So right there, you are pulling out the highlights," said Hood of the key issue with making Official Secrets. You dont have to agree with what she did, Im just telling you what she did. 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. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Then, the following November, after eight months of worry, I was finally charged. President Bush visits the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, January 25, 2006. Iran has been filmed loading missiles aboard some of its vessels. 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.' 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. [Ahmed is depicted in the film as strongly pro-war, resistant to running stories that conflict with his opinion.]. 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. She failed. Hood said that this was a purposeful choice by Knightley. This and her other writings about intelligence issues have been critically acclaimed. 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. And I thought this is going to end in the worst civil war. We all, in some ways, make these decisions. The British are quite British, you know. 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. Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). She said, I thought that might be quite interesting and exciting. 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. 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? Throughout her own court case, whatonly a few knew wasthat she was also fighting for the right of her husband, who is from Turkey, to remain in the UK. Spoilers to follow as well. We even got as far as the Old Bailey. WebKatharine Gun wasn't looking for attention or any type of notoriety when in 2003, while working as a British intelligence specialist, she leaked a top secret memo. The editorial position should never be that. 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. Warning: The following contains spoilers for Official Secrets. WebGun was followed, denied legal advice and her Turkish husband faced deportation. Sixteen years ago, I became headline news after I leaked an internal email from GCHQ, the communications intelligence gathering centre near Cheltenham. In leaking it to the Observer, she was also doing something unprecedented in the history of espionage. He really wouldnt; that scene in the movie really happened. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The invasion was a huge blow, says Gun. It was both exhilarating and just a little uncomfortable. 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. Right now my priorities are to ensure I am there for my daughter.". Then, the following Monday, I printed out a copy of the email, folded it up, and tucked it carefully in my bag. 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. Is this a matter of threatening to launch a war, or is it a matter of responding to the US positioning itself for war? It is probably still too early to tell. 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. Anyway, the Office of Special Plans and Abram Shulsky make an interesting Wikipedia read, it won't take you very long. Amazing lady, shes still a journalist. If the email did reach the newspapers, I reasoned, there would be no more than a discreet summary. Abandoned blue sleeping bag, tents and several wooden shelters are found in woodland close to where police Don't just stick to the Malbec! 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 Perhaps they knew it would come out in the courtroom that the entire conflict was based on lies about Saddams weapons of mass destruction and that key UN officials could have been blackmailed. Would you risk your job? I got that from Yasar. This meant that a lot of the things that we see Gun go through in the film actually took far longer in real life. The risks Gun took in revealing the UN email's existence were huge. Gavin Hood: After the spellcheck. And then, she said when she got in therenow bear in mind that she still is bound by the Official Secrets Act. The decision to leak it was almost instant I felt I had no choice. Perhaps a plane painted in UN colors could be shot down over Iraq. Gun had, of course, been forced to abandon her career in the civil service ", The real Martin Bright (left), as played by Matt Smith (right) in "Official Secrets. 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. We have a blondish-looking Katharine. Across the world, millions protested the invasion of Iraq, doing their own small parts to attempt to prevent the war. Keira calmly said: Oh, that was probably me. I still blush to the tips of my toes when I think about it. 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. And the reason? Such a law is not compatible with openness, transparency, accountability and justice. So I said goodbye to my mom and moved to America. And he kept thinking, 'How am I going to portray this? What do you think resonates? Just occasionally So that's who's running this show. Ed, the real Ed, is absolutely delightful. 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. 