But again, I cant help but make some small jokes about these things. ", Keira Knightley and Katharine Gun at the London premiere of "Official Secrets. I didn't plan to have this movie out today and know what was going to be going on. Gavin Hood: Its a question of how conditioned are we to the conventional Hollywood structure. So when I sent the script to Keira, and I was very hopeful that she would do it because she does a lot of period dramas, and you dont often see her in a modern drama and I thought shed be great. Is this a matter of threatening to launch a war, or is it a matter of responding to the US positioning itself for war? To separate fact from fiction, Newsweek spoke to the real Gun and Bright, as well as Official Secrets director Gavin Hood. He was actually gone for three days. In a year that the U.S. president is accused of pressuring foreign governments for political gain, the story behind the film Official Secrets seems particularly timely. David Dayen: Just the notion that the paper would say, we're for the war, that was their editorial position. Which really, really, really happened. And we keep that system alive. But get out of that trailer as fast as possible, get onto the set, and work from inside? [Gun's husband Yasar, a Kurd, was nearly deported back to the Middle East at one point, even though he had nothing to do with the leak.]. Then, the following November, after eight months of worry, I was finally charged. The truth is when she speaks to me, and she says, Gavin, we also go to lunch like everybody else in any other office. I don't think she thought they would deport her husband, I really don't think she thought that. Iran has been filmed loading missiles aboard some of its vessels. 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. '", 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. And he kept thinking, 'How am I going to portray this? You might say I am biased. Katharine Gun, a British former government employee, faced two years imprisonment in England for the crime of telling the truth. Do you go vote? So when, on the first Sunday of March, 2003, my leak appeared on the front page of The Observer newspaper, I was overcome with shock. After the leak was published, hundreds of staff inside the building were questioned in order to discover the identity of the whistleblower. Gavin Hood: And that really happened. I know what it is like to watch the system become completely authoritarian. Was the British government aware of it? I admitted the leak and my life was turned upside down. Much to the distress of our former partners in the Iran nuclear deal, Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the agreement and announced tougher sanctions. So here we are in rehearsal, and we're talking one day about the look. 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. She wasnt charged for eight months a gruelling period which is depicted as just a few Unfortunately, perhaps, I have a conscience and my dishonesty gnawed at me persistently until the next day, when I confessed. 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. Truth about Covid care home testing row: Timeline lays bare what was said, by who and when. "But the more I think about what happened, the more angry and frustrated I get about the fact that nobody acted on intelligence. Keira said no one knows Katharine, and that's not an insult to Katharine. What It Feels Liketo Survive a Chemical Attack. Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. David Dayen: How did you think Keira Knightley was an asset in showing that emotional journey throughout the movie? We have a blondish-looking Katharine. And in her case, she risked both her job and her freedom and whatever you think of her politically, I think that takes some guts. Where do you draw the line? His exact words to describe the intelligence method is, The goal of the intelligence is not the truth, but victory. That is a quote from Shulsky. Yet I do think Keira perfectly captures the strain I was under, the isolation and fear. [U.S. media dropped the story because the Drudge Report noted that the NSA memo in The Observer had British spellings for words like favourable, which nobody in the U.S. would write. Abandoned blue sleeping bag, tents and several wooden shelters are found in woodland close to where police Don't just stick to the Malbec! There it was spotted by Debs Paterson, director of the critically acclaimed Africa United, who met Katharine Gun last week with a view to making the film of her life. In technical speak, the Americans wanted the whole gamut of information which would give US policy makers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals in relation to Iraq. But I know some folks because of films I made like Eye in the Sky, and before that I made a film called Rendition. 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. 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. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images). The comments below have been moderated in advance. 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.". 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. 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. Jeb Bush Just Botched the Iraq Question. 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. If if wasnt, what does that mean for the rule of law? 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. For the Observer too, it was a story full of risks. And it's a tough profession in many ways. In one pivotal scene in the film, all of Gun and Bright's work is nearly undone by one mistake, as a member of The Observer team accidentally changed the American spelling of the memo into British spelling, something The Drudge Report then used to discredit the memo. What resonates to me is the somewhat more, I hope, timeless thing. Because I'm not ambitious it's not paramount for me to find myself in a high-paid job. His philosophy comes from a military intelligence model, which actually, by the time you go to war, now it's about winning. He is just way out there in a whole other realm. And I did the same for the journalists and the lawyers and everybody. Maybe that was naive, but she didn't think that. 