official Secrets. Sorry to digress. Id never seen anything like it. I became a mother, we moved countries and I have come to terms with that year of my life, though it will always define me in some ways. Webdeport Guns husband, Yasar (Adam Bakri), a Muslim Kurdish Turk who was awaiting permanent leave to remain in the U.K. 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. That kind of propaganda has to stop. It turned out a copyeditor at The Observer had run the memo through spellcheck before printing it.]. And I went back in 93 and did another two years with the new Department of Health. Neither my friends nor my family knew what I did all day. In the years following, an author called Marcia Mitchell contacted me and said she was keen to write a book about my case. The comments below have been moderated in advance. What is this paper? For the Observer too, it was a story full of risks. I sensed a slight flash of anger as she said: "It's not even a footnote in the history of Iraq." And Assange is the same. We must not be flummoxed by exaggerated claims of threats against America and our interests. But George W. Bush did something that, thankfully, Trump hasnt pulled off yet: He took us to war. Hundreds of thousands were killed. And it was this book which eventually became the script for Official Secrets. 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. Is this a matter of threatening to launch a war, or is it a matter of responding to the US positioning itself for war? And it's also true that we were then attacked by the Drudge Report for what would now be called 'fake news. She wasnt planning to get caught and then the dilemma was, My friends are all going to have their lives ruined.. As the Trump administration shreds norms of American governance like a Shih Tzu going to town on a roll of toilet paper, the last worst president is largely silent, busied with .css-umdwtv{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:.0625rem;text-decoration-color:#FF3A30;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:inherit;-webkit-transition:background 0.4s;transition:background 0.4s;background:linear-gradient(#ffffff, #ffffff 50%, #d5dbe3 50%, #d5dbe3);-webkit-background-size:100% 200%;background-size:100% 200%;}.css-umdwtv:hover{color:#000000;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;-webkit-background-position:100% 100%;background-position:100% 100%;}canine portraiture and now the subject of nearly fond nostalgia. 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. 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. 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. It was the first time I had worked with characters who were still alive, and they very much wanted it to be accurate or they wouldn't sign over their life rights. 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. It was like a neon sign that was flashing at me, Gun says. 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. [Gun was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act in Britain, but ultimately the case never went to trial.]. The film also captures my determination to do what I believed was right and reveals how divisive the Iraq War was, particularly highlighting the anger within certain sections of the intelligence services as the sabre-rattling statements of Mr Blair and his spokesman Alastair Campbell were accepted without proper challenge by some in the media. He was actually gone for three days. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. What It Feels Liketo Survive a Chemical Attack. Unfortunately. Later, she gave the document to a friend, who passed it onto a contact in the anti-war movement, until it finally landed with journalists Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy The Observer. Gun sacrificed so much when she decided to leak and has worked only intermittently since. And I did the same for the journalists and the lawyers and everybody. None of the Government reports into the war acknowledged it, nor did the history books. As it was, a second UN resolution directly to authorise war against Iraq never materialised and air strikes began on 19 March 2003. After the leak was published, hundreds of staff inside the building were questioned in order to discover the identity of the whistleblower. It left me in an impossible predicament. Now someone else may beI don't know if I could hack people's phones and computers, personally. So, Im not really answering your question well, but her feeling was just: Now I dont belong in this company. 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. David Dayen: But he is not a headline journalist at a newspaper. Some of those same birds are still flapping wings in the skies above Washington. It was what I was thinking, what I was feeling. Official Secrets is, for the most part, a historical account of these events in 2003, but as with nearly all films based on a true story, some things have been changed to aid the drama of the narrative. He said she didnt even know what the job was. There's an obvious scene of the immigration deportation. Maybe that was naive, but she didn't think that. So important was this email, I knew it might even derail the case that Tony Blair was making for joining the Americans in an invasion. Following the incident, Gun struggled to find work that she "But that's partly my own fault because I haven't aggressively pursued a career. Throughout her own court case, whatonly a few knew wasthat she was also fighting for the right of her husband, who is from Turkey, to remain in the UK. She will not talk about it anything else. You work for the government. Rishi Sunak is urgently reviewing his private exchanges with Matt Hancock after bombshell leak of ex-Health 'Drinks cold in fridge at DH!' She had received an email in her inbox asking her and her colleagues to help in a vast intelligence "surge" designed to secure a UN resolution to send troops into Iraq. David Dayen: One thing I think you depict really brilliantly in this story is what the climate was like at the time. She went to this interview, the next minute were down this rabbit hole, the next minute my wifes telling the world. 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. This content is imported from youTube. Although the story made headlines around the world at the time of the leak and later at the time of her trial, which collapsed after the prosecution withdrew its evidence, it remains largely missing from the official narratives of the build-up to the Iraq war. We were in development with a particular studio, and I don't mean to be funny after such a heavy film but sometimes we need a little bit of humor. Just occasionally Spoilers to follow as well. What might, IKeira Knightley, feel if I'm sitting at my desk and this happened to me?" Would you risk your job? The editorial position should never be that. 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. They had published not some coded version of events, but the email itself in full. Gun was followed, denied legal advice and her Turkish husband faced deportation. She thought wow, they need a Mandarin translator at GCHQ. Katharine Gun, former intelligence specialist turned whistleblower, discusses the new film "Official Secrets" which details why she leaked a classified memo. From nightmares to candy cravings, the seemingly innocuous habits in Man is banned from touching every parking meter in Liverpool for two years after being convicted of theft, Katharine Gun, Gchq Whistleblower For The Mail On Sunday, Do not sell or share my personal information. The British are quite British, you know. Now the goal is not truth, it is victory. 