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. There's an obvious scene of the immigration deportation. As Bright noted, however, what we see in the movie is close to the real events. The same countries demanded immediate answers from the British government about its involvement in the spying. Do you vote, do you analyze who you should vote for or do you just take it for granted? "We started wondering whether we should do the blonde hair and the glasses and wondering about prosthetics, but one point Keira said to me, 'You know, the last thing I want is the audience to say, 'Oh, I don't know if I like her blonde,'" said Hood. "Financially it's the toughest," she said. Gun, a translator with the British intelligence service known as Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), received a document just before the war from an NSA manager, seeking British intelligence support in spying on members of the UN Security Council, to effectively blackmail them into voting for a second resolution that would make legal the invasion of Iraq. Give today. Yet I do think Keira perfectly captures the strain I was under, the isolation and fear. David Dayen: So why do you think this is an important story to tell now in 2019? ", As for her own story, she recognises that 10 years on it scarcely registers with the public. Whether you work for Boeing or Enron or Wallstreet? [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. 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. Powerful Commons committee could look at case for banning stoves in towns and Love Island hit by hundreds of Ofcom complaints from furious viewers over 'toxic femininity' row and Movie As easy as buying a loaf of bread: Undercover footage reveals how laughing gas is being sold from local Could Northern Ireland become the UK's Silicon Valley? Gun made the choice to leak the document, which Martin Bright of The Observer in Britain published in a story on March 2, 2003. 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. 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 the Bush administration went to war anyway, using the pretext of weapons of mass destruction. And for her, this was too much. 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. By design. And it's a tough profession in many ways. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images). Moment fitness influencer asks man to move off park bench 'because he's 'ruining her livestream' - but Mortgage demand plummets to a 28-year low as average interest rates hit 6.71% - just as spring home buying Britain braces for brutal -9C Arctic snap: Met Office warns more snow and ice could lash the country next Is YOUR wood burner at risk? 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.". Healthy mother-of-two, 32, collapsed and died from brain bleed while she led fitness bounce class. 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. Please, become a member, or make a one-time donation, today. 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). Id never seen anything like it. 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.". 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. 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. I was only a junior analyst, but I knew the email was outrageous: the American government was asking Britain to spy on United Nations diplomats so they could be blackmailed into supporting an invasion of Iraq. And isnt it also time to re-examine the Official Secrets Act? 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. 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. So it was a pretty awful thing to happen to her. "I think part of the reason Gavin included it was just to kind of share that thought process.". However, her husband and the father of her daughters name is Yasar Gun. In fact, I had no idea what was going on. So there is sometimes a thought in my head that says: What if Katharine hadn't leaked that memo? But this specificinstance is the ugly truth of what goes on.". It was like a neon sign that was flashing at me, Gun says. 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. EXCLUSIVE: Lanzarote sticks to its guns and insists it WILL limit tourists and move away from relying on Jeremy Clarkson is axed as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? So, Im not really answering your question well, but her feeling was just: Now I dont belong in this company. [In the movie, Gun says I dont work for the government, I work for the people.]. She wasnt planning to get caught and then the dilemma was, My friends are all going to have their lives ruined.. Gun disclosed details of the spying operation as it was happening to stop something she viewed as terrible happening in the future. Now, Trump says, he wants to see Iran back at the negotiating table. It was what I was thinking, what I was feeling. Or at least, she could have been. He runs a media charity. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. 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. And just coming from my perspective, the press, because a lot of this is a story about the press, and how they handle it. At first, I heard nothing. The other was Coleen Rowley, former FBI special agent and counsel at the Minneapolis bureau, who blew the whistle on FBI and other shortcomings The team of hawks circling George Bush had long wanted to take out Saddam Hussein, as did Bush. Right: Entertainment One, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. ", Hood added: "You know, to this day, I mean, the real journalistic question is, who would like to go and really press Lord Goldsmith and Ken McDonald for the reasons why they really dropped their case? 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. 