Over the weekend, I got to work. 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. 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? Katharine Gun, former intelligence specialist turned whistleblower, discusses the new film "Official Secrets" which details why she leaked a classified memo. 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. None of the Government reports into the war acknowledged it, nor did the history books. ", 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. "One of the things that we discovered quite early on when he was interviewing me was that a lot of stuff was just happening in my head. I grew up in South Africa in the seventies and eighties, when apartheid was really tightening and tightening and tightening. Then, we all started watching the invasion and we werent how we got into the war. What we have in this country is very precious, and in a sense, when I make these kind of films I don't know if I consciously do it, it's actually reminding about us that authoritarianism and governments gone awry are not okay, and what makes us strongoh, that sounds terribly pretentious, but I think you see where I'm coming from. 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. ", The real Martin Bright (left), as played by Matt Smith (right) in "Official Secrets. 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. It almost started with, well, would I have the courage to do what she did in another setting maybe? Exaggerating threats to provoke a war? 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. The editorial position should never be that. This is my second brief moment of fame. 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. There's an obvious scene of the immigration deportation. By the way, I know some amazing people in the intelligence services. However, Gun added that this was nothing on the anxiety she felt when the memo she had leaked ended up on the front page of The Observer, which she called "the most stressful memo of my life. What might, IKeira Knightley, feel if I'm sitting at my desk and this happened to me?" Right now my priorities are to ensure I am there for my daughter.". 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. Healthy mother-of-two, 32, collapsed and died from brain bleed while she led fitness bounce class. I've seen that happen. But my point is simply this: The underpinnings of this country matter. Some called her a traitor; others Or at least, she could have been. It is to say that we need to know the truth behind the decisions to act or not to act. As the title of the film script suggests, she was "The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War". WebKatharine Guns husbands photo revelations are not made by her yet. 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. Yet to this day there has been barely a mention of the Bush regimes disgraceful demand in official histories of the period, as if its been deliberately written out. This is a special case because this story is very little-known in the United States. So Im very proud of Keiras performance and I dont mind that she doesnt have blonde hair. Gavin Hood: Keira is wonderful and is absolutely professional, arrives perfectly prepared, very calm, no fuss. 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. She wasnt charged for eight months a gruelling period which is depicted as just a few And Where Is Katharine Gun, JUST 36 HOURS TO GO IN OUR WINTER CAMPAIGN. Do you go vote? 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. The other was Coleen Rowley, former FBI special agent and counsel at the Minneapolis bureau, who blew the whistle on FBI and other shortcomings WebKatharine Gun (ne Harwood), 47, is married to Yasar Gn, a Turkish Kurd, with whom she has a 13-year old daughter. Please help keep the independent journalism of Common Dreams strong. The contents were explosive, implicating America in a blackmail plot to swing UN votes in favor of an invasion. 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. 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. You can look up Nicole Mowbray, she wrote an article in The Guardian a couple weeks ago, about this worst day of her life. Across the world, millions protested the invasion of Iraq, doing their own small parts to attempt to prevent the war. But any such illusions were shattered on the freezing cold morning of Friday, January 31, 2003, as I read and re-read the most extraordinary email from Americas intelligence service, the National Security Agency. Unfortunately. This content is imported from youTube. Webdeport Guns husband, Yasar (Adam Bakri), a Muslim Kurdish Turk who was awaiting permanent leave to remain in the U.K. She now has a four-year-old daughter who she is bringing up in Turkey. The spin in this country and in the UK was the threat of deadly weapons ready to be deployed by Saddam. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. She failed. I answered an advert in The Guardian newspaper for a translator. But, maybe if I didn't know and maybe if I went into that job and discovered oh my God, maybe I really can stop a terrorist attack today. 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. As of 2020 Gun lives in Turkey and Britain. 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? It turned out a copyeditor at The Observer had run the memo through spellcheck before printing it.]. This whole intelligence didn't match what the politicians were saying. 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. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images). And that's quite a depressing place to find yourself in when you feel so strongly and passionately about something. It sounds big with Katharine but that's what inspired me. This, despite credible evidence that Iran was in full compliance with terms of the agreement. Gun sacrificed so much when she decided to leak and has worked only intermittently since. I did feel like, Well, I failed.. 