Did that change your approach to presenting the film knowing that this was actually going to be somewhat of a surprise to people? By design. But she still was not uncomfortable with the other things we've talked about. She said, I thought that might be quite interesting and exciting. ", 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. President Bush visits the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, January 25, 2006. And isnt it also time to re-examine the Official Secrets Act? 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. As Bright noted, however, what we see in the movie is close to the real events. We were to target such things as phone calls and emails from their homes as well as their places of work. In one pivotal scene in the film, all of Gun and Bright's work is nearly undone by one mistake, as a member of The Observer team accidentally changed the American spelling of the memo into British spelling, something The Drudge Report then used to discredit the memo. Jeb Bush Just Botched the Iraq Question. The spin in this country and in the UK was the threat of deadly weapons ready to be deployed by Saddam. David Dayen: No problem. Not only was the cable the most sensitive ever to be disclosed on either side of the Atlantic, it was also unique in its timing. And Where Is Katharine Gun, JUST 36 HOURS TO GO IN OUR WINTER CAMPAIGN. On the other hand, she and Ben, to this day, feel they never got their day in court. 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. However, she is not without disappointment about how little obvious difference she made. 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. She also opposed the pending war. WebGun sacrificed so much when she decided to leak and has worked only intermittently since. 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. This is my second brief moment of fame. And for her, this was too much. Some called her a traitor; others insisted she was a hero. What might, IKeira Knightley, feel if I'm sitting at my desk and this happened to me?" 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. When I was a young law student, we studied the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Sometimes movies can be an effective way to make forgotten stories part of our national narrative, and in that sense, Official Secrets comes not a moment too soon. But Katharine only ever leaked this one memo. Which really, really, really happened. David Dayen: I want to go to the questions now. She said, I was naive. I spent the following hours doubled over the toilet bowl in absolute terror. And then, she said when she got in therenow bear in mind that she still is bound by the Official Secrets Act. But I talk to people and there does seem to be a sense of failure that, despite all the campaigning and all the marching and all the protesting and everything they did, it made not a ha'porth of difference. Sixteen years ago, I became headline news after I leaked an internal email from GCHQ, the communications intelligence gathering centre near Cheltenham. When my moment came, I found myself standing alone in the dock facing the judge and surrounded by lawyers, journalists and supporters. If we give over, if we start believing the fake news, as you say, we're all doomed, man. Last week in Los Angeles, I got to interview the director, South African-born Gavin Hood, after a screening. 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. 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. You have no idea. Now the goal is not truth, it is victory. 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. So here we are in rehearsal, and we're talking one day about the look. 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. Not the truth, but the war. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. 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. David Dayen: As someone who works on a magazine, it's the ultimate copyediting failure. In leaking it to the Observer, she was also doing something unprecedented in the history of espionage. We need another Katharine 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. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. When you support The American Prospect, youre supporting fellow readers who arent able to give, and countering the class system for information. This and her other writings about intelligence issues have been critically acclaimed. Interestingly I think we faced a challenge, which some of you may or may not agree with. 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? Is this a matter of threatening to launch a war, or is it a matter of responding to the US positioning itself for war? I didnt know the story and I googled her. I don't think she thought they would deport her husband, I really don't think she thought that. Enter Katharine Gun. So important was this email, I knew it might even derail the case that Tony Blair was making for joining the Americans in an invasion. Most whistleblowers leak after the event to expose perceived wrongdoing. 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. It left me in an impossible predicament. 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. But that shouldn't be the philosophy pre-war when you're trying to decide whether to go to war. For all the relief, there was a weird sense of anti-climax that we would now be unable to give our side of the story to the public. It turned out a copyeditor at The Observer had run the memo through spellcheck before printing it.]