For example, youre racing to the hospital with your wife. And so I did. So. I think most people have red lines that they wont cross. So, they immediatelywell, first of all, my manager said, What would you like to do? And I said, Well, pfff, what can I do? You know, we have to tell internal security. And I justI just determined to deny it. There is no single answer to that, she says, but Bright had the best stab at it: The only thing you can do is do your job right, and be a good citizen., In other words, she says, whatever your job is, do the things that you are supposed to do. The online Drudge Report used the fact that the reproduced NSA memo used English spelling to cast doubt on its veracity. It is loud, clear, confident, creative, interesting. And she said, Gavin, I dont want to wear makeup. So, lots of leads there. I hadnt realised the extent to which Martin in particular had gone out on a limb for this at the paper. I had, you know, encounters with Blair. . MARTIN BRIGHT: We didI tell you what, though, we did feel that we had failed. In the very typical British manner, we just pretended we had never met.. Now, the defense of necessity is usually used in very more simple circumstances. Published on May 3, 2021 08:23 PM. The film, Official Secrets, comes out officially at the end of August. All I want to do is feel the emotions that this young woman felt, and dont want to be fussed over. And it was great. Gun had, of course, been forced to abandon her career in the civil service and finally, struggling for work, left Britain altogether. Dr. Ahead of a new film, Official Secrets, the GCHQ worker who tried to prevent the 2003 invasion of Iraq recalls those feverish days and their consequences Keira Knightley on playing whistleblower Katharine Gun: Iraq was the first time Id been politically engaged. Following the incident, Gun struggled to find work that she loved, and her husband had grown disillusioned with Britain. It wasn't that she was naive . Gun, too, had expressed relief that the events are now part of a broader discussion due to the film and that she can finally talk about it without stress. I think youll find hes hiding in plain sight. And there was a dramatic hush in the audience. "[22], In January, 2019, the film Official Secrets, recounting Gun's actions in 2003, received its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, with Keira Knightley playing Gun. And the other way is the good, old-fashioned self-defense. And, with great respect, I think he did. I could not get it in. When Katharine Gun came across a memo while working for the British government in 2003, her whole world changed. So, in the film, when the director of public prosecutions says to Ben Emmerson, trying to wiggle out of it, Listen, it wasnt my decision to prosecute. Thats actually true. After competing in the singing competition, she launched an acting career and was . 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.. She had received an email in her inbox asking her and . KATHARINE GUN: It was GCHQ internal security, yeah. Its the intelligence agency, like the NSA, the National Security Agency, in the U.S. She leaked a memo revealing that the United States was collaborating with Britain in collecting sensitive information on United Nations Security Council members, countries, in order to pressure the members, the ambassadors, into supporting the Iraq invasion of March 2003. This was a huge story, crushed by a bigger story. One foundered for lack of funds, another strayed further from the truth than she would have liked. [3], Katharine Harwood moved to Taiwan in 1977 with her parents, Paul and Jan Harwood. And all of a sudden the news media is not interested in how we got into the war. MARTIN BRIGHT: But once everyone did, there waswe knew that there was somethingthere was something going on. ED VULLIAMY: said on the program, I filed that story seven times. Within half an hour, the case was dropped because the prosecution declined to offer evidence. He gets more and more pressure from Blair. First day, what did you feel? I mean, youre talking about the editorial leadership of The Observer, the editor-in-chief. I mean, really, these people need to be held accountable for what theyve done. This is viewer supported news. KATHARINE GUN: Yeah, and he had no money in his pocket. But I wasnt thinking about myself really. Ed Vulliamys character, played by Rhys Ifans in the film, says, you know, he effing caved at the time when his country needed him most. By Ben Davies BBC News Online political staff at the TUC in Brighton There is something about Katharine Gun that makes her seem an unlikely candidate for whistleblowing. She was the real-life translator who photocopied . The Tony Blair Conscience Fund or something? KATHARINE GUN: I dont know. is katharine gun still married to yasar. He left the Observer not long after the events it describes and now runs the Creative Society, a charity that helps widen access to jobs in the media and the arts to candidates with non-traditional backgrounds. [8] The plan might have contravened Articles 22 and 27 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which regulates global diplomacy. So I was in a dreadful state. AMY GOODMAN: And so, you decide to go back and revealwho was it that was questioning you? AMY GOODMAN: But so, did you have any conversations with the former prime minister at the time, Tony Blair? . But lets go back to the moment. is a 501(c)3 non-profit news organization. MARTIN BRIGHT: I mean, there are a series of questions of accountability here. KATHARINE GUN: Oh, yes, absolutely. And he didnt come back out again. The film captures well the inspired and stubborn efforts of Bright (Matt Smith in the movie), and colleagues Ed Vulliamy (played with brio by Rhys Ifans) and Peter Beaumont (played by Matthew Goode), to stand the story