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. 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. The days and weeks dragged agonisingly by. Direct to your inbox. I was 27 when it all began. Questioner: The only thing that I've wondered while watching the film, since it's a true story, is how could Ms. Gunn, who was a spy, who was a member of an intelligence agency, be surprised when her husband got deportedor when the government came after her husband, how could she be surprised when all of the different reactions she got came forward? Sixteen years ago, I became headline news after I leaked an internal email from GCHQ, the communications intelligence gathering centre near Cheltenham. That kind of propaganda has to stop. ", Bright noted that apart from some small flourishes to heighten the drama, he didn't think Official Secrets had "any genuine liberties taken with the truth. David Dayen: How did you think Keira Knightley was an asset in showing that emotional journey throughout the movie? Before 1989, there had been a Public Interest Defence to protect whistleblowers, but that was altered amid the furore surrounding the sinking of the Argentinian Navy cruiser, the General Belgrano, in the course of the Falklands War. 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? In the matter of a few years. "But that's partly my own fault because I haven't aggressively pursued a career. And it's also true that we were then attacked by the Drudge Report for what would now be called 'fake news. So Im very proud of Keiras performance and I dont mind that she doesnt have blonde hair. ", 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 typically, in the movie business, ever since Joseph Campbell wrote The Hero of A Thousand Facesand Im not meaning to be sarcastic because thats a great piece of work, but it spoiled the idea that every development executive is reading these books because the hero we meet and then something upsets their world and the antagonist that must equal the hero, and eventually we go through these loops and the hero triumphs in the end. Did that change your approach to presenting the film knowing that this was actually going to be somewhat of a surprise to people? Katharine Gun, former intelligence specialist turned whistleblower, discusses the new film "Official Secrets" which details why she leaked a classified memo. And the reason? So we start with hair, and then we start with glasses, and Keira says, "Gavin, what if I just was me?" And I know whose throat it really sticks in, is [British journalist] Ed Vulliamy, who I adore. She wasnt charged for eight months a gruelling period which is depicted as just a few Anyway, the Office of Special Plans and Abram Shulsky make an interesting Wikipedia read, it won't take you very long. 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. If Keira Knightleys remarkable performance in Official Secrets can help change that, the film will truly have been worthwhile. As I walked down the red carpet, I had never in my life experienced the flash of so many cameras. WebKatharine Gun (ne Harwood), 47, is married to Yasar Gn, a Turkish Kurd, with whom she has a 13-year old daughter. He said she didnt even know what the job was. She leaked a memo, she thought she'd get away with it, and she faced another one of these little moral dilemmas which was a few days later all her friends were being interrogated. '", 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. Look at what happened to Reality Winner in this country. Gavin Hood: Its a great question. 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 Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. The difficulties of translating Gun's story also made writing the climax of the film tricky. Martin Bright, who is in the movie very briefly I guess, is no longer in journalism as I understand it. I had, of course, signed the Official Secrets Act, content in the knowledge I was working within the law for Britains protection. Later, it turned out that the Attorney General had indeed judged the war to be illegal in his initial advice, but that fact was not revealed until six years later in 2010. What do I do? And that was my way in. Gun made the choice to leak the document, which Martin Bright of The Observer in Britain published in a story on March 2, 2003. Where do you draw the line? What is this paper? 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. When Katharine Gun came across a memo while working for the British government in 2003, her whole world changed. Me, you, not some big picture. As a result of the story the paper published 10 years ago this weekend, she was arrested, lost her job and faced trial under the Official Secrets Act. My job had been to listen to Chinese communications, translate them from Mandarin to English and produce reports for different government departments. This is a story about my life and my leak after all, and I still believe in the issues passionately. 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 And then there is the Gulf of Tonkin incident that led America deeply into war against North Vietnam. Yet I do think Keira perfectly captures the strain I was under, the isolation and fear. 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. 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. So she went along to this interview, and she was 28. You work for the government. Gavin Hood: Hes not in journalism. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. And just coming from my perspective, the press, because a lot of this is a story about the press, and how they handle it. So I said to her at one point, and its in the movie because her interrogator said it too and you would ask her the same question, which is Katharine I hear all this, but it was a little muddy, you worked as a spy, you hacked peoples phones and computers, you do dirty tricks. I was only a junior analyst, but I knew the email was outrageous: the American government was asking Britain to spy on United Nations diplomats so they could be blackmailed into supporting an invasion of Iraq. Happy and carefree, Id recently married my handsome husband and was working at GCHQ as a linguist. So right there, you are pulling out the highlights," said Hood of the key issue with making Official Secrets. For the Observer too, it was a story full of risks. To me, it was a way of showing that Iraq cannot be dismissed as a horror show of suffering, but is an ancient and sophisticated culture that goes back thousands of years. As the title of the film script suggests, she was "The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War". So, to find that it would be dramatised on the big screen was as wonderfully welcome as it was astonishing. WebGun sacrificed so much when she decided to leak and has worked only intermittently since. David Dayen: So why do you think this is an important story to tell now in 2019? It was written in technical language, but the meaning was clear enough: the Americans were asking around 100 people in GCHQ to gather information from the communications made by diplomats from six nations Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea and Pakistan all which were then sitting on the United Nations Security Council. 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? 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. Unfortunately, perhaps, I have a conscience and my dishonesty gnawed at me persistently until the next day, when I confessed. 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. "Still no regrets," she said. Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture. Problem number two: Do you shut up or do you speak up? (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images). WebKatharine Guns husbands photo revelations are not made by her yet. 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. [In real life] I saw the email, I immediately thought, 'Oh, my God, this is shocking.' We were in development with a particular studio, and I don't mean to be funny after such a heavy film but sometimes we need a little bit of humor. 