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. So somehow in my rolodex, sometimes they sought me out. I dont know if theyd have discovered me eventually, but the fact is I couldnt live a lie for ever. The difficulties of translating Gun's story also made writing the climax of the film tricky. It gives me an interesting pause. the waning support for public institutions today. Over the weekend, I got to work. At some point, as you probably know, Bush and Rumsfeld decided to bypass the CIA and take out that Office of Special Plans. And I know whose throat it really sticks in, is [British journalist] Ed Vulliamy, who I adore. When Katharine Gun came across a memo while working for the British government in 2003, her whole world changed. So we're in this development meeting, and the executive looks at me and goes, Gavin, I mean we need her running down alleys more, someone needs to throw a brick through her damn window, and when does she don her cape? It was literally the line. And maybe if we went to work for Enron and we liked our job well enough, and its a job. As opposed to trying to be Katharine Gun. The same countries demanded immediate answers from the British government about its involvement in the spying. 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. '", The reality was not nearly as dramatic as in the film, where Bright and his editor are together in a newsroom when the mistake is revealed, leading to them being dropped from interviews with a number of international news outlets. For several years, just recalling the events would set my heart racing and my hands trembling. Some called her a traitor; others She was charged Look at what happened to Reality Winner in this country. And she thought she wouldnt get caught. And if, 16 years ago, you had told me that one day my life story would be portrayed by Keira Knightley, Id have laughed and changed the subject. It's tough, the laws here are even stricter than in the UK. Donald Trump also is saying he doesn't want war, which is probably true. Perhaps it was no wonder that Tony Blairs government decided to abandon the case without offering any evidence. And she and many in her world knew, and many in the CIA knew, as Mel Goodman who's the man in the boathouse in Washington knew, that this was B.S. Weve said it before: The greatest threat to democracy from the media isnt disinformation, its the paywall. First, I contacted someone to this day Ive never named them who had the details of a journalist and anti-war activist. WebKatharine Gun (ne Harwood), 47, is married to Yasar Gn, a Turkish Kurd, with whom she has a 13-year old daughter. [In real life] I saw the email, I immediately thought, 'Oh, my God, this is shocking.' I don't think I've ever met a more determined character and she remained utterly convinced of the justice of her cause: "There's nothing subsequent to the invasion that makes me think it was the right decision made by Bush and Blair." Surely, after 16 years, we are entitled to have answers. Unfortunately, perhaps, I have a conscience and my dishonesty gnawed at me persistently until the next day, when I confessed. It remains entirely to the credit of Roger Alton, at the time the paper's editor, that he stuck with the story, despite its potential implications. They published the scoop in March 2003putting Gun directly in the crosshairs of law enforcement, and sparking a legal fight for her freedom. But Katharine only ever leaked this one memo. As of 2020 Gun lives in Turkey and Britain. I didnt know until I looked really deeply into this that theres really two schools of thought. The truth is when she speaks to me, and she says, Gavin, we also go to lunch like everybody else in any other office. After the charges against her were dropped in 2004, she found it difficult to find a new Marcia Mitchell is a writer, researcher, and the author of "The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion." The truth is that I didnt know who Katharine Gun was until my producer Ged Doherty called me up one day, we made Eye In The Sky together, and said, Have you ever heard of Katharine Gun? Thats one of those moments where you think: Sounds like I ought to have, but I hadnt. 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. As I walked down the red carpet, I had never in my life experienced the flash of so many cameras. Gavin Hood: Yes, it really sticks in my throat too. Does anyone have any questions? We are no longer accepting comments on this article. To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page. WebYou may not know the name Katharine Gun unless you live in the United Kingdom, but she was a pivotal figure in the run-up to the Iraq War. 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 answered an advert in The Guardian newspaper for a translator. Eventually, it was widely held that at least one of the reports of the attacks, and perhaps even both, were false. During the American-lead 2003 campaign for United Nations support for an invasion of Iraq, Gun, who's played in the film by Keira Knightley, was a 28 year-old Mandarin translator working for the UKs Government Communications Headquarters, the nations equivalent of the American NSA. Who knows whether they would've bent those other nations to vote for a resolution. WebFor 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. She said, I was naive. Then the most almighty cacophony erupted, a roar so loud we could barely hear to speak. Ed, I know some people have said that Rhys Ifans [who plays Vulliamy] is slightly over the top. He is just way out there in a whole other realm. So we start with hair, and then we start with glasses, and Keira says, "Gavin, what if I just was me?" ", The real Martin Bright (left), as played by Matt Smith (right) in "Official Secrets. Only later did I appreciate the extent to which the journalists involved Martin Bright, Peter Beaumont and Ed Vulliamy had to go in order to prove that the email was legitimate. She was a spythe communications she translated had been obtained covertly, but she did the work in the interest of protecting Britain. As the title of the film script suggests, she was "The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War". I even thought, naively, Id be able to keep my anonymity. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images). But the Bush administration went to war anyway, using the pretext of weapons of mass destruction. Yet I do think Keira perfectly captures the strain I was under, the isolation and fear. As one of the journalists who broke the story, I feel a certain responsibility for how things have turned out. "You get to the end, and there's this court case. She also opposed the pending war. One is reminded of the January 31, 2003 Oval Office meeting with George Bush, Tony Blair, and Condoleeza Rice, in which the topic of provoking Iraq to start a war was particularly revealing. WebAttempts were made by the authorities to deport her husband, who grew disillusioned with Britain. In leaking it to the Observer, she was also doing something unprecedented in the history of espionage. Most whistleblowers leak after the event to expose perceived wrongdoing. 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. Americans find it hard to believe that it could happen, but it happens, it happens fast. 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. But that shouldn't be the philosophy pre-war when you're trying to decide whether to go to war. 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. Same birds are still flapping wings in the crosshairs of law enforcement, and its job! 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