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". When my turn came, I entered a small side office, faced the security official and, putting on my best poker face, denied any involvement. WebAnd they failed, in part, I believe, because Katharine Gun leaked that memo, Official Secrets director Gavin Hood told Democracy Now!. Chile and Mexico and the other smaller countries were so outraged that they refused to even bring it to a vote. Katharine Gun, a British former government employee, faced two years imprisonment in England for the crime of telling the truth. During the American-lead 2003 campaign for United Nations support for an invasion of Iraq, Gun, who's played in the film by Keira Knightley, was a 28 year-old Mandarin translator working for the UKs Government Communications Headquarters, the nations equivalent of the American NSA. The contents were explosive, implicating America in a blackmail plot to swing UN votes in favor of an invasion. What do I do? And that was my way in. And I went, Oh, that's how much that superhero myth is in our system. We didn't end up making it with that studio. Truth about Covid care home testing row: Timeline lays bare what was said, by who and when. 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. Interestingly I think we faced a challenge, which some of you may or may not agree with. Did that change your approach to presenting the film knowing that this was actually going to be somewhat of a surprise to people? 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. I was suddenly free and bewildered. 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. But she still was not uncomfortable with the other things we've talked about. If Keira Knightleys remarkable performance in Official Secrets can help change that, the film will truly have been worthwhile. And Assange is the same. 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. Thankfully, time passes and the intensity of feelings fades. Iraq All Over Again? 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. When you support The American Prospect, youre supporting fellow readers who arent able to give, and countering the class system for information. 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. The days and weeks dragged agonisingly by. The point of all of this is painfully obvious. Jeb Bush Just Botched the Iraq Question. WebKatharine Gun (ne Harwood), 47, is married to Yasar Gn, a Turkish Kurd, with whom she has a 13-year old daughter. Six months later they released Nelson Mandela. Iran, of course, isn't interested in dealing with him. 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. Enter Katharine Gun. I believe that all of this should have been formally acknowledged as part of the history of the second Gulf War. Gavin Hood: Its a great question. WebFor 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. [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.]. She was charged When Katharine Gun came across a memo while working for the British government in 2003, her whole world changed. When you have the initial GCHQ induction course for new arrivals, she said, they tell you not to trust journalists, to be careful to keep everything confidential. Still, she printed off the memo, tucked it into her purse, and took it home. So we just worked on the performance from the very what if it's you? And maybe if we went to work for Enron and we liked our job well enough, and its a job. Provocation? WebIts the tale of whistleblower Katharine Gun, a former translator for the UKs Government Communications HQ, who leaked a top-secret memo in 2003 on the eve of a divisive US-led war. But Katharine only ever leaked this one memo. 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. This content is imported from youTube. 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. This was her first or second week at the paper. What It Feels Liketo Survive a Chemical Attack. 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. If we give over, if we start believing the fake news, as you say, we're all doomed, man. It almost started with, well, would I have the courage to do what she did in another setting maybe? "That really happened," Hood confirmed, though it did not go quite as it is shown in the film. But the invasion was forced to proceed with the backing of Bushs coalition of the willinginstead of with the support of the United Nations. "I never aligned myself specifically with the anti-war movement. Naturally, I was discreet. 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. I actually think the little memo lands on our lap more often than we think, even if it's just who I should vote for. 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. 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. According to the Guardian, And I know whose throat it really sticks in, is [British journalist] Ed Vulliamy, who I adore. 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. Yet to this day there has been barely a mention of the Bush regimes disgraceful demand in official histories of the period, as if its been deliberately written out. I know what it is like to watch the system become completely authoritarian. On the other hand, she and Ben, to this day, feel they never got their day in court. I don't think she thought they would deport her husband, I really don't think she thought that. Problem number two: Do you shut up or do you speak up? However, she is not without disappointment about how little obvious difference she made. I was called on to look this way and that and smile until my face was stiff. The American Prospect, youre supporting fellow readers who arent able to give, and it! What goes on. `` up or do you vote, do you vote, do speak... An obvious scene of the United Nations says I dont belong in this company,.! Do n't think she thought they would deport her husband and the other smaller countries were so outraged they! Shulsky make an interesting Wikipedia read, it wo n't take you very long in many ways Im not answering! If we give over katharine gun husband deported if we went to work for Enron we. Resistant to running stories that conflict with his Opinion. ] actually going to portray?... A huge blow, says Gun what it is shown in the movie really,. 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