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. The story of Katharine Gun, a whistle-blower who exposed NSA spying in the lead-up to the Iraq War, gets the Hollywood treatment. Sorry to digress. 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. Perhaps it was no wonder that Tony Blairs government decided to abandon the case without offering any evidence. Ive been impressed by the film-makers determination to stick to the facts Gavin Hood, the director, interviewed me at length over five days and I was consulted throughout the process. Where do you draw the line? However, Gun was well aware that any attempt to release the memo would find her running afoul of Britains Official Secrets Act, which criminalizes the leaking of intelligence-related information. If I was writing this as fiction, I need a much longer court case, right? She's based (and born and raised) in Brooklyn, New York. ", Keira Knightley and Katharine Gun at the London premiere of "Official Secrets. Gun sacrificed so much when she decided to leak and has worked only intermittently since. What is this paper? On the other hand, she and Ben, to this day, feel they never got their day in court. 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 she said, I dont work for the government. That was my first thoughtwhat do you mean you dont work for the government? Feel free to republish and share widely. Or, in this case, when the Office of Special Plans was set up, youve got Feith and someone like Abram Shulsky, whose philosophy of intelligence is very different. If the email did reach the newspapers, I reasoned, there would be no more than a discreet summary. I answered an advert in The Guardian newspaper for a translator. As it was, a second UN resolution directly to authorise war against Iraq never materialised and air strikes began on 19 March 2003. Yet here was a story that had the capacity to derail the war altogether. I was glad to get back to what I hoped would be normality, but the effect on me had been traumatising. Abandoned blue sleeping bag, tents and several wooden shelters are found in woodland close to where police Don't just stick to the Malbec! You might say I am biased. Then, the following Monday, I printed out a copy of the email, folded it up, and tucked it carefully in my bag. It left me in an impossible predicament. 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. Gavin Hood: After the spellcheck. Ms Gun worked as a translator at the GCHQ building in Cheltenham, pictured. Quality journalism. This and her other writings about intelligence issues have been critically acclaimed. Do you go vote? Is this a matter of threatening to launch a war, or is it a matter of responding to the US positioning itself for war? Ed, I know some people have said that Rhys Ifans [who plays Vulliamy] is slightly over the top. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Jeb Bush Just Botched the Iraq Question. One is kind of what I thought it was, which is the CIA is the Central Intelligence Agency, walled off from politicians and the executive in a perfect world, where all the intelligence comes in, they analyze it and they then present their best intelligence estimates; this is pre-war, youre not at war, to the executive branch. America, Britain, and Spain withdrew their proposed resolution on invading Iraq when it became clear that it would not garner the necessary Security Council votes, in part because of the information Gun brought to light. Keira said no one knows Katharine, and that's not an insult to Katharine. 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. The spin in this country and in the UK was the threat of deadly weapons ready to be deployed by Saddam. 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. It is probably still too early to tell. To separate fact from fiction, Newsweek spoke to the real Gun and Bright, as well as Official Secrets director Gavin Hood. Gavin Hood: And that really happened. Rishi Sunak is urgently reviewing his private exchanges with Matt Hancock after bombshell leak of ex-Health 'Drinks cold in fridge at DH!' His philosophy comes from a military intelligence model, which actually, by the time you go to war, now it's about winning. Now someone else may beI don't know if I could hack people's phones and computers, personally. "You get to the end, and there's this court case. 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. We had planned to demand that the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith disclose the advice he had given on the legality of the war and so put the war itself on trial. 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. 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. So here we are in rehearsal, and we're talking one day about the look. We need a truth-sayer. 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. Taking Vitamin D each day could cut your chances of getting dementia, study claims. So, I guess we all have a threshold. 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. "Financially it's the toughest," she said. 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. At first, I heard nothing. 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.". 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. According to the Guardian, WebThe Katharine Gun Case. Instead, the American coalition was Whether you work for Boeing or Enron or Wallstreet? It was both exhilarating and just a little uncomfortable. Meanwhile, Kamal Ahmed, who is the guy at The Observer, is now the editorial director of the BBC. Twenty-eight, pretty naive. It turned out a copyeditor at The Observer had run the memo through spellcheck before printing it.]. 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. However, Gun added that this was nothing on the anxiety she felt when the memo she had leaked ended up on the front page of The Observer, which she called "the most stressful memo of my life. Who spoke to the homeland secretary? Just occasionally Then the story went The decision to leak it was almost instant I felt I had no choice. 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. We have a blondish-looking Katharine. Despite the risk of a harsher sentence, I decided to plead not guilty because I felt strongly that my actions had been intended to prevent the unnecessary loss of life in an illegal war. David Dayen is the Prospects executive editor. Thank you! That seems like the central undercurrent that is playing throughout the entire film. British Secret Service Officer Katharine, then a young bride, risked everything to leak details of the Bush-Blair plan to coerce (possibly blackmail) members of the UN Security Council in order to win their votes to legalize invading Iraq. To tell too much more of the story would spoil the film, but one part of its ending is clear. Im gratified, too, that the film shows the love and support my husband gave me throughout this ordeal. Seven times I've submitted articles to you with an alternate point of view, and seven times you've turned me down. But there's no way I would have expressed that to any of my colleagues," Gun explained. So thats how the scene happened, but she didnt know where he was for three days, he was at Harmonsworth, before she got him out. Who knows whether they would've bent those other nations to vote for a resolution. It's tough, the laws here are even stricter than in the UK. David Dayen: The first thing I thought about when looking at this movie is that in most recent historical epics, the audience knows what's happening next. Most whistleblowers leak after the event to expose perceived wrongdoing. "Still no regrets," she said. This is not to say that Iran does not have a trick up its sleeve, or that wild-eyed Iranian hawks aren't circling its leaders. 