Although the story made headlines around the world at the time of the leak and later at the time of her trial, which collapsed after the prosecution withdrew its evidence, it remains largely missing from the official narratives of the build-up to the Iraq war. If it was, who cleared it to be passed to GCHQ? 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. But my point is simply this: The underpinnings of this country matter. Six months later they released Nelson Mandela. Only now, more than a decade and a half later, is this disturbing sequence of events once again receiving the attention it deserves thanks to Official Secrets, a brilliant new movie starring Keira and former Doctor Who, Matt Smith. Unfortunately. They're more polite to their suspects. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. 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. And she thought she wouldnt get caught. WebWhistleblower Katherine Gun, right, is played by Keira Knightly in the movie Official Secrets View gallery Gun was outraged after she learned - as part of her job with GCHQ - that Perhaps it was no wonder that Tony Blairs government decided to abandon the case without offering any evidence. Do you go vote? When do the clocks change in 2023? 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. For several years, just recalling the events would set my heart racing and my hands trembling. When I was a young law student, we studied the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights. What resonates to me is the somewhat more, I hope, timeless thing. David Dayen: The first thing I thought about when looking at this movie is that in most recent historical epics, the audience knows what's happening next. It was like a neon sign that was flashing at me, Gun says. 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. The point of all of this is painfully obvious. I was glad to get back to what I hoped would be normality, but the effect on me had been traumatising. President Bush visits the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, January 25, 2006. 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. 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. Keira said no one knows Katharine, and that's not an insult to Katharine. But when Gun's lawyers threaten to question the U.K. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith about Britain's involvement in the Iraq war, the government drops their case against Gun. There were some audience questions as well. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. WebKatharine Gun (ne Harwood), 47, is married to Yasar Gn, a Turkish Kurd, with whom she has a 13-year old daughter. At some point, as you probably know, Bush and Rumsfeld decided to bypass the CIA and take out that Office of Special Plans. 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. His philosophy comes from a military intelligence model, which actually, by the time you go to war, now it's about winning. 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. Problem number two: Do you shut up or do you speak up? 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. The editorial position should never be that. You can look up Nicole Mowbray, she wrote an article in The Guardian a couple weeks ago, about this worst day of her life. It should take the facts as they lead. And I thought: this is good. Who authorised the NSA email, for example? 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. [Gun was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act in Britain, but ultimately the case never went to trial.]. Happy and carefree, Id recently married my handsome husband and was working at GCHQ as a linguist. Who, one must ask, is provoking whom? And those two are great actresses. I admitted the leak and my life was turned upside down. 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 it's a tough profession in many ways. In the matter of a few years. And he kept thinking, 'How am I going to portray this? If Keira Knightleys remarkable performance in Official Secrets can help change that, the film will truly have been worthwhile. ", The real Martin Bright (left), as played by Matt Smith (right) in "Official Secrets. Marcia Mitchell is a writer, researcher, and the author of "The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion." The difficulties of translating Gun's story also made writing the climax of the film tricky. Never mind that invading another country for the purpose of regime change is illegal according to international laws to which the United States is a signatory. 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. Gavin Hood: There is a kind of cognitive dissonance. And I know whose throat it really sticks in, is [British journalist] Ed Vulliamy, who I adore. Gavin Hood: Hes not in journalism. They live on a smallholding, renting a house, in rural Turkey. ", As for her own story, she recognises that 10 years on it scarcely registers with the public. But this specificinstance 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. To separate fact from fiction, Newsweek spoke to the real Gun and Bright, as well as Official Secrets director Gavin Hood. We all, in some ways, make these decisions. David Dayen: How did you think Keira Knightley was an asset in showing that emotional journey throughout the movie? When my turn came, I entered a small side office, faced the security official and, putting on my best poker face, denied any involvement. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. As I walked down the red carpet, I had never in my life experienced the flash of so many cameras. So right there, you are pulling out the highlights," said Hood of the key issue with making Official Secrets. 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 the working day came to close, I tried to project a sense of calm I didnt feel, walked out of the gates and put the incriminating email in the post. But she said she would still be prepared to give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq 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. Gavin Hood: And that really happened. Most whistleblowers leak after the event to expose perceived wrongdoing. So, to find that it would be dramatised on the big screen was as wonderfully welcome as it was astonishing. Meanwhile, Kamal Ahmed, who is the guy at The Observer, is now the editorial director of the BBC. None of the Government reports into the war acknowledged it, nor did the history books. 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. For the future, I hope the film will help locate the missing pieces from the story. 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 also opposed the pending war. 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. So, Im not really answering your question well, but her feeling was just: Now I dont belong in this company. Amazing lady, shes still a journalist. ", Left: Dave Benett/Getty. 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. 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. First, I contacted someone to this day Ive never named them who had the details of a journalist and anti-war activist. 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. That kind of propaganda has to stop. 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. The invasion was a huge blow, says Gun. 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.". And isnt it also time to re-examine the Official Secrets Act? A script has been doing the rounds in Hollywood for five years. But Katharine Gun, whos now the subject of a new film, the Gavin Hood-directed Official Secrets, did a lot moreand became one of the most important political whistleblowers that most Americans have never heard of. "I never aligned myself specifically with the anti-war movement. Now the goal is not truth, it is victory. 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. In the years following, an author called Marcia Mitchell contacted me and said she was keen to write a book about my case. 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. And it was there that, to our amazement and totally without warning, the CPS dropped the charges before the trial had even started. Gavin Hood: Its a question of how conditioned are we to the conventional Hollywood structure. Gavin Hood: Its a great question. That's really the simplest question: When do you speak up? David Dayen: So why do you think this is an important story to tell now in 2019? Some called her a traitor; others insisted she was a hero. 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. Where do you draw the line? I grew up in South Africa in the seventies and eighties, when apartheid was really tightening and tightening and tightening. The decision to leak it was almost instant I felt I had no choice. In the runup to the critical vote on war in Iraq, Katharine Gun exposed a US plot to spy on the UN. And Where Is Katharine Gun, JUST 36 HOURS TO GO IN OUR WINTER CAMPAIGN. The comments below have been moderated in advance. We were to target such things as phone calls and emails from their homes as well as their places of work. If I was writing this as fiction, I need a much longer court case, right? ", 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 have a blondish-looking Katharine. His most recent book is Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.. Its had far reaching and very negative impacts in all aspects of our institutions and our public life," Gun says. [In the movie, Gun says I dont work for the government, I work for the people.]. And I think thats why you get this very honest, pure, deeply felt performance. Katharine Gun and Martin Bright could be forgiven for fielding Hollywoods overtures with a degree of skepticism. 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. Exaggerating threats to provoke a war? The British are quite British, you know. [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.]. "I think part of the reason Gavin included it was just to kind of share that thought process.". She was a spythe communications she translated had been obtained covertly, but she did the work in the interest of protecting Britain. I was called on to look this way and that and smile until my face was stiff. 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. ", Keira Knightley and Katharine Gun at the London premiere of "Official Secrets. The work shed signed up to do was covered by British law, and would be something to do with whatever that was necessary to keep British lives safe. The memo, however represented the actual twisting of diplomatic arms in order to secure a war which [was] based on lies., But it also represented an opportunity to show the world the tactics American and British officials were willing to employ in their push for an invasion. So it was a pretty awful thing to happen to her. [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. Unfortunately, perhaps, I have a conscience and my dishonesty gnawed at me persistently until the next day, when I confessed.
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