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. At first, I heard nothing. Some of those same birds are still flapping wings in the skies above Washington. Sound familiar? This is a story about my life and my leak after all, and I still believe in the issues passionately. So there is sometimes a thought in my head that says: What if Katharine hadn't leaked that memo? And it's also true that we were then attacked by the Drudge Report for what would now be called 'fake news. WebKatharine Gun, as passionately embodied here by Knightley, skews too noble to be particularly interesting, and the film is weakest when its focused on her and her husband She didnt know where he was for three days and she took the train down from Charlton to London to see the MP, Nigel Jones, who said exactly what he says in the movie. So we start with hair, and then we start with glasses, and Keira says, "Gavin, what if I just was me?" [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. Public attention is the last thing you expect if, like me, youd settled for a job in the shadowy world of British intelligence. Who knows whether they would've bent those other nations to vote for a resolution. But get out of that trailer as fast as possible, get onto the set, and work from inside? I dont know if theyd have discovered me eventually, but the fact is I couldnt live a lie for ever. 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. Keira calmly said: Oh, that was probably me. I still blush to the tips of my toes when I think about it. He really wouldnt; that scene in the movie really happened. The poor woman is based on a real person. Well, you don't have one and get that almost anti-climactic moment that is a punch in the gut," said Hood. Taking Vitamin D each day could cut your chances of getting dementia, study claims. WebHer husband, Yaar Gn, is a Turkish Kurd. I didnt know until I looked really deeply into this that theres really two schools of thought. Naturally, I was discreet. 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. Quality journalism. So that's who's running this show. The only thing that we altered in that is that I didnt have time to tell it for as long as it went on. 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. Eventually, it was widely held that at least one of the reports of the attacks, and perhaps even both, were false. Twenty-eight, pretty naive. 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. 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. For the Observer too, it was a story full of risks. In leaking it to the Observer, she was also doing something unprecedented in the history of espionage. We were to target such things as phone calls and emails from their homes as well as their places of work. As one of the journalists who broke the story, I feel a certain responsibility for how things have turned out. David Dayen: Just the notion that the paper would say, we're for the war, that was their editorial position. 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. And Assange is the same. But the invasion was forced to proceed with the backing of Bushs coalition of the willinginstead of with the support of the United Nations. The British are quite British, you know. 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. Maybe thats rewarding. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. 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. "But the more I think about what happened, the more angry and frustrated I get about the fact that nobody acted on intelligence. She had received an email in her inbox asking her and her colleagues to help in a vast intelligence "surge" designed to secure a UN resolution to send troops into Iraq. 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. 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 Secrets (Keira Knightly is Katharine). I was suddenly free and bewildered. 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. The paper had taken the controversial decision to back intervention in Iraq. 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." And the reason? Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture. Gavin Hood: Yes, it really sticks in my throat too. And we keep that system alive. Then, the world is safer until the sequel when it all happens again. And I know whose throat it really sticks in, is [British journalist] Ed Vulliamy, who I adore. When do the clocks change in 2023? She said, I thought that might be quite interesting and exciting. I know what it is like to watch the system become completely authoritarian. The real-life Gun said: "The attempt at deportation kind of spiked my stress level again for another period of my life." It should take the facts as they lead. For several years, just recalling the events would set my heart racing and my hands trembling. Jeb Bush Just Botched the Iraq Question. To this day, however, there has been barely a mention of the year I spent living under a cloud. When Official Secrets received its British premiere at Londons BFI Film Festival earlier this month, I was determined to wear something that held a special meaning and settled on a dress by an Iraqi designer. Chile and Mexico and the other smaller countries were so outraged that they refused to even bring it to a vote. Gavin Hood: There is a kind of cognitive dissonance. I don't know that consciously it did, it's just that I didn't know the story and so, for me, it was I asked Katharine, I flew to London, I met her for five days. And it's a tough profession in many ways. Not mine or The Observer's finest hour, has to be said. By Katharine Gun, Gchq Whistleblower For The Mail On Sunday, Published: 22:33 GMT, 26 October 2019 | Updated: 16:47 GMT, 8 November 2019. 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. Martin Bright, who is in the movie very briefly I guess, is no longer in journalism as I understand it. Throughout her own court case, what only a few knew was that she was also fighting for He is just way out there in a whole other realm. You dont have to agree with what she did, Im just telling you what she did. The other kind of fight could be frightening and politically risky. What do you think resonates? So WMD may not have been as important, had they gotten that resolution. She wasnt planning to get caught and then the dilemma was, My friends are all going to have their lives ruined.. That kind of propaganda has to stop. 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. 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