[24] In July 2019, in a lengthy interview on the US program Democracy Now!, Gun, Gavin Hood (the film's director), and Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy (the journalists who broke the story of the leaked memo) discussed the events that the film describes. But I wasnt thinking about myself really. Although Katharine Gun returned to the public eye in 2019 for the promotional press events for Official Secrets, she has largely retreated from the medias gaze since. And the situation, the toxic abomination of Brexit in our country, has sort of rehabilitated Blair in a sort of bizarre way. GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun speaks out - Daily Mail I think most people have red lines that they wont cross. [5] Less than a week after the Observer story, on Wednesday 5 March, Gun confessed to her line manager at GCHQ that she had leaked the email, and was arrested. So, from a dramatic point of view, you have someone whos just going to their job every day, as most of us do, happens to be a spy working for GCHQ, but could have been a person working for an accounting firm or Enron or Boeing or any other organization, who sees something that is simply wrong, sees, you know, and says, GAVIN HOOD: and says, Im going to speak up.. Gun was outraged after she learned - as part of her job with GCHQ - that the United States wanted . Which agency was it? I mean, obviously, at that point, then felt very sorry that someone had been arrested, but it was a huge relief at the time. Why did you choose to do this film? I wanted to go to the making of the filmKeira Knightley, did you meet with her?and also ask you, Gavin, about Keira taking on this role. Following the incident, Gun struggled to find work that she loved, and her husband had grown disillusioned with Britain. I denied it. Indeed, your point about Bush is right. So I was in a dreadful state. White bread, white Trump, white, or this America, the one of every color, creed? You know, we dont have that. AMY GOODMAN: And you actually said you hadnt heard of Katharine Gun at the time, which is interesting in itself, because the story, in a sense, was almost killed for a bit. GAVIN HOOD: Ben Emmerson. You want to know where he is? he said. And so, we went down together to internal security, and they called Scotland Yard. We do not accept funding from advertising, underwriting or government agencies. . You get pulled over. 'You've caused an international incident': how my work mistake came ED VULLIAMY: Yes, the people who were giving Martin traction to get this story out, and who effectively, according to Mr. Daviess book, censored mine, about the cooking-up of the WMD and the fact that we knew Saddam didnt have any. AMY GOODMAN: Now, he goes in for a regular check-in. In Turkey, close to her husbands family, Gun and her partner, Yasar, could raise their child in peace. Shes out. And we worked five, six hours every day. The film, Official Secrets, comes out officially at the end of August. Katharine Gun Husband: Learn Everything About Iraq War Whistleblower I think youll find hes hiding in plain sight. And there was a dramatic hush in the audience. And you said in places like Chile. For the American gamer, see, Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, United Nations Security Council and the Iraq War, "Whistleblowerin Katharine Gun - "Ich frchtete, sie knnten meine Gedanken lesen", "The US spymaster, the whistleblower, and the secret email she exposed", "Profile: Katherine Gun, Iraq war wistleblower", "Katharine Gun: Ten years on what happened to the woman who revealed dirty tricks on the UN Iraq war vote? Few are aware that her husband had also been thrown into troubled waters when Gun blew the lid off the alleged spy efforts in 2003. How Did Catherine the Great's Husband Really Die? - Harper's BAZAAR (In fact, those -our and -ise endings had been introduced by an Observer editorial assistant, innocently following house style guidelines as she copied out the memo into the system.) I hadnt realised the extent to which Martin in particular had gone out on a limb for this at the paper. Ahead of a new film, Official Secrets, the GCHQ worker who tried to prevent the 2003 invasion of Iraq recalls those feverish days and their consequences Keira Knightley on playing whistleblower Katharine Gun: Iraq was the first time Id been politically engaged. In its absence, Tony Blair won another election in 2005. To see Part 1 of our discussion, go to democracynow.org. She has a younger brother who teaches in Taiwan. [19] MARTIN BRIGHT: I have an abiding interest in the link between religion and conflict. KATHARINE