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. Would you risk your job? When you support The American Prospect, youre supporting fellow readers who arent able to give, and countering the class system for information. 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. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. I was arrested for a breach of section one of the Official Secrets Act 1989 and held overnight in a cell in the basement of the Cheltenham Police headquarters. Katharine Gun, former intelligence specialist turned whistleblower, discusses the new film "Official Secrets" which details why she leaked a classified memo. But the Bush administration went to war anyway, using the pretext of weapons of mass destruction. I was glad to get back to what I hoped would be normality, but the effect on me had been traumatising. Times have often been tough, not least because of the itinerant life she has chosen for herself. What happened to Gun afterwards forms the basis of the film Official Secrets, which opened in New York and Los Angeles earlier this month and goes into wider release today. She made the point that if you have Helen Mirren playing the Queen or Meryl Streep playing Maggie Thatcher, everybody knows those people and your judged on how well you impersonate, if you will, those people. Today, I believe the Act serves as an illiberal, draconian piece of law, little more than a weapon of the state to deter any disclosure, no matter how much in the public interest it might be. Iran, of course, isn't interested in dealing with him. WebAnd they failed, in part, I believe, because Katharine Gun leaked that memo, Official Secrets director Gavin Hood told Democracy Now!. David Dayen is the Prospects executive editor. But George W. Bush did something that, thankfully, Trump hasnt pulled off yet: He took us to war. The editorial position should never be that. For me as a journalist who was really getting started around that time, this climate of fear that was in place in the United States and also in the UK. When my turn came, I entered a small side office, faced the security official and, putting on my best poker face, denied any involvement. As a result of the story the paper published 10 years ago this weekend, she was arrested, lost her job and faced trial under the Official Secrets Act. "But that's partly my own fault because I haven't aggressively pursued a career. Whistleblower and former employee of Britain's global surveillance center GCHQ (Government Communications Head Quarters) Katharine Gun smiles as she speaks to the media during a press conference February 25, 2004 in London, England. And Assange is the same. Im gratified, too, that the film shows the love and support my husband gave me throughout this ordeal. Gun sacrificed so much when she decided to leak and has worked only intermittently since. Supported by Liberty, the prominent British civil-rights campaigning organiza-tion, Gun and her lawyer, Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes), decided to cite grounds of necessity in order to contest the charges laid against her. When my moment came, I found myself standing alone in the dock facing the judge and surrounded by lawyers, journalists and supporters. What is this paper? By design. So, Im not really answering your question well, but her feeling was just: Now I dont belong in this company. Healthy mother-of-two, 32, collapsed and died from brain bleed while she led fitness bounce class. But the invasion was forced to proceed with the backing of Bushs coalition of the willinginstead of with the support of the United Nations. Who, one must ask, is provoking whom? 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. Exaggerating threats to provoke a war? It was like a neon sign that was flashing at me, Gun says. Maybe thats rewarding. Then the most almighty cacophony erupted, a roar so loud we could barely hear to speak. The decision to leak it was almost instant I felt I had no choice. Later, it turned out that the Attorney General had indeed judged the war to be illegal in his initial advice, but that fact was not revealed until six years later in 2010. "Financially it's the toughest," she said. WebHer husband, Yaar Gn, is a Turkish Kurd. Ed, the real Ed, is absolutely delightful. Please help keep the independent journalism of Common Dreams strong. She was charged She also opposed the pending war. We need another Katharine Gun. KatharineGun did not stop the war,but was it all entirely in vain? "I never aligned myself specifically with the anti-war movement. This, remember, was a conflict that caused the deaths of 179 British servicemen, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and caused countless more to suffer serious wounds, both physical and psychological. Gun, her husband, and their four-year-old daughter shed their coveted privacy long enough to allow Katharine to be one of two former Sam Adams Award winners to present this year's award. Guided by her conscience, Katharine Gun defied her government and leaked the memo to the press, setting off a chain of events that jeopardized her freedom, her safety, but also opened the door to putting the entire Iraq invasion on trial. Not good enough, the trio decided. Just occasionally I answered an advert in The Guardian newspaper for a translator. Neither my friends nor my family knew what I did all day. She had been following that war, as many of us had, for a year. Now the goal is not truth, it is victory. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. 