WebGun, then 28, received an email about a U.S.-led operation enlisting the help of Britain to spy on other countries, in an attempt to blackmail them into supporting the Iraq War. So Im very proud of Keiras performance and I dont mind that she doesnt have blonde hair. And I did the same for the journalists and the lawyers and everybody. 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. David Dayen: One thing I think you depict really brilliantly in this story is what the climate was like at the time. And the reason? We need another Katharine Gun. What happened to Gun afterwards forms the basis of the film Official Secrets, which opened in New York and Los Angeles earlier this month and goes into wider release today. David Dayen is the Prospects executive editor. But this specificinstance is the ugly truth of what goes on.". Two hours later after this deep dive, I called Ged back and said, How come we dont know this story? I guess the answer to that is that her story was big news for the day, and then very quickly got crushed by a bigger story, which was the story of the invasion. If if wasnt, what does that mean for the rule of law? In technical speak, the Americans wanted the whole gamut of information which would give US policy makers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals in relation to Iraq. The decision to leak it was almost instant I felt I had no choice. Just occasionally 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. the waning support for public institutions today. Ms Gun worked as a translator at the GCHQ building in Cheltenham, pictured. On the other hand, she and Ben, to this day, feel they never got their day in court. 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. 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. 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. 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. I never thought Id be choosing a dress for a red carpet appearance at a major film festival. But the Bush administration went to war anyway, using the pretext of weapons of mass destruction. Not the truth, but the war. ", 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. 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. I got that from Yasar. So it was a pretty awful thing to happen to her. And in her case, she risked both her job and her freedom and whatever you think of her politically, I think that takes some guts. After the initial flurry of media interest, I was left to figure out how to move on with my life and that proved hard. Gun made the choice to leak the document, which Martin Bright of The Observer in Britain published in a story on March 2, 2003. When do the clocks change in 2023? So she went along to this interview, and she was 28. David Dayen: Just the notion that the paper would say, we're for the war, that was their editorial position. There it was spotted by Debs Paterson, director of the critically acclaimed Africa United, who met Katharine Gun last week with a view to making the film of her life. To this day, however, there has been barely a mention of the year I spent living under a cloud. 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. Then, the following Monday, I printed out a copy of the email, folded it up, and tucked it carefully in my bag. Who spoke to the homeland secretary? The contents were explosive, implicating America in a blackmail plot to swing UN votes in favor of an invasion. Gun was followed, denied legal advice and her Turkish husband faced deportation. 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. 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 The Observer, which then publishes it on their front page. 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. 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). The central issues of whistle-blower protection, public interest disclosures, journalistic freedom and the accountability of our elected representatives continue to be just as relevant today. He said: "Very close. David Dayen: As someone who works on a magazine, it's the ultimate copyediting failure. Whether you work for Boeing or Enron or Wallstreet? It was like a neon sign that was flashing at me, Gun says. So, that's where we had to go for WMD. To separate fact from fiction, Newsweek spoke to the real Gun and Bright, as well as Official Secrets director Gavin Hood. This meant that a lot of the things that we see Gun go through in the film actually took far longer in real life. The concern among many Americans is that claims of an unprovoked, deadly attack by Iran are exaggerated. 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. Now the goal is not truth, it is victory. The more we find out that in fact the million-person march was a real cause of worry for Downing Street and for Blair personally, it makes you think we were so close and yet so far.". That's the memo. A thorough investigation began as soon as the staff started arriving at GCHQ on the Monday morning. "You get to the end, and there's this court case. WebWhistleblower Katherine Gun, right, is played by Keira Knightly in the movie Official Secrets View gallery Gun was outraged after she learned - as part of her job with GCHQ - that After the leak was published, hundreds of staff inside the building were questioned in order to discover the identity of the whistleblower. But that shouldn't be the philosophy pre-war when you're trying to decide whether to go to war. For me as a journalist who was really getting started around that time, this climate of fear that was in place in the United States and also in the UK. If I was writing this as fiction, I need a much longer court case, right? What resonates to me is the somewhat more, I hope, timeless thing. I didn't plan to have this movie out today and know what was going to be going on. 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. 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. Gun said that the UK government still had some explaining to do: "I thinkthere need to be more questions asked about whether they responded to that request, why they felt it was within their scope of work to respond to that sort of request, and what is the manner of the relationship between UK politics and US politics. Problem number two: Do you shut up or do you speak up? A manufactured provocation. And maybe they were right, I don't know. 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. But the falsehoods and unnecessary wars of yesteryear likely have influenced the waning support for public institutions today. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. 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. 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". But she said she would still be prepared to give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. However, the Pentagon says the US deployment is "in response to indications of heightened Iranian readiness to conduct offensive operations against US forces and our interests.". She will not talk about it anything else. "Still no regrets," she said. In the matter of a few years. Iran, of course, isn't interested in dealing with him. So thats how the scene happened, but she didnt know where he was for three days, he was at Harmonsworth, before she got him out. 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 point of all of this is painfully obvious. Gavin Hood: Its a question of how conditioned are we to the conventional Hollywood structure. After the charges against her were dropped in 2004, she found it difficult to find a new Then the most almighty cacophony erupted, a roar so loud we could barely hear to speak. I didnt know the story and I googled her. I've seen that happen. The spin in this country and in the UK was the threat of deadly weapons ready to be deployed by Saddam. 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. KatharineGun did not stop the war,but was it all entirely in vain? Then the story went This content is imported from youTube. Throughout her own court case, what only a few knew was that she was also fighting for Gun had, of course, been forced to abandon her career in the civil service Can dementia be spotted in CHILDHOOD? Had the film appeared any earlier, however, I dont think Id have been able to watch it, let alone help the makers. 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. ", 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. It remains entirely to the credit of Roger Alton, at the time the paper's editor, that he stuck with the story, despite its potential implications. I became a mother, we moved countries and I have come to terms with that year of my life, though it will always define me in some ways. Some called her a traitor; others insisted she was a hero. 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. David Dayen: No problem. Right now my priorities are to ensure I am there for my daughter.". Koza was in effect issuing a direct order to the employees of a UK security agency to gather "the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises". For several years, just recalling the events would set my heart racing and my hands trembling. 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.". So somehow in my rolodex, sometimes they sought me out. The paper had taken the controversial decision to back intervention in Iraq. So, Im not really answering your question well, but her feeling was just: Now I dont belong in this company. David Dayen: And you were dealing with a story that was about a leak that didn't stop a war and leading to a trial that didn't happen. But again, I cant help but make some small jokes about these things. 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. 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. 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. Neither my friends nor my family knew what I did all day. You can look up Nicole Mowbray, she wrote an article in The Guardian a couple weeks ago, about this worst day of her life. 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. 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. Then, the world is safer until the sequel when it all happens again. '", 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. The case and the resulting anxiety never seemed far away. And they failed, in part, I believe, because Katharine Gun leaked that memo, Official Secrets director Gavin Hood told Democracy Now!. 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. Like a neon sign that was their editorial position was going to be deployed Saddam... And Ben, to this interview, and she was a bridge far. Lot of the year I spent living under a cloud other hand, she printed off the memo tucked. Very proud of Keiras performance and I dont mind that she doesnt have blonde hair imported from.... 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