GUN: And yeah, becauseanyway, he was going in every week to basically prove that he was still resident or that they could pinpoint where he was. It opens on August 30th. Now, the defense of necessity is usually used in very more simple circumstances. But, yes, I did. Maybe? He gets more and more pressure from Blair. And then, on Tuesday, they called me in, and I went in. "The U.S. government, through the NSA, was spying in violation of international law on other UN Security Council members in order to better coerce them to back the invasion of Iraq. Katharine Gun leaked that memo to the Observer, in the belief that the revelation of the proposed bugging and blackmail tactics might be enough to stop the war. That accountability is key. 101 years old Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson was an American mathematician whose orbital mechanics calculations as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent crewed spaceflights in the United States. Katharine Gun is a British Linguist and Iraq War Whistleblower. And so, a lot, a lot later. I dont have to be in makeup or wardrobe for hours. And she just said what she loved about Katharine isand I hope this isnt said the wrong way, and I keep saying itshes one of us. So, in the film, when the director of public prosecutions says to Ben Emmerson, trying to wiggle out of it, Listen, it wasnt my decision to prosecute. Thats actually true. AMY GOODMAN: Shes then arrested. In 2003, Gun was working as a translator of Mandarin at the government intelligence agency, GCHQ, in Cheltenham. And yeah, it was absolutely terrifying. Lets find out! Shes ordinary. Katharine Gun Official Secrets True Story Interview - Esquire MARTIN BRIGHT: OK, youre making me feel really bad about going to work for him now. AMY GOODMAN: So, and we want to get to all that, but nowwe want to get to all that, but right now youre showing this film around the country. This is Democracy Now! GAVIN HOOD: Chile, Bulgaria, Angola, Cameroon, Pakistan, Mexico. Official Secrets: A Conversation With Director Gavin Hood The law requires you to. ED VULLIAMY: But my point is not against Mr. Ahmed. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Its millions. I was calling Nigel Jones, my MP. He left the Observer not long after the events it describes and now runs the Creative Society, a charity that helps widen access to jobs in the media and the arts to candidates with non-traditional backgrounds. We 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 Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Theyre going to send him back to Turkey. He would have had to have the authority of Lord Goldsmith to prosecute. MARTIN BRIGHT: Not until around the time of the trial. Gun owned up to the leak a few days later to save her GCHQ colleagues from a witch-hunt. Katharine Teresa Gun (ne Harwood;[1] born 1974) is a British linguist who worked as a translator for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). How am I possibly going to do that? We were mostly in our mid-20s, so it was the usual stuff, who is going out with who. ED VULLIAMY: Yes. ED VULLIAMY: Yes. Do you think shed meet with me? Because I think we were both a little skeptical of each other. [3], Katharine Harwood moved to Taiwan in 1977 with her parents, Paul and Jan Harwood. But deep inside me, I didnt feel guilty. Katharine Gun - who's played by Keira Knightley in a forthcoming film - blew the whistle on a dodgy scheme by the American government. And I justI just determined to deny it. The country, at the time, was being drummed into war by the Blair government, desperate to achieve the United Nations sanction for the imminent American-led invasion of Iraq. Right? is katharine gun still married to yasar. I think of journalists as being bullet-proof in a way, she says, but obviously not., She and Bright have done several question and answer sessions in the US after the film has been screened at various festivals. And we had to sit and wait for two hours while they winged it down from London. These were, as I said before, bitter times. The official editorial line, led by the then editor Roger Alton (now an executive editor at the Daily Mail) and political editor Kamal Ahmed (now editorial director of BBC News) was in close support of the Blair governments position on the invasion. Protesters against the invasion of Iraq, February 2003. Interview with Joel Looper by Schenck Talks Bonhoeffer I think its important for people to find that truth and follow through on it, Gun opined, and its certainly worth remembering. AMY GOODMAN: And then what happened? But you areis this part