Public attention is the last thing you expect if, like me, youd settled for a job in the shadowy world of British intelligence. 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. This is my second brief moment of fame. 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. 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 I didn't plan to have this movie out today and know what was going to be going on. But any such illusions were shattered on the freezing cold morning of Friday, January 31, 2003, as I read and re-read the most extraordinary email from Americas intelligence service, the National Security Agency. So, that's where we had to go for WMD. The email was demonstrating the depths to which the American and British governments would descend in order to get spurious legal cover for a war in the Middle East which would have utterly catastrophic consequences, as we know to our cost today. They had published not some coded version of events, but the email itself in full. 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 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. ", 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. 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. It was written in technical language, but the meaning was clear enough: the Americans were asking around 100 people in GCHQ to gather information from the communications made by diplomats from six nations Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea and Pakistan all which were then sitting on the United Nations Security Council. 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? And it was there that, to our amazement and totally without warning, the CPS dropped the charges before the trial had even started. WebKeira Knightley stars in this true story about Katharine Gun, a British intelligence officer who exposed the US government's efforts to force the UN Security Council to sanction the Would you risk your job? David Dayen: I want to go to the questions now. You work for the government. 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. Feel free to republish and share widely. Gavin Hood: Hes not in journalism. We need a truth-sayer. 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. You dont have to agree with what she did, Im just telling you what she did. Last week in Los Angeles, I got to interview the director, South African-born Gavin Hood, after a screening. 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. That would be awkward. Which really, really, really happened. Do you vote, do you analyze who you should vote for or do you just take it for granted? Or at least, she could have been. David Dayen: Just the notion that the paper would say, we're for the war, that was their editorial position. 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. 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. Now someone else may beI don't know if I could hack people's phones and computers, personally. '", 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. His most recent book is Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.. The movie tells the story of Katharine Gun (played by Keira Knightley), a translator with the U.K.'s GCHQ who, in 2003, leaked top secret documents to journalist Martin Bright (Matt Smith) that revealed that the American government's plans to apply pressure on members of the U.N. Security Counsel to pass its war resolution. 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. I got that from Yasar. And they failed, in part, I believe, because Katharine Gun leaked that memo, Official Secrets director Gavin Hood told Democracy Now!. 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." Truth and accountability were drilled into me as a child. 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. [In real life] I saw the email, I immediately thought, 'Oh, my God, this is shocking.' Six months later they released Nelson Mandela. Naturally, I was discreet. [Gun was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act in Britain, but ultimately the case never went to trial.]. Gun was visiting friends and family in Cheltenham when I talked to her, with the strain obvious on her face but still looking much younger than her 38 years. Please, become a member, or make a one-time donation, today. WebKatharine Gun, as passionately embodied here by Knightley, skews too noble to be particularly interesting, and the film is weakest when its focused on her and her husband So thank you for being here, it means a lot. "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. And she said, I dont work for the government. That was my first thoughtwhat do you mean you dont work for the government? 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? Rishi Sunak is urgently reviewing his private exchanges with Matt Hancock after bombshell leak of ex-Health 'Drinks cold in fridge at DH!' It's tough, the laws here are even stricter than in the UK. Sixteen years ago, I became headline news after I leaked an internal email from GCHQ, the communications intelligence gathering centre near Cheltenham. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. And for her, this was too much. I didnt know the story and I googled her. 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. I even thought, naively, Id be able to keep my anonymity. You took this job and didnt even know what it was. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. WebThe Katharine Gun Case. 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. It almost started with, well, would I have the courage to do what she did in another setting maybe? And I thought: this is good. But, did it change the way I approached it? Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Where do you draw the line? Anyway, the Office of Special Plans and Abram Shulsky make an interesting Wikipedia read, it won't take you very long. But George W. Bush did something that, thankfully, Trump hasnt pulled off yet: He took us to war. 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. As the title of the film script suggests, she was "The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War". The risks Gun took in revealing the UN email's existence were huge. But I know some folks because of films I made like Eye in the Sky, and before that I made a film called Rendition. Over the weekend, I got to work. But, maybe if I didn't know and maybe if I went into that job and discovered oh my God, maybe I really can stop a terrorist attack today. He is just way out there in a whole other realm. Spoilers to follow as well. I never thought Id be choosing a dress for a red carpet appearance at a major film festival. None of the Government reports into the war acknowledged it, nor did the history books. I could put a lens on, and now my job is, this actress is doing great work, lets not get tricky, lets just get the audience into her eyes so that you could see those cogs moving. What might, IKeira Knightley, feel if I'm sitting at my desk and this happened to me?" WebKatharine Gun was a young specialist working for Britains Government Communications Headquarters when she exposed a highly confidential memo that revealed the United 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. 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. Gun had hoped the leak would prick the conscience of the British public, large sections of which were already taking to the streets in opposition to the war. Progressive values. Then, we all started watching the invasion and we werent how we got into the war. And it's not an easy question, it sounds easy, but I don't think it is. What did you think was going to happen? 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. Official Secrets Trailer #1 (2019) | Movieclips Trailers, Imagine Donald Trump Running an Actual War. Jeb Bush Just Botched the Iraq Question. This, despite credible evidence that Iran was in full compliance with terms of the agreement. Who, one must ask, is provoking whom? Donald Trump also is saying he doesn't want war, which is probably true. "You get to the end, and there's this court case. She went to this interview, the next minute were down this rabbit hole, the next minute my wifes telling the world. For several years, just recalling the events would set my heart racing and my hands trembling. As a result, there never was any second UN resolution. 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. She said, I thought that might be quite interesting and exciting. And she thought she wouldnt get caught. There were some audience questions as well. David Dayen: As someone who works on a magazine, it's the ultimate copyediting failure. 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. 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. 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. 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. Did that change your approach to presenting the film knowing that this was actually going to be somewhat of a surprise to people? "But the more I think about what happened, the more angry and frustrated I get about the fact that nobody acted on intelligence. 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. I had, of course, signed the Official Secrets Act, content in the knowledge I was working within the law for Britains protection. 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. So she went along to this interview, and she was 28. Yet here was a story that had the capacity to derail the war altogether. The world hole, the laws here are even stricter than in the.... 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