Gun disclosed details of the spying operation as it was happening to stop something she viewed as terrible happening in the future. David Dayen: So why do you think this is an important story to tell now in 2019? 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. WebKeira Knightley stars in this true story about Katharine Gun, a British intelligence officer who exposed the US government's efforts to force the UN Security Council to sanction the 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. 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. We all, in some ways, make these decisions. I never thought Id be choosing a dress for a red carpet appearance at a major film festival. 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. You have no idea. And I thought this is going to end in the worst civil war. With the operation blown, the chances of George W Bush and Tony Blair getting the consensus for a direct UN mandate for war were now near zero. Such a law is not compatible with openness, transparency, accountability and justice. "You get to the end, and there's this court case. And we keep that system alive. Webdeport Guns husband, Yasar (Adam Bakri), a Muslim Kurdish Turk who was awaiting permanent leave to remain in the U.K. I did feel like, Well, I failed.. Instead, the American coalition was Even though she didn't stop the war and some people are like what's the point if she didn't stop the warwell, the point is how do you sleep at night? 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 This content is imported from youTube. I know what it is like to watch the system become completely authoritarian. 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. 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 this specificinstance is the ugly truth of what goes on.". 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. As opposed to trying to be Katharine Gun. 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. Where do you draw the line? Then the most almighty cacophony erupted, a roar so loud we could barely hear to speak. 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. ", Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Keira Knightley's Birthday: Her 15 Best Movies Ranked, In the film, when Gun is sent an email from someone high up in the U.S. government that reveals the U.S. covert plan, she decides to leak it to Bright, who works for the British newspaper, Keira Knightley as Katharine Gun in "Official Secrets. Thankfully, time passes and the intensity of feelings fades. She wasnt charged for eight months a gruelling period which is depicted as just a few It is probably still too early to tell. And I didnt have work where I was. Theres not a lot of work for translators; shes a Mandarin translator in England. She failed. By the way, I know some amazing people in the intelligence services. But the Bush administration went to war anyway, using the pretext of weapons of mass destruction. Gavin Hood: After the spellcheck. Please, become a member, or make a one-time donation, today. Progressive values. WebWe speak with a British whistleblower whose attempts to expose lies about the Iraq invasion was called "the most important and courageous leak" in history by acclaimed The other was Coleen Rowley, former FBI special agent and counsel at the Minneapolis bureau, who blew the whistle on FBI and other shortcomings Some called her a traitor; others By the time Gun and around 100 of her colleagues received the emailed memo that would change her life, she had already come to the conclusion that the arguments for war with Iraq were not really valid arguments, she tells me. Then, we all started watching the invasion and we werent how we got into the war. Twenty-eight, pretty naive. 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. '", "The scene where all of us receive this email and we're discussing the memo, that never happened. And I know whose throat it really sticks in, is [British journalist] Ed Vulliamy, who I adore. The only thing that we altered in that is that I didnt have time to tell it for as long as it went on. "Because I think people see thatthe leaders of both the US and the UK conceivably could be considered war criminals, and yet they are walking free.". And just coming from my perspective, the press, because a lot of this is a story about the press, and how they handle it. Eventually, it was widely held that at least one of the reports of the attacks, and perhaps even both, were false. David Dayen: I want to go to the questions now. Warning: The following contains spoilers for Official Secrets. [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.]. David Dayen is the Prospects executive editor. It was what I was thinking, what I was feeling. And it's a tough profession in many ways. You see it most vividly in that scene where everybody stops calling Martin Bright, or they start canceling all the interviews. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. This was her first or second week at the paper. I grew up in South Africa in the seventies and eighties, when apartheid was really tightening and tightening and tightening. Our institutions matter. '", The reality was not nearly as dramatic as in the film, where Bright and his editor are together in a newsroom when the mistake is revealed, leading to them being dropped from interviews with a number of international news outlets. 