up, based on the few details it betrayed, and to get it into the paper, despite the strong misgivings of the political desk. She knows what it's like to have her face slapped, her bones broken and her nose bloodied by her former bully of a husband, an active Marine Colonel and a man who she claims is "above the law and literally gets away with murder." We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work. And you said in places like Chile. No need to prove anything further. Im going to start with you, Gavin. AMY GOODMAN: Whatever you tried to do didnt succeed. KATHARINE GUN: Well, yeah, yeah. Ten years ago, a young Mandarin specialist at GCHQ, the government's surveillance centre in Cheltenham, did something extraordinary. The day before the trial, Gun's defence team had asked the government for any records of legal advice about the lawfulness of the war that it had received during the run-up to the war. The first is a U.N. resolution for war. He would have had to have the authority of Lord Goldsmith to prosecute. KATHARINE GUN: And also, Im justwell, whether its natural inclination or whether its what was kind of drummed into us at GCHQ, but it was, you know, this the sense of being private and not trusting journalists or people who are trying to ferret out information from you. GAVIN HOOD: She did work for the attorney general, right up until a matter of weeks or so before the war, at which point, when he changed his mind, under massive pressure, having visited Washington and spoken to Gonzales and all the various lawyers who worked for Rumsfeld and Bush and Cheney, and theyd sold him on this idea of using Resolution 678, which authorized the 1991 Gulf War, and said, Really, that war didnt end, and were really still at war with Iraq. The trials and tribulations of daringly telling the truth and facing its consequences must certainly not be a light burden to bear. This is Democracy Now! We do not accept funding from advertising, underwriting or government agencies. And she said, I have to go, mostlyto find strong female characters, I have to go back 100 and 200 years and wear a corset to play a strong female character. And she said, This isI want to do this, because its a strong female character not in a corset. You dont know who the GCHQ person is. But I felt this information was explosive, it needed to get out. But this is not the issue. How did she go about rebuilding her life? After they charged me, thats when they tried to deport my husband. "[5], Gun's regular job at GCHQ in Cheltenham was to translate Mandarin Chinese into English. Guns words will, in the coming weeks finally receive the much wider audience they deserve. So a very big story got crushed very quickly. Plead out. 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. Gun leaked the memo to the press in 2003, setting off a chain of events that jeopardized her freedom and safety, but also opened the door to putting the entire legality of the Iraq invasion on trial. You know, this is hundreds of thousands of people killed. I think of journalists as being bullet-proof in a way, she says, but obviously not., She and Bright have done several question and answer sessions in the US after the film has been screened at various festivals. "That story" concerns British whistleblower Katharine Gun, played by Keira Knightley in a film that premiered at Sundance festival in January.Fluent in Mandarin, the 28-year-old Gun was . AMY GOODMAN: So, and we want to get to all that, but nowwe want to get to all that, but right now youre showing this film around the country. The official editorial line, led by the then editor Roger Alton (now an executive editor at the Daily Mail) and political editor Kamal Ahmed (now editorial director of BBC News) was in close support of the Blair governments position on the invasion. I was called up on Tuesday. Please do your part today. A New Film Tells Her Story, 15 Years Later: How U.K. Whistleblower Katharine Gun Risked Everything to Leak a Damning Iraq War Memo, Links to news stories (20032006) about Katharine Gun, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katharine_Gun&oldid=1149317616, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2020, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2019, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 11 April 2023, at 13:29. She was arrested and charged with breach of the Official Secrets Act. But as we said last night, this is the purpose of Albert Camuss great story La Peste, when Dr. Rieux is given the child dying of plague. GAVIN HOOD: And then, for five days, I interviewed Katharine and just made notes. Also with us, the director of Official Secrets, Gavin Hood. In 2003, she leaked top-secret information to The Observer, concerning a request by the United States for compromising intelligence on diplomats from member states of the 2003 Security Council.The diplomats were due to vote on a second United . Sometimes you break stories, and networks ring you and say they want to interview you, and then they drop you because of the agenda. 