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 are no longer accepting comments on this article. There were some audience questions as well. 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. Then the story went 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. Questioner: The only thing that I've wondered while watching the film, since it's a true story, is how could Ms. Gunn, who was a spy, who was a member of an intelligence agency, be surprised when her husband got deportedor when the government came after her husband, how could she be surprised when all of the different reactions she got came forward? To look at someone who I thought was quite accessible and ordinaryand she doesn't mind me saying this because Katharine is someone who keeps her head below and is quiet, and did something extraordinary. 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. A decade on, sitting in a cafe in Cheltenham, not far from GCHQ, I asked her if she still stood by what she had done. Following the incident, Gun struggled to find work that she Or at least, she could have been. Gun had, of course, been forced to abandon her career in the civil service The point of all of this is painfully obvious. So I said goodbye to my mom and moved to America. 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. At some point, as you probably know, Bush and Rumsfeld decided to bypass the CIA and take out that Office of Special Plans. The same countries demanded immediate answers from the British government about its involvement in the spying. That's really the simplest question: When do you speak up? As one of the journalists who broke the story, I feel a certain responsibility for how things have turned out. WebKatharine Gun (ne Harwood), 47, is married to Yasar Gn, a Turkish Kurd, with whom she has a 13-year old daughter. 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.". And that I think was the motivation. Gavin Hood: Keira is wonderful and is absolutely professional, arrives perfectly prepared, very calm, no fuss. Id immediately be transported back to GCHQ and that email the anger I felt and the decisions I made. Had the film appeared any earlier, however, I dont think Id have been able to watch it, let alone help the makers. Whether you work for Boeing or Enron or Wallstreet? ", "I think Gavin had a really difficult time telling this story because it doesn't fit into a normal sort of storytelling mode," said Gun. the waning support for public institutions today. A manufactured provocation. Katharine Gun, a shy and studious 28-year-old who spent her days listening in to obscure Chinese intercepts, decided to tell the world about a secret plan by the US government to spy on the United Nations. Theyre talking about diplomatic negotiations, and having all the cards on the table, but behind that what theyre doing is trying to bribe UN diplomatic members to vote for a war which has no legal justifications, Gun says. You have no idea. Was it because we had demanded the Attorney Generals legal advice as part of my defence? 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 issue is provocation. And I thought this is going to end in the worst civil war. So right there, you are pulling out the highlights," said Hood of the key issue with making Official Secrets. Then, the following Monday, I printed out a copy of the email, folded it up, and tucked it carefully in my bag. 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. At first, I heard nothing. Meanwhile, Kamal Ahmed, who is the guy at The Observer, is now the editorial director of the BBC. Our institutions matter. You took this job and didnt even know what it was. In fact, I had no idea what was going on. Can dementia be spotted in CHILDHOOD? But I do want to give her credit that I think I didn't do her justice enough in the moment that she leaked that memo; it changed so quickly to war that we don't really get a moment to absorb the fact that as a result of her leaking that memo, there was no vote at the UN Security Council. Because it was toughthe guy wouldnt print his stuff. She said, I thought that might be quite interesting and exciting. The email, which was sent by an American NSA official, suggested that the US was just as well aware that it couldnt earn UN support through valid arguments alone: The memo outlined a plan to bug diplomats from non-permanent UN Security Council Nations Chile, Pakistan, Bulgaria, Guinea, Angola, and Cameroon in search of intelligence that could be used to cajole and possibly even blackmail them into supporting the invasion. To this day, however, there has been barely a mention of the year I spent living under a cloud. Two hours later after this deep dive, I called Ged back and said, How come we dont know this story? I guess the answer to that is that her story was big news for the day, and then very quickly got crushed by a bigger story, which was the story of the invasion. 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. WebKatharine Gun was a young specialist working for Britains Government Communications Headquarters when she exposed a highly confidential memo that revealed the United The only thing that we altered in that is that I didnt have time to tell it for as long as it went on. David Dayen: So why do you think this is an important story to tell now in 2019? Her husband said its a job, its just a goddamn job, I work at a caf. As it was, a second UN resolution directly to authorise war against Iraq never materialised and air strikes began on 19 March 2003. "Obviously, we are compressing a story that took place in real life over a period of a year into two hours. So, that's where we had to go for WMD. They had published not some coded version of events, but the email itself in full. Actually, there were two incidents at sea, blamed originally on the North Vietnamese. Spoilers to follow as well. 