. Some of those same birds are still flapping wings in the skies above Washington. Ed, the real Ed, is absolutely delightful. It is written by Sara and Gregory Bernstein, a California-based husband-and-wife writing partnership who have worked with British director Jonathan Lynn. It is probably still too early to tell. Ive already lost a dear friend, and I cant do thisget called up two months of the year, every year, for the next 12 years. But George W. Bush did something that, thankfully, Trump hasnt pulled off yet: He took us to war. It is to say that a government, for its own reasons may, either by design or through miscalculation, lead a country into an unnecessary and brutal war. It is to say that we need to know the truth behind the decisions to act or not to act. She wasnt planning to get caught and then the dilemma was, My friends are all going to have their lives ruined.. Gavin Hood: After the spellcheck. It was what I was thinking, what I was feeling. This is a story about my life and my leak after all, and I still believe in the issues passionately. 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". "Still no regrets," she said. David Dayen: But he is not a headline journalist at a newspaper. "That really happened," Hood confirmed, though it did not go quite as it is shown in the film. You took this job and didnt even know what it was. 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. The memo from Frank Koza, chief of staff at the "regional targets" section of the National Security Agency, GCHQ's sister organisation in the US, remains shocking in its implications for British sovereignty. I was called on to look this way and that and smile until my face was stiff. Hood said that this was a purposeful choice by Knightley. "We started wondering whether we should do the blonde hair and the glasses and wondering about prosthetics, but one point Keira said to me, 'You know, the last thing I want is the audience to say, 'Oh, I don't know if I like her blonde,'" said Hood. She hoped that if people know about the lengths to which theyve gone to legitimize an invasion of Iraq, then it would blow apart, and people will suddenly think, No, this isnt right, and the whole house of cards would come tumbling down.. Who, one must ask, is provoking whom? Our institutions matter. Liberty, the civil rights organisation, and Ben Emmerson QC had already agreed to defend me and we prepared for trial. Feel free to republish and share widely. And it was this book which eventually became the script for Official Secrets. It almost started with, well, would I have the courage to do what she did in another setting maybe? At some point, as you probably know, Bush and Rumsfeld decided to bypass the CIA and take out that Office of Special Plans. [In real life] I saw the email, I immediately thought, 'Oh, my God, this is shocking.' Her husband said its a job, its just a goddamn job, I work at a caf. Gavin Hood: And that really happened. Perhaps they knew it would come out in the courtroom that the entire conflict was based on lies about Saddams weapons of mass destruction and that key UN officials could have been blackmailed. To separate fact from fiction, Newsweek spoke to the real Gun and Bright, as well as Official Secrets director Gavin Hood. 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. Gun disclosed details of the spying operation as it was happening to stop something she viewed as terrible happening in the future. And they failed, in part, I believe, because Katharine Gun leaked that memo, Official Secrets director Gavin Hood told Democracy Now!. Then the story went Again. WebI disappeared with my husband down to the coast in Brighton, on the coast of England, and spent some time away from the limelight, Gun said in the interview. "Obviously, we are compressing a story that took place in real life over a period of a year into two hours. A thorough investigation began as soon as the staff started arriving at GCHQ on the Monday morning. Meanwhile, Kamal Ahmed, who is the guy at The Observer, is now the editorial director of the BBC. They live on a smallholding, renting a house, in rural Turkey. Weve said it before: The greatest threat to democracy from the media isnt disinformation, its the paywall. Who spoke to the homeland secretary? That would be awkward. You see it most vividly in that scene where everybody stops calling Martin Bright, or they start canceling all the interviews. And I went back in 93 and did another two years with the new Department of Health. But, did it change the way I approached it? 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). Spoilers to follow as well. WebAttempts were made by the authorities to deport her husband, who grew disillusioned with Britain. The decision to leak it was almost instant I felt I had no choice. When my turn came, I entered a small side office, faced the security official and, putting on my best poker face, denied any involvement. It sounds big with Katharine but that's what inspired me. Yet I do think Keira perfectly captures the strain I was under, the isolation and fear. Because I'm not ambitious it's not paramount for me to find myself in a high-paid job. Well, you don't have one and get that almost anti-climactic moment that is a punch in the gut," said Hood. 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. 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. Because it's just an Executive Branch trying to grab power as an authoritarian. 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. Then, the following November, after eight months of worry, I was finally charged. To this day, however, there has been barely a mention of the year I spent living under a cloud. "But that's partly my own fault because I haven't aggressively pursued a career. A transcript, lightly edited with explainers where necessary, follows. You work for the government. Who knows whether they would've bent those other nations to vote for a resolution. I believe that all of this should have been formally acknowledged as part of the history of the second Gulf 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. Truth about Covid care home testing row: Timeline lays bare what was said, by who and when. She went to this interview, the next minute were down this rabbit hole, the next minute my wifes telling the world. So right there, you are pulling out the highlights," said Hood of the key issue with making Official Secrets. He runs a media charity. The editorial position should never be that. 