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. So, GCHQ had been aware of this for over 24 hours, and they were waiting for everybody to come back into work on Monday, and they were prepared. Right? How often does she go through that fateful weekend, where she wrestled with her conscience after seeing the memo? Whistleblower Katherine Gun, right, is played by Keira Knightly in the movie Official Secrets. I didnt want to be that. You know, we had it in October 2002. GAVIN HOOD: They failed. Truth has a habit of finding a voice, however. Strange Hollywood person. But lets talk about that moment in the courthouse. We pay respect by giving voice to social justice, acknowledging our shared history and valuing the cultures of First Nations. This is Democracy Now! And whats so marvelous about what Gavins done is to just sort of bring this back into the present. All rights reserved. Mr. Davies, in his book, has done more recently, AMY GOODMAN: And he said to you, Martin, at least in the film, This will jeopardize our access.. KATHARINE GUN: Need I say more? Gun owned up to the leak a few days later to save her GCHQ colleagues from a witch-hunt. AMY GOODMAN: Youre watching that on television. The people who went in and smashed it up in 2003, do they watch the news? I felt like saying, I tried to tell you this seven times, and you would not let me print it. You know, it's tough. A translator for UK intelligence agency GCHQ, Gun read a brief from the US National Security Agency urging its British sister organisation to spy on members of the UN Security Council, to gain influence i n a vote on whether to sanction an invasion of Iraq. They called for your documents. Im sure that what Katharine felt when in 2010 we found out that Lord Goldsmith had declared the war, in his advice, illegal, must have been pretty painful for Katharine to hear, as it was for me when Congress said, I think around 2004, '05, we knew, actually, there were no weapons of mass destruction. . A full trial might have exposed any such documents to public scrutiny, as the defence was expected to argue that trying to stop an unlawful war of aggression outweighed Gun's obligations under the Official Secrets Act. KATHARINE GUN: Oh, yeah. But you areis this part of the film true, where you have the authorities come in and say, Were questioning everyone, because someone here did this.. Well, if Bush and Blair could have got a U.N. resolution, they would have had perfect cover for going to Iraq without having to bring up the WMD, the weapons of mass destruction, argument, because the whole weapons of mass destruction argument is the self-defense, that they needed a legalyou know, you do want to be going to war legally. She is played, with steely English resolve, by Keira Knightley. And towards the end of the Q&A session, an elderly gentleman put up his hand and said, Im very interested in the issue of Frank Koza. MARTIN BRIGHT: OK, youre making me feel really bad about going to work for him now. I mean, my initial encounter with him at the Faith Foundation was extremely concerning, in fact, because he said that what he wanted me to do was develop a heat map, you know, an interactive map of all the madrassas, you know, Islamic schools, around the world, with my tiny team of two or three interns, showingand he looked me in the eye, and he said, I want you to be ableI want people who are looking on our website to be able to see how radical those madrassas are, by color coding.. KATHARINE GUN: Devastation. We are defending ourselves. Well, extremely. You know, I felt vindicated. And they attempt to deport your husband, who is a? I wanted to stop bombs dropping on Iraq., The consequences have been damaging not just for Guns career. And they had already taken him down into the custody suite, which is, by the way, where I had been before, Gun revealed. AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain that. KATHARINE GUN: Yeah. It opens on August 30th. 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.Or at least, she could have been. And I did this sort of dive. 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 . Watching the film was like watching a case that was very similar to my own: Katharine Gun, photographed last month in Durham. I thought you said youre sick. And I said, I need to talk to you. And so we went into a small room, and I just said, I did it. And then she put her arm around me and went, Oh, Katharine. And then I burst out crying. Ben Emmerson decides the way to defend Katharine Gun is to ask for Lord Goldsmiths documents. But deep inside me, I didnt feel guilty. AMY GOODMAN: The San Francisco Film Festival. And a fireman does that if he bashes your house down to get to you. In its absence, Tony Blair won another election in 2005. MARTIN BRIGHT: I did, yes. They may have chosen to push those boundaries, but they did know the difference, and they knew that it mattered if they were caught. Maybe? MARTIN BRIGHT: Not until around the time of the trial. And its sothe nonpermanent members, who realized they were being hacked and their personal things were beingin order to try and blackmail them into a vote. So I was bailed until November, when they charged me. AMY GOODMAN: And these ambassadors are the ambassadors of? How am I possibly going to do that? There is a Guardian Live preview screening with Katharine Gun, Gavin Hood and Martin Bright on 12 October. She grew up in Taiwan, where her father had gone to teach, and her accent is hard to place. AMY GOODMAN: Katharine, has your 11-year-old daughter seen the film? You work for the British government, her interrogator said, with a sneer. No one else including myself has ever done what Gun did: tell secret truths at personal risk, before an imminent war, in time, possibly, to avert it.. Keira Knightley plays Katharine Gun in the film Official Secrets (Photo: eOne) Now living quietly in Turkey, Gun has been thrust into the global spotlight once again . I mean, no ones going tono crocodile tears over that. In 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 she leaked the . The woman in her 20s attempted to stop the war and firmly stood to her truthful morals. The repercussions of a lot of what happened are still being felt today.. 4 4.Katharine Gun: Ten years on what happened to the woman who 5 5.Iraq War Whistle Blower Katharine Gun Shares Her Story | Video - PBS; 6 6.GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun speaks out | Daily Mail Online; 7 7.15 Years Later: How U.K. Whistleblower Katharine Gun - YouTube; 8 8.Katharine Gun & Martin Bright Interview - Official .
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