of the film true, where you have the authorities come in and say, Were questioning everyone, because someone here did this.. GAVIN HOOD: Well, for me, what I love about the story is actually, on the one hand, its got this huge global political relevance, and it resonates still today. KATHARINE GUN: Well, hes Turkish, from a Kurdish background, yeah. You have the Iraq War continuing today, 16 years after George W. Bush, knowing there were not weapons of mass destruction, invades Iraq with Britain. KATHARINE GUN: to police custody, yes, and kept overnight in a police cell. In the very typical British manner, we just pretended we had never met.. Yes. Iraq now, nightmare. Im going, No, II dont. He said, Just google Katharine Gun and official secrets. So I googled official secrets Katharine Gun, becausethe title of our film comes from the Official Secrets Act, which is what she breached when she leaked the memo. If you are a journalist, check and double-check your sources. They knew the difference between truth, lies and propaganda. AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. AMY GOODMAN: What was it called? Please do your part today. The repercussions of a lot of what happened are still being felt today.. AMY GOODMAN: And what did you tell Katharine at that time? And I didnt want to have a record. 'Official Secrets': the story of the British spy who tried to stop a war AMY GOODMAN: I mean, youre the guy who broke the story that showed that Britain was collaborating with the U.S. in trying to get dirt on U.S. ambassadors, AMY GOODMAN: to get them to vote for the war in Iraq, which ended up killingwhat do you say at the end of the film? The biggest story was: Who cares why were in the war? She urged "those in a position to do so to disclose information which relates to this planned aggression; legal advice, meetings between the White House and other intelligence agencies, assessments of Iran's threat level (or better yet, evidence that assessments have been altered), troop deployments and army notifications. what is the true story behind the Keira Knightley film? - The Sun [11], The case came to court on 25 February 2004. I mean, MI6 couldnt do that. Iraq All Over Again? And Where Is Katharine Gun? - LA Progressive And yet this rather shy 30-year-old leaked details of an alleged plot to bug UN delegates before the Iraq war and was sacked from her . AMY GOODMAN: So you just thought this was routine. And looking back, its easy to be nostalgic about how things were with Bush and Blair, because it looks like these people were easier to hold to account. I wish wed pushed it harder with the boss class within The Observer. You know, in the end, there was a feeling, I think, whatI know that Katharine and I have talked about this a lot. Some of the information that would have been revealed at her trial, in particular Lord Goldsmiths conflicting arguments as to the legality of the invasion, did not fully emerge until the publication of the report of the Chilcot inquiry in 2016. MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, I mean, the story doesnt end. Gun had, of course, been forced to abandon her career in the civil service and finally, struggling for work, left Britain altogether. And you had a showing in San Francisco. Katharine Gun (ne Harwood), 47, is married to Yasar Gn, a Turkish Kurd, with whom she has a 13-year old daughter. The legal case against Gun was eventually dropped by the British government in 2004, after her lawyer, Ben Emmerson QC (played in the film with fabulous charisma by Ralph Fiennes), threatened to use disclosure to put the legal basis of the war itself on trial. This is Democracy Now! So, lots of leads there. Gun splits her time between Turkey and Britain. What happened next is the subject of a new Hollywood movie starring Keira Knightley as Katharine Gun. [6] She left teaching in 1999, and after some temporary jobs, finding it difficult to find work as a linguist, Gun applied to GCHQ in 2001, after reading a newspaper advertisement for the organisation. Who is her husband? As soon as I opened the door and he saw me coming in, and he could see something was wrong, and thenand I said, Theyve taken him. And he went, The bastards! So, anyway, I was on the phone. So I saw people going in and coming out and going in and coming out. MARTIN BRIGHT: We didI tell you what, though, we did feel that we had failed. 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 . But this gets out, and suddenly you see it on the front page of The Observer when you go to buy, what, milk in the morning for you and your husband. I work for the British people.