Her husband said its a job, its just a goddamn job, I work at a caf. What is this paper? Unfortunately. What did you think was going to happen? By the way, I know some amazing people in the intelligence services. 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. Cheering crowds have never been my sort of thing. Whatever, she blew the whistle ultimately revealing the truth behind the build-up to the Iraq War--regime change, disguised as terrifying threats of weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps they don't trust him to keep his word. Gun, her husband, and their four-year-old daughter shed their coveted privacy long enough to allow Katharine to be one of two former Sam Adams Award winners to present this year's award. 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. Im gratified, too, that the film shows the love and support my husband gave me throughout this ordeal. A transcript, lightly edited with explainers where necessary, follows. And it's a tough profession in many ways. She went to this interview, the next minute were down this rabbit hole, the next minute my wifes telling the world. In the years following, an author called Marcia Mitchell contacted me and said she was keen to write a book about my case. 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. Hood said that this was a purposeful choice by Knightley. KatharineGun did not stop the war,but was it all entirely in vain? You have no idea. "One of the things that we discovered quite early on when he was interviewing me was that a lot of stuff was just happening in my head. 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. [In the movie, Gun says I dont work for the government, I work for the people.]. 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? Its Straussian, over the top and pretentious but basically amounts to this. So WMD may not have been as important, had they gotten that resolution. After a police interview, at which I repeated my admission, I was released on bail to await the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service. Now there is the possibility that Gun's singular life will be made into a movie. Who, one must ask, is provoking whom? 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Despite the millions affected by the Iraq War, its now far removed from British and American news cycles, displaced from the headlines by todays political turmoil. The days and weeks dragged agonisingly by. I admitted the leak and my life was turned upside down. David Dayen: How did you think Keira Knightley was an asset in showing that emotional journey throughout the movie? 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. None of the Government reports into the war acknowledged it, nor did the history books. Such a law is not compatible with openness, transparency, accountability and justice. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. But the invasion was forced to proceed with the backing of Bushs coalition of the willinginstead of with the support of the United Nations. It was like a neon sign that was flashing at me, Gun says. The spin in this country and in the UK was the threat of deadly weapons ready to be deployed by Saddam. He said: "Very close. It's tough, the laws here are even stricter than in the UK. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images). Surely, after 16 years, we are entitled to have answers. 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. To this day, however, there has been barely a mention of the year I spent living under a cloud. But this specificinstance is the ugly truth of what goes on.". "You get to the end, and there's this court case. Give today. At some point, as you probably know, Bush and Rumsfeld decided to bypass the CIA and take out that Office of Special Plans. It gives me an interesting pause. His exact words to describe the intelligence method is, The goal of the intelligence is not the truth, but victory. That is a quote from Shulsky. When I got to the interview thats when they told me that its for GCHQ, I didnt know what GCHQ did. So, I think she entered the world out of a sort of strange curiosity. Director Gavin Hood Writers Sara Bernstein Gregory Bernstein Gavin Hood Stars Keira Knightley Matt Smith Matthew Goode Weve said it before: The greatest threat to democracy from the media isnt disinformation, its the paywall. The increasing presence of US Navy ships and a B-52 bomber task force in their neighborhood might provoke the Iranians to load up their missiles. Unfortunately, perhaps, I have a conscience and my dishonesty gnawed at me persistently until the next day, when I confessed. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. She wasnt charged for eight months a gruelling period which is depicted as just a few Gun sacrificed so much when she decided to leak and has worked only intermittently since. She didnt know where he was for three days and she took the train down from Charlton to London to see the MP, Nigel Jones, who said exactly what he says in the movie. 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. When my turn came, I entered a small side office, faced the security official and, putting on my best poker face, denied any involvement. 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. Gavin Hood: Yes, it really sticks in my throat too. One by one, all those who received the email approximately 100 people were taken in for a grilling. Is this a matter of threatening to launch a war, or is it a matter of responding to the US positioning itself for war? ", 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? Katharine Gun and Martin Bright could be forgiven for fielding Hollywoods overtures with a degree of skepticism. [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.]. And I didnt have work where I was. Theres not a lot of work for translators; shes a Mandarin translator in England. So she went along to this interview, and she was 28. Not mine or The Observer's finest hour, has to be said. So, Im not really answering your question well, but her feeling was just: Now I dont belong in this company. Copyright 2023 | The American Prospect, Inc. | All Rights Reserved, The Alt-Labor Chronicles: Americas Worker Centers, Official Secrets: A Conversation With Director Gavin Hood. If I was writing this as fiction, I need a much longer court case, right? 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). Most whistleblowers leak after the event to expose perceived wrongdoing. They live on a smallholding, renting a house, in rural Turkey. The contents were explosive, implicating America in a blackmail plot to swing UN votes in favor of an invasion. The risks Gun took in revealing the UN email's existence were huge. 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. But the Bush administration went to war anyway, using the pretext of weapons of mass destruction. For several years, just recalling the events would set my heart racing and my hands trembling. 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. We all, in some ways, make these decisions. We may earn a commission from these links. You dont have to agree with what she did, Im just telling you what she did. I've seen that happen. And we keep that system alive. Yet I do think Keira perfectly captures the strain I was under, the isolation and fear. You work for the government. 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. The team of hawks circling George Bush had long wanted to take out Saddam Hussein, as did Bush. 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. This content is imported from youTube. '", "The scene where all of us receive this email and we're discussing the memo, that never happened. It was both exhilarating and just a little uncomfortable. I am an American citizen; I have a strange accent but Ive been here 25 years; my kids were born here. [Gun was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act in Britain, but ultimately the case never went to trial.]. 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. 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. If we give over, if we start believing the fake news, as you say, we're all doomed, man. "Obviously, we are compressing a story that took place in real life over a period of a year into two hours. Id never seen anything like it. Gun made the choice to leak the document, which Martin Bright of The Observer in Britain published in a story on March 2, 2003. Koza was in effect issuing a direct order to the employees of a UK security agency to gather "the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises". Eventually, it was widely held that at least one of the reports of the attacks, and perhaps even both, were false. After the charges against her were dropped in 2004, she found it difficult to find a new "But the more I think about what happened, the more angry and frustrated I get about the fact that nobody acted on intelligence. 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. 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. First, I contacted someone to this day Ive never named them who had the details of a journalist and anti-war activist. So, she began to feel uncomfortable in the work she was doing at that point. And it's also true that we were then attacked by the Drudge Report for what would now be called 'fake news. After the leak was published, hundreds of staff inside the building were questioned in order to discover the identity of the whistleblower. Anyway, the Office of Special Plans and Abram Shulsky make an interesting Wikipedia read, it won't take you very long. What appealed to me in the end is that Katharine is in fact, far more like us. And Where Is Katharine Gun, JUST 36 HOURS TO GO IN OUR WINTER CAMPAIGN. Us, in any situation, wherever you work, I thought that's what this timeless about it. This, despite credible evidence that Iran was in full compliance with terms of the agreement. Then, the world is safer until the sequel when it all happens again. 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