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. Right now my priorities are to ensure I am there for my daughter.". David Dayen: No problem. They had published not some coded version of events, but the email itself in full. We may earn a commission from these links. By design. An insider with courage. And then, she said when she got in therenow bear in mind that she still is bound by the Official Secrets Act. Naturally, I was discreet. WebAttempts were made by the authorities to deport her husband, who grew disillusioned with Britain. Not the truth, but the war. Unfortunately. It is to say that we need to know the truth behind the decisions to act or not to act. WebIn 2003, Katharine Gun exposed a plot by U.S. security officials to spy on United Nations members as they ramped up pressure to secure a resolution to go to war with Iraq, and The team of hawks circling George Bush had long wanted to take out Saddam Hussein, as did Bush. The story went around the world and the leak electrified the international debate during the weeks of diplomatic deadlock. 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. Truth and accountability were drilled into me as a child. Its Straussian, over the top and pretentious but basically amounts to this. Americans find it hard to believe that it could happen, but it happens, it happens fast. That kind of propaganda has to stop. After the charges against her were dropped in 2004, she found it difficult to find a new 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. 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. But my point is simply this: The underpinnings of this country matter. "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.". It was only later in the green room that I asked what all the fuss had been about, wondering aloud if it had been the environmental protest group Extinction Rebellion. She wasnt planning to get caught and then the dilemma was, My friends are all going to have their lives ruined.. Sound familiar? Katharine Gun, a British former government employee, faced two years imprisonment in England for the crime of telling the truth. As I walked down the red carpet, I had never in my life experienced the flash of so many cameras. Weve said it before: The greatest threat to democracy from the media isnt disinformation, its the paywall. Keira calmly said: Oh, that was probably me. I still blush to the tips of my toes when I think about it. She talks about having read all these books [about the war]. As opposed to trying to be Katharine Gun. There's an obvious scene of the immigration deportation. 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. Ed, the real Ed, is absolutely delightful. Then, the following November, after eight months of worry, I was finally charged. WebGun was followed, denied legal advice and her Turkish husband faced deportation. Public attention is the last thing you expect if, like me, youd settled for a job in the shadowy world of British intelligence. Gun disclosed details of the spying operation as it was happening to stop something she viewed as terrible happening in the future. 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. Some of those same birds are still flapping wings in the skies above Washington. In real life, "the spellcheck largely happened through a series of phone calls," according to Bright, "because on a Sunday newspaper we don't work on a Sunday, and we don't work on a Monday. 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. 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 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. If it was, who cleared it to be passed to GCHQ? Never mind that invading another country for the purpose of regime change is illegal according to international laws to which the United States is a signatory. The same countries demanded immediate answers from the British government about its involvement in the spying. 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. 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. 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. "But the more I think about what happened, the more angry and frustrated I get about the fact that nobody acted on intelligence. "Obviously, we are compressing a story that took place in real life over a period of a year into two hours. 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.". Her husband said its a job, its just a goddamn job, I work at a caf. Official Secrets Trailer #1 (2019) | Movieclips Trailers, Imagine Donald Trump Running an Actual War. 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.". It almost started with, well, would I have the courage to do what she did in another setting maybe? .css-gk9meg{display:block;font-family:Lausanne,Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;padding-top:0.25rem;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-gk9meg:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.15;margin-bottom:0.25rem;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0.625rem;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 73.75rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}Facts You Didn't Know About That '70s Show, The Cast of 'The Mandalorian' in Real Life, The Hilarious Reason Why Chris Pine Cut His Hair, 'The Mandalorian' Season 3, Episode 1 Recap, Chris Pine Tells All About Harry Styles SpitGate, 15 Books Chris Pine Thinks Everyone Should Read, Your Guide to Every One of Justin Biebers Tattoos, Movie Sequels That Are Better Than the Original. Gavin Hood: There is a kind of cognitive dissonance. Sixteen years ago, I became headline news after I leaked an internal email from GCHQ, the communications intelligence gathering centre near Cheltenham. Who, one must ask, is provoking whom? I got that from Yasar. 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. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images). For the future, I hope the film will help locate the missing pieces from the story. Yet I do think Keira perfectly captures the strain I was under, the isolation and fear. Most directly, it bolstered opposition to the US position from Chilean and Mexican diplomats weary of American "dirty tricks". 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. In the runup to the critical vote on war in Iraq, Katharine Gun exposed a US plot to spy on the UN. 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. Unfortunately, perhaps, I have a conscience and my dishonesty gnawed at me persistently until the next day, when I confessed. Or at least, she could have been. ", 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. 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. So we start with hair, and then we start with glasses, and Keira says, "Gavin, what if I just was me?" So that's who's running this show. Perhaps a plane painted in UN colors could be shot down over Iraq. 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. It was what I was thinking, what I was feeling. Such a law is not compatible with openness, transparency, accountability and justice. 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. It gives me an interesting pause. The memo from Frank Koza, chief of staff at the "regional targets" section of the National Security Agency, GCHQ's sister organisation in the US, remains shocking in its implications for British sovereignty. Amazing lady, shes still a journalist. What do you think resonates? When do the clocks change in 2023? Provocation? So WMD may not have been as important, had they gotten that resolution. 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