After the charges against her were dropped in 2004, she found it difficult to find a new But George W. Bush did something that, thankfully, Trump hasnt pulled off yet: He took us to war. She had been following that war, as many of us had, for a year. 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 Problem number two: Do you shut up or do you speak up? She failed. 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). So, she began to feel uncomfortable in the work she was doing at that point. But the invasion was forced to proceed with the backing of Bushs coalition of the willinginstead of with the support of the United Nations. So it was a pretty awful thing to happen to her. I didnt know until I looked really deeply into this that theres really two schools of thought. 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. 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. And it was this book which eventually became the script for Official Secrets. Anyway, the Office of Special Plans and Abram Shulsky make an interesting Wikipedia read, it won't take you very long. What do I do? And that was my way in. I was suddenly free and bewildered. Gavin Hood: After the spellcheck. I got that from Yasar. And I did the same for the journalists and the lawyers and everybody. 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. You can look up Nicole Mowbray, she wrote an article in The Guardian a couple weeks ago, about this worst day of her life. Can dementia be spotted in CHILDHOOD? That's really the simplest question: When do you speak up? 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. WebKatharine Gun was a young specialist working for Britains Government Communications Headquarters when she exposed a highly confidential memo that revealed the United 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. 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. But she said she would still be prepared to give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. In the runup to the critical vote on war in Iraq, Katharine Gun exposed a US plot to spy on the UN. And isnt it also time to re-examine the Official Secrets Act? That kind of propaganda has to stop. "I never aligned myself specifically with the anti-war movement. The poor woman is based on a real person. She talks about having read all these books [about the war]. Since 2003, my life and Gun's have continued to cross from time to time. 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. Not the truth, but the war. I was called on to look this way and that and smile until my face was stiff. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images). She wasnt planning to get caught and then the dilemma was, My friends are all going to have their lives ruined.. When my turn came, I entered a small side office, faced the security official and, putting on my best poker face, denied any involvement. Neither my friends nor my family knew what I did all day. The British are quite British, you know. Hundreds of thousands were killed. 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. Abandoned blue sleeping bag, tents and several wooden shelters are found in woodland close to where police Don't just stick to the Malbec! 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. So here we are in rehearsal, and we're talking one day about the look. Well, you don't have one and get that almost anti-climactic moment that is a punch in the gut," said Hood. Naturally, I was discreet. I believe that all of this should have been formally acknowledged as part of the history of the second Gulf War. The spin in this country and in the UK was the threat of deadly weapons ready to be deployed by Saddam. ", Keira Knightley and Katharine Gun at the London premiere of "Official Secrets. She leaked a memo, she thought she'd get away with it, and she faced another one of these little moral dilemmas which was a few days later all her friends were being interrogated. 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. 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. ", As for her own story, she recognises that 10 years on it scarcely registers with the public. If we give over, if we start believing the fake news, as you say, we're all doomed, man. 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. Then the most almighty cacophony erupted, a roar so loud we could barely hear to speak. 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. 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. "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. As I walked down the red carpet, I had never in my life experienced the flash of so many cameras. Martin Bright, who is in the movie very briefly I guess, is no longer in journalism as I understand it. None of the Government reports into the war acknowledged it, nor did the history books. 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. She said, I worry what's going to happen, they'll go, Ooh, I don't know if I like Keira Knightly in blonde hair, what's she done to her nose, does she have glasses on? Because they don't have a comparison to make, until you see her at the end of the movie. 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. And I thought this is going to end in the worst civil war. ", Speaking to Gun, and seeing her in archival footage at the end of the film, it is clear that Knightley didn't try to emulate the look or sound of the real-life Gun. After the initial flurry of media interest, I was left to figure out how to move on with my life and that proved hard. Such a law is not compatible with openness, transparency, accountability and justice. It's a fascinating film that really evokes the dangers of speaking out in the post-9/11 age, as well as the press's inability to challenge the official story on Iraq, particularly the U.S. press, which really just blacked out the Gun leak entirely. Please, become a member, or make a one-time donation, today. It left me in an impossible predicament. That seems like the central undercurrent that is playing throughout the entire film. It's tough, the laws here are even stricter than in the UK. My shock turned to anger as the significance sank in. Even though she didn't stop the war and some people are like what's the point if she didn't stop the warwell, the point is how do you sleep at night? We even got as far as the Old Bailey. Chile and Mexico and the other smaller countries were so outraged that they refused to even bring it to a vote. She said to me, Gavin, I had no problem doing the work that involved a lot of listening in, in order to give information about trade negotiations, to give our country the advantage of trade negotiations when they go. Gavin Hood: There is a kind of cognitive dissonance. By the time Gun and around 100 of her colleagues received the emailed memo that would change her life, she had already come to the conclusion that the arguments for war with Iraq were not really valid arguments, she tells me. And it's also true that we were then attacked by the Drudge Report for what would now be called 'fake news. I am an American citizen; I have a strange accent but Ive been here 25 years; my kids were born here. 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. And Assange is the same. "On the one hand, she's free. WebGun was followed, denied legal advice and her Turkish husband faced deportation. The editorial position should never be that. 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. By Katharine Gun, Gchq Whistleblower For The Mail On Sunday, Published: 22:33 GMT, 26 October 2019 | Updated: 16:47 GMT, 8 November 2019. Look at what happened to Reality Winner in this country. 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