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. I answered an advert in The Guardian newspaper for a translator. We need another Katharine Gun. 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. It's tough, the laws here are even stricter than in the UK. I spent the following hours doubled over the toilet bowl in absolute terror. Gun made the choice to leak the document, which Martin Bright of The Observer in Britain published in a story on March 2, 2003. 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. We all, in some ways, make these decisions. This was her first or second week at the paper. 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. And it's also true that we were then attacked by the Drudge Report for what would now be called 'fake news. But my point is simply this: The underpinnings of this country matter. 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. 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. 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. 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. It was like a neon sign that was flashing at me, Gun says. By design. Unfortunately, perhaps, I have a conscience and my dishonesty gnawed at me persistently until the next day, when I confessed. 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.". And for her, this was too much. Gavin Hood: And that really happened. And that's quite a depressing place to find yourself in when you feel so strongly and passionately about something. 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. "I think part of the reason Gavin included it was just to kind of share that thought process.". You dont have to agree with what she did, Im just telling you what she did. The legal case against Gun was eventually dropped by the British government in 2004, after her lawyer, Ben Emmerson QC (played in the film with fabulous charisma by Ralph Fiennes), threatened to use disclosure to put the legal basis of the war itself on trial. David Dayen: As someone who works on a magazine, it's the ultimate copyediting failure. 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. It is probably still too early to tell. What It Feels Liketo Survive a Chemical Attack. We started working on this three years ago and even then it felt relevant in the sense that the challenges we talked about earlier: Where does my loyalty lie? Interestingly I think we faced a challenge, which some of you may or may not agree with. I believe that all of this should have been formally acknowledged as part of the history of the second Gulf War. It was both exhilarating and just a little uncomfortable. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. I even thought, naively, Id be able to keep my anonymity. WebAttempts were made by the authorities to deport her husband, who grew disillusioned with Britain. David Dayen: Just the notion that the paper would say, we're for the war, that was their editorial position. This, despite credible evidence that Iran was in full compliance with terms of the agreement. 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. What do I do? And that was my way in. 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. Me, you, not some big picture. It almost started with, well, would I have the courage to do what she did in another setting maybe? So, Im not really answering your question well, but her feeling was just: Now I dont belong in this company. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. In leaking it to the Observer, she was also doing something unprecedented in the history of espionage. 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. Or at least, she could have been. I sensed a slight flash of anger as she said: "It's not even a footnote in the history of Iraq." David Dayen: But he is not a headline journalist at a newspaper. So there is sometimes a thought in my head that says: What if Katharine hadn't leaked that memo? The team of hawks circling George Bush had long wanted to take out Saddam Hussein, as did Bush. You can look up Nicole Mowbray, she wrote an article in The Guardian a couple weeks ago, about this worst day of her life. I was called on to look this way and that and smile until my face was stiff. 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. 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. 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. Official Secrets Trailer #1 (2019) | Movieclips Trailers, Imagine Donald Trump Running an Actual War. If Keira Knightleys remarkable performance in Official Secrets can help change that, the film will truly have been worthwhile. Ten years ago, a young Mandarin specialist at GCHQ, the government's surveillance centre in Cheltenham, did something extraordinary. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images). 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, Don't mention the Iraq war, William Hague tells cabinet, Tenyears on, the case for invading Iraq is still valid, Occupying Iraq: a US army veteran's ambivalence, Howthe Bush administration sold the war and we bought it, the story the paper published 10 years ago this weekend, was arrested, lost her job and faced trial under the Official Secrets Act, collapsed after the prosecution withdrew its evidence. 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 Was the British government aware of it? Ive already lost a dear friend, and I cant do thisget called up two months of the year, every year, for the next 12 years. 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. 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. She went to this interview, the next minute were down this rabbit hole, the next minute my wifes telling the world. 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 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. 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. The case and the resulting anxiety never seemed far away. Whether you work for Boeing or Enron or Wallstreet? 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 said, I was naive. Because I'm not ambitious it's not paramount for me to find myself in a high-paid job. They had published not some coded version of events, but the email itself in full. 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. Gavin Hood: I asked her the same questions, and on about my second day interviewing her, I said to her, because I wasnt sure if I should make the movie; I mean, I needed to know whose story I was telling and if she was batshit crazy. "On the one hand, she's free. Hundreds of thousands were killed. "But that's partly my own fault because I haven't aggressively pursued a career. You see it most vividly in that scene where everybody stops calling Martin Bright, or they start canceling all the interviews. But she said she would still be prepared to give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. [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.]. In the matter of a few years. 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 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 It left me in an impossible predicament. Its Straussian, over the top and pretentious but basically amounts to this. We were to target such things as phone calls and emails from their homes as well as their places of work. However, her husband and the father of her daughters name is Yasar Gun. It turned out a copyeditor at The Observer had run the memo through spellcheck before printing it.]. You might say I am biased. 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. Look at what happened to Reality Winner in this country. Her husband said its a job, its just a goddamn job, I work at a caf. We may earn a commission from these links. To tell too much more of the story would spoil the film, but one part of its ending is clear. Right: Entertainment One, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. The story of Katharine Gun, a whistle-blower who exposed NSA spying in the lead-up to the Iraq War, gets the Hollywood treatment. Exaggerating threats to provoke a war? After the charges against her were dropped in 2004, she found it difficult to find a new And isnt it also time to re-examine the Official Secrets Act? We typically, in the movie business, ever since Joseph Campbell wrote The Hero of A Thousand Facesand Im not meaning to be sarcastic because thats a great piece of work, but it spoiled the idea that every development executive is reading these books because the hero we meet and then something upsets their world and the antagonist that must equal the hero, and eventually we go through these loops and the hero triumphs in the end. If there had been a UN resolution, there would have been no need to make a WMD argument because there are two legal ways to go to war. Its had far reaching and very negative impacts in all aspects of our institutions and our public life," Gun says. At first, I heard nothing. The days and weeks dragged agonisingly by. I didn't plan to have this movie out today and know what was going to be going on. Then, the world is safer until the sequel when it all happens again. Weve said it before: The greatest threat to democracy from the media isnt disinformation, its the paywall. 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. Sixteen years ago, I became headline news after I leaked an internal email from GCHQ, the communications intelligence gathering centre near Cheltenham. As of 2020 Gun lives in Turkey and Britain. He is just way out there in a whole other realm. 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. As a film of her story is planned, she tells of her anger and frustration but not her regrets, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Katharine Gun back in Cheltenham last week: 'This is the ugly truth of what goes on.' President Bush visits the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, January 25, 2006. We need a truth-sayer. ", Bright noted that apart from some small flourishes to heighten the drama, he didn't think Official Secrets had "any genuine liberties taken with the truth. Can dementia be spotted in CHILDHOOD? This whole intelligence didn't match what the politicians were saying. 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." 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. 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. Would you risk your job? 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. 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. Yet here was a story that had the capacity to derail the war altogether. So here we are in rehearsal, and we're talking one day about the look. 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. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. Gun disclosed details of the spying operation as it was happening to stop something she viewed as terrible happening in the future. His philosophy comes from a military intelligence model, which actually, by the time you go to war, now it's about winning. Happy and carefree, Id recently married my handsome husband and was working at GCHQ as a linguist. To separate fact from fiction, Newsweek spoke to the real Gun and Bright, as well as Official Secrets director Gavin Hood. 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. 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