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. So that's who's running this show. A translator for UK intelligence agency GCHQ, Gun read a brief from the US National Security Agency urging its British sister organisation to spy on members of the UN Security Council, to gain influence i n a vote "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.". And just coming from my perspective, the press, because a lot of this is a story about the press, and how they handle it. 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. By the way, I know some amazing people in the intelligence services. Or at least, she could have been. 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. Public attention is the last thing you expect if, like me, youd settled for a job in the shadowy world of British intelligence. The story went around the world and the leak electrified the international debate during the weeks of diplomatic deadlock. "On the one hand, she's free. Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). By printing off the memo, putting it in her handbag and taking it home, she was already committing a serious breach of the Official Secrets Act. He loves a battle, when it's done with words, boasts, and threats. She talks about having read all these books [about the war]. Ms Gun worked as a translator at the GCHQ building in Cheltenham, pictured. We all, in some ways, make these decisions. He runs a media charity. And then, she said when she got in therenow bear in mind that she still is bound by the Official Secrets Act. He really wouldnt; that scene in the movie really happened. Instead, the American coalition was forced to stake its claim to a legal invasion on grounds of self defense, including now-infamously untrue claims about weapons of mass destruction. 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 Taking Vitamin D each day could cut your chances of getting dementia, study claims. 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. So we start with hair, and then we start with glasses, and Keira says, "Gavin, what if I just was me?" Gun discusses her attempt to stop the Iraq War, which is the subject of the new movie Official Secrets. Again. For several years, just recalling the events would set my heart racing and my hands trembling. Thank you! Gun was followed, denied legal advice and her Turkish husband faced deportation. US firms waiting in the wings read to pump 'billions Parents' fury as schools STILL won't tell them if they are closed tomorrow as teacher strikes continue. 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. 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". That would be awkward. Sound familiar? You have the UN resolution, we're all doing this together to stop the genocide or something, or it's self-defense, we're going to be attacked, it's so clear we're going to be attacked that we have to take pre-emptive action. And the reason? On the other hand, she and Ben, to this day, feel they never got their day in court. Did that change your approach to presenting the film knowing that this was actually going to be somewhat of a surprise to people? 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. When I was a young law student, we studied the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights. An insider with courage. Gavin Hood: There is a kind of cognitive dissonance. It turned out a copyeditor at The Observer had run the memo through spellcheck before printing it.]. Thankfully, time passes and the intensity of feelings fades. And I think thats why you get this very honest, pure, deeply felt performance. You 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. 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. Keira calmly said: Oh, that was probably me. I still blush to the tips of my toes when I think about it. For all the relief, there was a weird sense of anti-climax that we would now be unable to give our side of the story to the public. It was what I was thinking, what I was feeling. But that shouldn't be the philosophy pre-war when you're trying to decide whether to go to war. Webdeport Guns husband, Yasar (Adam Bakri), a Muslim Kurdish Turk who was awaiting permanent leave to remain in the U.K. However, when her friends start being interrogated about the leak, Gun confesses to being the whistleblower, leading to her being arrested and taken to court for breaching the Official Secrets Act. Truth and accountability were drilled into me as a child. The paper had taken the controversial decision to back intervention in Iraq. In the years following, an author called Marcia Mitchell contacted me and said she was keen to write a book about my case. The other kind of fight could be frightening and politically risky. Progressive values. I was 27 when it all began. She's based (and born and raised) in Brooklyn, New York. Such a law is not compatible with openness, transparency, accountability and justice. Now, Trump says, he wants to see Iran back at the negotiating table. He said: "Very close. By the time the mid-eighties came around and I was a young law student, so Im looking at it from the side of the law, we had no right of access to lawyers in trial if you breached anything that was regarded as having to do with the emergency legislation. 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. Surely, after 16 years, we are entitled to have answers. Who authorised the NSA email, for example? Does your loyalty lie to your own conscious, does your loyalty lie to your marriage, does your loyalty lie to your government, does your loyalty lie to your country? You can look up Nicole Mowbray, she wrote an article in The Guardian a couple weeks ago, about this worst day of her life. Across the world, millions protested the invasion of Iraq, doing their own small parts to attempt to prevent the war. 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