Then, the following November, after eight months of worry, I was finally charged. The story went around the world and the leak electrified the international debate during the weeks of diplomatic deadlock. It turned out a copyeditor at The Observer had run the memo through spellcheck before printing it.]. At some point, as you probably know, Bush and Rumsfeld decided to bypass the CIA and take out that Office of Special Plans. 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. Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. Not the truth, but the war. One is kind of what I thought it was, which is the CIA is the Central Intelligence Agency, walled off from politicians and the executive in a perfect world, where all the intelligence comes in, they analyze it and they then present their best intelligence estimates; this is pre-war, youre not at war, to the executive branch. 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. Which really, really, really happened. 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. WebThe Katharine Gun Case. That seems like the central undercurrent that is playing throughout the entire film. But, did it change the way I approached it? So, I guess we all have a threshold. Katharine Gun, a British former government employee, faced two years imprisonment in England for the crime of telling the truth. President Bush visits the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, January 25, 2006. 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. Right now my priorities are to ensure I am there for my daughter.". And it's also true that we were then attacked by the Drudge Report for what would now be called 'fake news. I was called on to look this way and that and smile until my face was stiff. Now the goal is not truth, it is victory. And it's a tough profession in many ways. 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. Id never seen anything like it. She talks about having read all these books [about the war]. What do I do? And that was my way in. Jack Straw, then the foreign secretary, has not been challenged on whether he authorised the operation to go ahead, although it is almost certain that he did. "I think part of the reason Gavin included it was just to kind of share that thought process.". We even got as far as the Old Bailey. 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. Can dementia be spotted in CHILDHOOD? Now someone else may beI don't know if I could hack people's phones and computers, personally. I sensed a slight flash of anger as she said: "It's not even a footnote in the history of Iraq." This, despite credible evidence that Iran was in full compliance with terms of the agreement. If if wasnt, what does that mean for the rule of law? What is this paper? And Where Is Katharine Gun, JUST 36 HOURS TO GO IN OUR WINTER CAMPAIGN. 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. And just coming from my perspective, the press, because a lot of this is a story about the press, and how they handle it. ", Keira Knightley and Katharine Gun at the London premiere of "Official Secrets. That's the memo. So she said, Can I just do nothing with my hair, put on the jeans like Katharine wore? So the wardrobe is accurate to Katharine's style. 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. She's based (and born and raised) in Brooklyn, New York. Id immediately be transported back to GCHQ and that email the anger I felt and the decisions I made. And for her, this was too much. Following the incident, Gun struggled to find work that she Supported by Liberty, the prominent British civil-rights campaigning organiza-tion, Gun and her lawyer, Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes), decided to cite grounds of necessity in order to contest the charges laid against her. It sounds big with Katharine but that's what inspired me. And I went, Oh, that's how much that superhero myth is in our system. We didn't end up making it with that studio. We must not be flummoxed by exaggerated claims of threats against America and our interests. Last week in Los Angeles, I got to interview the director, South African-born Gavin Hood, after a screening. WebHer late husband, Tom, a former special agent of the FBI and one-time head of counter-intelligence in New York, co-authored the Gun story. Not mine or The Observer's finest hour, has to be said. I got that from Yasar. Thankfully, time passes and the intensity of feelings fades. Neither my friends nor my family knew what I did all day. And she said, I dont work for the government. That was my first thoughtwhat do you mean you dont work for the government? 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. The paper had taken the controversial decision to back intervention in Iraq. If there had been a UN resolution, there would have been no need to make a WMD argument because there are two legal ways to go to war. I dont know if theyd have discovered me eventually, but the fact is I couldnt live a lie for ever. 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. This is a special case because this story is very little-known in the United States. David Dayen: So why do you think this is an important story to tell now in 2019? We were to target such things as phone calls and emails from their homes as well as their places of work. I didnt know until I looked really deeply into this that theres really two schools of thought. Quality journalism. The truth is when she speaks to me, and she says, Gavin, we also go to lunch like everybody else in any other office. Healthy mother-of-two, 32, collapsed and died from brain bleed while she led fitness bounce class. '", 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. 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. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. So thank you for being here, it means a lot. You are sitting in the intelligence services, and Ive spoken to many now because Ive made other films in that world and I have some interesting folks that Ive been able to talk to, and the struggle was were being disloyal if you dont toe a party line, as it were, but we know this isnt right. 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. 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. A thorough investigation began as soon as the staff started arriving at GCHQ on the Monday morning. If the email did reach the newspapers, I reasoned, there would be no more than a discreet summary. WebKeira Knightley stars in this true story about Katharine Gun, a British intelligence officer who exposed the US government's efforts to force the UN Security Council to sanction the Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. But the Bush administration went to war anyway, using the pretext of weapons of mass destruction. Theyre talking about diplomatic negotiations, and having all the cards on the table, but behind that what theyre doing is trying to bribe UN diplomatic members to vote for a war which has no legal justifications, Gun says. 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. That means that, in theory, the war could still be classified as an illegal war, Gun says. As one of the journalists who broke the story, I feel a certain responsibility for how things have turned out. Gun discusses her attempt to stop the Iraq War, which is the subject of the new movie Official Secrets. She went to this interview, the next minute were down this rabbit hole, the next minute my wifes telling the world. And she thought she wouldnt get caught. I was arrested for a breach of section one of the Official Secrets Act 1989 and held overnight in a cell in the basement of the Cheltenham Police headquarters. The editorial position should never be that. Exaggerating threats to provoke a war? His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. 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. 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. As it was, a second UN resolution directly to authorise war against Iraq never materialised and air strikes began on 19 March 2003. What It Feels Liketo Survive a Chemical Attack. A manufactured provocation. '", "The scene where all of us receive this email and we're discussing the memo, that never happened. This was her first or second week at the paper. Copyright 2023 | The American Prospect, Inc. | All Rights Reserved, The Alt-Labor Chronicles: Americas Worker Centers, Official Secrets: A Conversation With Director Gavin Hood. We had planned to demand that the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith disclose the advice he had given on the legality of the war and so put the war itself on trial. The increasing presence of US Navy ships and a B-52 bomber task force in their neighborhood might provoke the Iranians to load up their missiles. Then, the world is safer until the sequel when it all happens again. Katharine Gun, former intelligence specialist turned whistleblower, discusses the new film "Official Secrets" which details why she leaked a classified memo. She was horrified and leaked the email to the Observer. Katharine Gun and Martin Bright could be forgiven for fielding Hollywoods overtures with a degree of skepticism. 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