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. And the reason? That's the memo. And I didnt have work where I was. Theres not a lot of work for translators; shes a Mandarin translator in England. And she said, I dont work for the government. That was my first thoughtwhat do you mean you dont work for the government? 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. Official Secrets Trailer #1 (2019) | Movieclips Trailers, Imagine Donald Trump Running an Actual War. David Dayen: Just the notion that the paper would say, we're for the war, that was their editorial position. 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. WebKatharine Gun (ne Harwood), 47, is married to Yasar Gn, a Turkish Kurd, with whom she has a 13-year old daughter. Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture. But the Bush administration went to war anyway, using the pretext of weapons of mass destruction. But that shouldn't be the philosophy pre-war when you're trying to decide whether to go to war. This is my second brief moment of fame. The poor woman is based on a real person. I did feel like, Well, I failed.. Can dementia be spotted in CHILDHOOD? They had published not some coded version of events, but the email itself in full. 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. 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 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. I got that from Yasar. So she went along to this interview, and she was 28. We need another Katharine Gun. Truth about Covid care home testing row: Timeline lays bare what was said, by who and when. David Dayen: As someone who works on a magazine, it's the ultimate copyediting failure. Meanwhile, Kamal Ahmed, who is the guy at The Observer, is now the editorial director of the BBC. We go to the canteen and we talk.. She failed. WebHer husband, Yaar Gn, is a Turkish Kurd. Right now my priorities are to ensure I am there for my daughter.". Because it's just an Executive Branch trying to grab power as an authoritarian. Gavin Hood: After the spellcheck. KatharineGun did not stop the war,but was it all entirely in vain? 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. "I think part of the reason Gavin included it was just to kind of share that thought process.". 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. 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. 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. Katharine Gun, a British former government employee, faced two years imprisonment in England for the crime of telling the truth. WebThe Katharine Gun Case. His philosophy comes from a military intelligence model, which actually, by the time you go to war, now it's about winning. Because it was toughthe guy wouldnt print his stuff. A thorough investigation began as soon as the staff started arriving at GCHQ on the Monday morning. The story went around the world and the leak electrified the international debate during the weeks of diplomatic deadlock. 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. Warning: The following contains spoilers for Official Secrets. As Bright noted, however, what we see in the movie is close to the real events. 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. Supported by Liberty, the prominent British civil-rights campaigning organiza-tion, Gun and her lawyer, Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes), decided to cite grounds of necessity in order to contest the charges laid against her. 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. What appealed to me in the end is that Katharine is in fact, far more like us. And I thought: this is good. Jeb Bush Just Botched the Iraq Question. And maybe if we went to work for Enron and we liked our job well enough, and its a job. 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? None of the Government reports into the war acknowledged it, nor did the history books. As one of the journalists who broke the story, I feel a certain responsibility for how things have turned out. President Bush visits the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, January 25, 2006. She thought wow, they need a Mandarin translator at GCHQ. She was charged Gavin Hood: And that really happened. Gavin Hood: Hes not in journalism. The film also captures my determination to do what I believed was right and reveals how divisive the Iraq War was, particularly highlighting the anger within certain sections of the intelligence services as the sabre-rattling statements of Mr Blair and his spokesman Alastair Campbell were accepted without proper challenge by some in the media. And we keep that system alive. 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. But this specificinstance is the ugly truth of what goes on.". Actually, there were two incidents at sea, blamed originally on the North Vietnamese. Or at least, she could have been. The truth was that in April of 2002, the two world leaders secretly had agreed on a plan to take out Saddam, all the while giving speeches insisting that the only motivation for even considering war was that horrific stockpile of deadly weapons. 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. British Secret Service Officer Katharine, then a young bride, risked everything to leak details of the Bush-Blair plan to coerce (possibly blackmail) members of the UN Security Council in order to win their votes to legalize invading Iraq. To legitimize an invasion and get rid of Saddam, a new UN Security Council resolution, going beyond SC1441 and specifically sanctioning the invasion, was the answer. [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.]. 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. I know what it is like to watch the system become completely authoritarian. Feel free to republish and share widely. So, to find that it would be dramatised on the big screen was as wonderfully welcome as it was astonishing. My shock turned to anger as the significance sank in. 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. Public attention is the last thing you expect if, like me, youd settled for a job in the shadowy world of British intelligence. Neither my friends nor my family knew what I did all day. 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? Whistleblower Katherine Gun, right, is played by Keira Knightly in the movie Official Secrets, Gun was outraged after she learned - as part of her job with GCHQ - that the United States wanted Britain to assist in spying on fellow United Nations Security Council members to win a vote in favour of a planned war in Iraq. Yet I do think Keira perfectly captures the strain I was under, the isolation and fear. That's really the simplest question: When do you speak up? 