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.". WebIts the tale of whistleblower Katharine Gun, a former translator for the UKs Government Communications HQ, who leaked a top-secret memo in 2003 on the eve of a divisive US-led war. So we just worked on the performance from the very what if it's you? Whether you work for Boeing or Enron or Wallstreet? An insider with courage. And she and many in her world knew, and many in the CIA knew, as Mel Goodman who's the man in the boathouse in Washington knew, that this was B.S. 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. Everyone involved assumed the project had run into the dust, but then it appeared on the Black List, a Hollywood website for unmade film scripts, which has featured Slumdog Millionaire and The King's Speech in the past. the waning support for public institutions today. He is wonderfully articulate but super pissed off, and his PTSDbecause hes been in Iraq for yearsmanifests at just disdain for that certain person you mentioned. 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." If I was writing this as fiction, I need a much longer court case, right? Then the most almighty cacophony erupted, a roar so loud we could barely hear to speak. America, Britain, and Spain withdrew their proposed resolution on invading Iraq when it became clear that it would not garner the necessary Security Council votes, in part because of the information Gun brought to light. 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? WebHer husband, Yaar Gn, is a Turkish Kurd. 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. Was it because we had demanded the Attorney Generals legal advice as part of my defence? Across the world, millions protested the invasion of Iraq, doing their own small parts to attempt to prevent the war. This included a particular focus on the "swing nations" on the security council, Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, "as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters". Gun had, of course, been forced to abandon her career in the civil service Its Straussian, over the top and pretentious but basically amounts to this. They failed. And it's a tough profession in many ways. The British are quite British, you know. And he kept thinking, 'How am I going to portray this? Copyright 2023 | The American Prospect, Inc. | All Rights Reserved, The Alt-Labor Chronicles: Americas Worker Centers, Official Secrets: A Conversation With Director Gavin Hood. 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. If it was, who cleared it to be passed to GCHQ? 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. Katharine Gun, a British former government employee, faced two years imprisonment in England for the crime of telling the truth. Maybe thats rewarding. 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. Quality journalism. Then, the following November, after eight months of worry, I was finally charged. And I think thats why you get this very honest, pure, deeply felt performance. Warning: The following contains spoilers for Official Secrets. But ultimately, heres why I thinkthis might sound like a strange statement. Now the goal is not truth, it is victory. Provocation? "Financially it's the toughest," she said. Gavin Hood: Thats such an interesting statement, I mean, I just took it at face value that papers take an editorial position, but youre right. It should take the facts as they lead. They published the scoop in March 2003putting Gun directly in the crosshairs of law enforcement, and sparking a legal fight for her freedom. 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. Would you risk your job? Or at least, she could have been. Please help keep the independent journalism of Common Dreams strong. It gives me an interesting pause. Gun disclosed details of the spying operation as it was happening to stop something she viewed as terrible happening in the future. You have no idea. Because I'm not ambitious it's not paramount for me to find myself in a high-paid job. Liberty, the civil rights organisation, and Ben Emmerson QC had already agreed to defend me and we prepared for trial. What appealed to me in the end is that Katharine is in fact, far more like us. Gavin Hood: I asked her the same questions, and on about my second day interviewing her, I said to her, because I wasnt sure if I should make the movie; I mean, I needed to know whose story I was telling and if she was batshit crazy. This content is imported from youTube. Spoilers to follow as well. 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, Don't mention the Iraq war, William Hague tells cabinet, Tenyears on, the case for invading Iraq is still valid, Occupying Iraq: a US army veteran's ambivalence, Howthe Bush administration sold the war and we bought it, the story the paper published 10 years ago this weekend, was arrested, lost her job and faced trial under the Official Secrets Act, collapsed after the prosecution withdrew its evidence. She had been following that war, as many of us had, for a year. And I thought: this is good. And I thought this is going to end in the worst civil war. Questioner: It was so heartening to hear you talk about that hero's journey because I feel like we so often take compassion, passion, integrity for granted as a call to action. Truth and accountability were drilled into me as a child. Ten years ago, a young Mandarin specialist at GCHQ, the government's surveillance centre in Cheltenham, did something extraordinary. 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. WebAttempts were made by the authorities to deport her husband, who grew disillusioned with Britain. The issue is provocation. 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. I believe that all of this should have been formally acknowledged as part of the history of the second Gulf War. Gavin Hood: Keira is wonderful and is absolutely professional, arrives perfectly prepared, very calm, no fuss. Unfortunately. 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. Sound familiar? David Dayen: I want to go to the questions now. WebKatharine Gun wasn't looking for attention or any type of notoriety when in 2003, while working as a British intelligence specialist, she leaked a top secret memo. As a film of her story is planned, she tells of her anger and frustration but not her regrets, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Katharine Gun back in Cheltenham last week: 'This is the ugly truth of what goes on.' In the runup to the critical vote on war in Iraq, Katharine Gun exposed a US plot to spy on the UN. 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. She said, I worry what's going to happen, they'll go, Ooh, I don't know if I like Keira Knightly in blonde hair, what's she done to her nose, does she have glasses on? Because they don't have a comparison to make, until you see her at the end of the movie. Then, the world is safer until the sequel when it all happens again. Its had far reaching and very negative impacts in all aspects of our institutions and our public life," Gun says. The decision to leak it was almost instant I felt I had no choice. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. Not mine or The Observer's finest hour, has to be said. 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. He said: "Very close. 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. Now, Trump says, he wants to see Iran back at the negotiating table. So, Im not really answering your question well, but her feeling was just: Now I dont belong in this company. There were some audience questions as well. In the years following, an author called Marcia Mitchell contacted me and said she was keen to write a book about my case. She said, I thought that might be quite interesting and exciting. That's really the simplest question: When do you speak up? 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