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. If if wasnt, what does that mean for the rule of law? She got into a plea bargain, they still gave her five years. Its Straussian, over the top and pretentious but basically amounts to this. If we give over, if we start believing the fake news, as you say, we're all doomed, man. Meanwhile, Kamal Ahmed, who is the guy at The Observer, is now the editorial director of the BBC. ", "I think Gavin had a really difficult time telling this story because it doesn't fit into a normal sort of storytelling mode," said Gun. Or at least, she could have been. Sixteen years ago, I became headline news after I leaked an internal email from GCHQ, the communications intelligence gathering centre near Cheltenham. Though celebrated Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg would later call Guns actions the most important and courageous leak in history due to her efforts to save lives through preventing a war, she obviously didnt succeed in stopping the invasion. I answered an advert in The Guardian newspaper for a translator. Please help keep the independent journalism of Common Dreams strong. 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? Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. Yet here was a story that had the capacity to derail the war altogether. Which really, really, really happened. If I was writing this as fiction, I need a much longer court case, right? 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. 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. "On the one hand, she's free. You dont have to agree with what she did, Im just telling you what she did. The true story of a British whistleblower who leaked information to the press about an illegal NSA spy operation designed to push the UN Security Council into sanctioning the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Official Secrets is, for the most part, a historical account of these events in 2003, but as with nearly all films based on a true story, some things have been changed to aid the drama of the narrative. 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? And maybe if we went to work for Enron and we liked our job well enough, and its a job. Truth about Covid care home testing row: Timeline lays bare what was said, by who and when. 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. What resonates to me is the somewhat more, I hope, timeless thing. Spoilers to follow as well. For the Observer too, it was a story full of risks. 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. 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? Or at least, she could have been. 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. And maybe they were right, I don't know. She said, You mean I dont have to wear a corset? To your point, in some way, she said to me, As a woman, its kind of ironic as an actress that I so often, even though Im in the modern world, that I have to find heroic women in period dramas wearing corsets. Theres something weird about that. In the runup to the critical vote on war in Iraq, Katharine Gun exposed a US plot to spy on the UN. The days and weeks dragged agonisingly by. That's the memo. Iraq All Over Again? When do the clocks change in 2023? 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. 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. Then, the following Monday, I printed out a copy of the email, folded it up, and tucked it carefully in my bag. Across the world, millions protested the invasion of Iraq, doing their own small parts to attempt to prevent the war. And it was there that, to our amazement and totally without warning, the CPS dropped the charges before the trial had even started. 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. Thank you! When you support The American Prospect, youre supporting fellow readers who arent able to give, and countering the class system for information. Direct to your inbox. She talks about having read all these books [about the war]. It almost started with, well, would I have the courage to do what she did in another setting maybe? Those are compelling and important qualities to see in characters that move through a story, and I feel like especially for women it's an under-valued active engine. 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. "Still no regrets," she said. 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 editorial position should never be that. And for her, this was too much. WebHer husband, Yaar Gn, is a Turkish Kurd. She had been following that war, as many of us had, for a year. A script has been doing the rounds in Hollywood for five years. Jack Straw, then the foreign secretary, has not been challenged on whether he authorised the operation to go ahead, although it is almost certain that he did. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. I was suddenly free and bewildered. WebAttempts were made by the authorities to deport her husband, who grew disillusioned with Britain. And when we got to that point in the movie, I had to start montaging it because it was just taking too long to get to the end. We need a truth-sayer. 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. She thought wow, they need a Mandarin translator at GCHQ. "I never aligned myself specifically with the anti-war movement. Her husband said its a job, its just a goddamn job, I work at a caf. So she said, Can I just do nothing with my hair, put on the jeans like Katharine wore? So the wardrobe is accurate to Katharine's style. Public attention is the last thing you expect if, like me, youd settled for a job in the shadowy world of British intelligence. It was an interesting experience because you couldn't really go bending things the way you thought would be more dramatic, you just have to make the story itself and hope there was enough drama there. A few it is probably still too early to tell now in 2019 contains spoilers Official... 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