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. 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. So we're in this development meeting, and the executive looks at me and goes, Gavin, I mean we need her running down alleys more, someone needs to throw a brick through her damn window, and when does she don her cape? It was literally the line. Hundreds of thousands were killed. But my point is simply this: The underpinnings of this country matter. As of 2020 Gun lives in Turkey and Britain. 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". Katharine Gun, a British former government employee, faced two years imprisonment in England for the crime of telling the truth. Surely, she thought, when people realised that the UK was being asked to collaborate in an operation to find out personal information that could be used to blackmail UN delegates, they would be outraged and the UK government would halt its slide into war. But get out of that trailer as fast as possible, get onto the set, and work from inside? WebWhen the film opens, Gun (Keira Knightley) is happily married to Yasar (Adam Bakri), a Turkish national living in the UK on a temporary visa, and passionately invested in And that's quite a depressing place to find yourself in when you feel so strongly and passionately about something. To tell too much more of the story would spoil the film, but one part of its ending is clear. So it was a pretty awful thing to happen to her. Or at least, she could have been. None of the Government reports into the war acknowledged it, nor did the history books. The British are quite British, you know. "Financially it's the toughest," she said. Webdeport Guns husband, Yasar (Adam Bakri), a Muslim Kurdish Turk who was awaiting permanent leave to remain in the U.K. He is just way out there in a whole other realm. 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. By the way, I know some amazing people in the intelligence services. Some called her a traitor; others Unfortunately. 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. 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. Gun sacrificed so much when she decided to leak and has worked only intermittently since. But I do want to give her credit that I think I didn't do her justice enough in the moment that she leaked that memo; it changed so quickly to war that we don't really get a moment to absorb the fact that as a result of her leaking that memo, there was no vote at the UN Security Council. Director Gavin Hood Writers Sara Bernstein Gregory Bernstein Gavin Hood Stars Keira Knightley Matt Smith Matthew Goode "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. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, King Charles hosts von der Leyen at Windsor Castle, Police: Urgent search for Constance Marten's missing baby, Shocking video shows machete fight in broad daylight, Gabor Mat: No Jewish state without oppressing local population, Putin spy plane before being 'destroyed by pro-Ukraine Belarus group', Amplified jet stream could lead to 'disruptive snow in places', Pupils take to TikTok as they stage protest at Shenfield High School, Putin orders intelligence service to find 'scum' who oppose him, Moment supermarket cashier is attacked at work in New York, Police search allotment sheds for Constance Marten's missing baby, Huge urgent police search for missing baby of Constance Marten, Dashcam captures moment two cars collide on a roundabout. I could put a lens on, and now my job is, this actress is doing great work, lets not get tricky, lets just get the audience into her eyes so that you could see those cogs moving. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images). 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. 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. So she went along to this interview, and she was 28. And it's also true that we were then attacked by the Drudge Report for what would now be called 'fake news. Martin Bright, who is in the movie very briefly I guess, is no longer in journalism as I understand it. 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. Surely, after 16 years, we are entitled to have answers. She will not talk about it anything else. We started working on this three years ago and even then it felt relevant in the sense that the challenges we talked about earlier: Where does my loyalty lie? Progressive values. The difficulties of translating Gun's story also made writing the climax of the film tricky. What did you think was going to happen? So we start with hair, and then we start with glasses, and Keira says, "Gavin, what if I just was me?" And it's not an easy question, it sounds easy, but I don't think it is. Instead, the American coalition was I was suddenly free and bewildered. The team of hawks circling George Bush had long wanted to take out Saddam Hussein, as did Bush. It should take the facts as they lead. So we just worked on the performance from the very what if it's you? The case and the resulting anxiety never seemed far away. 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. 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. Its Straussian, over the top and pretentious but basically amounts to this. 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.". This is shocking. right there, you do n't have one and get that almost moment. 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