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. There were some audience questions as well. I answered an advert in The Guardian newspaper for a translator. And I went back in 93 and did another two years with the new Department of Health. She wasnt charged for eight months a gruelling period which is depicted as just a few As of 2020 Gun lives in Turkey and Britain. And that I think was the motivation. 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. She was a spythe communications she translated had been obtained covertly, but she did the work in the interest of protecting Britain. 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. 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. However, her husband and the father of her daughters name is Yasar Gun. The only thing that we altered in that is that I didnt have time to tell it for as long as it went on. 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. 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. 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. 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. We all, in some ways, make these decisions. Surely, after 16 years, we are entitled to have answers. What might, IKeira Knightley, feel if I'm sitting at my desk and this happened to me?" If the email did reach the newspapers, I reasoned, there would be no more than a discreet summary. It wasone of the reasons I came to this country in 89 was because we were getting drafted, and I thought I cant do this. And I did the same for the journalists and the lawyers and everybody. An insider with courage. Or at least, she could have been. Maybe thats rewarding. Why did the British authorities wait eight months before charging me and then drop the charges, claiming there was insufficient evi-dence for prosecution when I had confessed to the leak from the start? Now the goal is not truth, it is victory. But the falsehoods and unnecessary wars of yesteryear likely have influenced the waning support for public institutions today. My job had been to listen to Chinese communications, translate them from Mandarin to English and produce reports for different government departments. For all the relief, there was a weird sense of anti-climax that we would now be unable to give our side of the story to the public. Just occasionally I had, of course, signed the Official Secrets Act, content in the knowledge I was working within the law for Britains protection. But Katharine only ever leaked this one memo. It sounds big with Katharine but that's what inspired me. The point of all of this is painfully obvious. Unfortunately. The truth is when she speaks to me, and she says, Gavin, we also go to lunch like everybody else in any other office. I sensed a slight flash of anger as she said: "It's not even a footnote in the history of Iraq." Interestingly I think we faced a challenge, which some of you may or may not agree with. So we start with hair, and then we start with glasses, and Keira says, "Gavin, what if I just was me?" Seven times I've submitted articles to you with an alternate point of view, and seven times you've turned me down. 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. "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. "But the more I think about what happened, the more angry and frustrated I get about the fact that nobody acted on intelligence. It was what I was thinking, what I was feeling. Was the British government aware of it? By design. So when I sent the script to Keira, and I was very hopeful that she would do it because she does a lot of period dramas, and you dont often see her in a modern drama and I thought shed be great. Who authorised the NSA email, for example? So thank you for being here, it means a lot. 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. It should take the facts as they lead. The decision to leak it was almost instant I felt I had no choice. But there's no way I would have expressed that to any of my colleagues," Gun explained. For the future, I hope the film will help locate the missing pieces from the story. For the Observer too, it was a story full of risks. 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. Progressive values. 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." David Dayen: I want to go to the questions now. 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. Some called her a traitor; others Ed, I know some people have said that Rhys Ifans [who plays Vulliamy] is slightly over the top. Some called her a traitor; others insisted she was a hero. What It Feels Liketo Survive a Chemical Attack. 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. And I know whose throat it really sticks in, is [British journalist] Ed Vulliamy, who I adore. But, did it change the way I approached it? One is kind of what I thought it was, which is the CIA is the Central Intelligence Agency, walled off from politicians and the executive in a perfect world, where all the intelligence comes in, they analyze it and they then present their best intelligence estimates; this is pre-war, youre not at war, to the executive branch. 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. Who, one must ask, is provoking whom? Rishi Sunak is urgently reviewing his private exchanges with Matt Hancock after bombshell leak of ex-Health 'Drinks cold in fridge at DH!' The issue is provocation. 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. 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. We were to target such things as phone calls and emails from their homes as well as their places of work. Hundreds of thousands were killed. That kind of propaganda has to stop. Where do you draw the line? 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. "You get to the end, and there's this court case. 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. That means that, in theory, the war could still be classified as an illegal war, Gun says. I was 27 when it all began. Us, in any situation, wherever you work, I thought that's what this timeless about it. ", The real Martin Bright (left), as played by Matt Smith (right) in "Official Secrets. I didnt know the story and I googled her. You see it most vividly in that scene where everybody stops calling Martin Bright, or they start canceling all the interviews. 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. I've seen that happen. Now, Trump says, he wants to see Iran back at the negotiating table. 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. 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. Thank you! So WMD may not have been as important, had they gotten that resolution. That would be awkward. 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. Name is Yasar Gun, they need a Mandarin translator in England for the.! National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, January 25, 2006 obtained covertly, was! Such things as phone calls and emails from their homes as well as their places of work vain. Appealed to me? this interview, and there 's no way I would have expressed to. 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