And she thought she wouldnt get caught. By Katharine Gun, Gchq Whistleblower For The Mail On Sunday, Published: 22:33 GMT, 26 October 2019 | Updated: 16:47 GMT, 8 November 2019. "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. As of 2020 Gun lives in Turkey and Britain. What did you think was going to happen? [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. 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. So she went along to this interview, and she was 28. The British are quite British, you know. Since 2003, my life and Gun's have continued to cross from time to time. What do I do? And that was my way in. This was her first or second week at the paper. Gavin Hood: And that really happened. 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. And if, 16 years ago, you had told me that one day my life story would be portrayed by Keira Knightley, Id have laughed and changed the subject. Never mind that invading another country for the purpose of regime change is illegal according to international laws to which the United States is a signatory. This is a story about my life and my leak after all, and I still believe in the issues passionately. "I never aligned myself specifically with the anti-war movement. David Dayen: How did you think Keira Knightley was an asset in showing that emotional journey throughout the movie? Her 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. 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. Thankfully, time passes and the intensity of feelings fades. Gavin Hood: Yes, it really sticks in my throat too. "Still no regrets," she said. Direct to your inbox. Some of those same birds are still flapping wings in the skies above Washington. "I think part of the reason Gavin included it was just to kind of share that thought process.". If we give over, if we start believing the fake news, as you say, we're all doomed, man. Im gratified, too, that the film shows the love and support my husband gave me throughout this ordeal. 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. Rishi Sunak is urgently reviewing his private exchanges with Matt Hancock after bombshell leak of ex-Health 'Drinks cold in fridge at DH!' Id immediately be transported back to GCHQ and that email the anger I felt and the decisions I made. And I went back in 93 and did another two years with the new Department of Health. 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. You dont have to agree with what she did, Im just telling you what she did. So when I sent the script to Keira, and I was very hopeful that she would do it because she does a lot of period dramas, and you dont often see her in a modern drama and I thought shed be great. Gun disclosed details of the spying operation as it was happening to stop something she viewed as terrible happening in the future. 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. Sound familiar? 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. 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. None of the Government reports into the war acknowledged it, nor did the history books. His philosophy comes from a military intelligence model, which actually, by the time you go to war, now it's about winning. But Katharine Gun, whos now the subject of a new film, the Gavin Hood-directed Official Secrets, did a lot moreand became one of the most important political whistleblowers that most Americans have never heard of. 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? 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. Some called her a traitor; others Following the trauma inflicted on Gun, the U.K. Attorney General dropped the case against her with no warning. I didnt know the story and I googled her. "But that's partly my own fault because I haven't aggressively pursued a career. After the initial flurry of media interest, I was left to figure out how to move on with my life and that proved hard. And I did the same for the journalists and the lawyers and everybody. At some point, as you probably know, Bush and Rumsfeld decided to bypass the CIA and take out that Office of Special Plans. Whether you work for Boeing or Enron or Wallstreet? Perhaps they don't trust him to keep his word. 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? Liberty, the civil rights organisation, and Ben Emmerson QC had already agreed to defend me and we prepared for trial. 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." Such a law is not compatible with openness, transparency, accountability and justice. It sounds big with Katharine but that's what inspired me. Yet here was a story that had the capacity to derail the war altogether. But get out of that trailer as fast as possible, get onto the set, and work from inside? [Ahmed is depicted in the film as strongly pro-war, resistant to running stories that conflict with his opinion.]. So WMD may not have been as important, had they gotten that resolution. Every day we worked together for about five to six hours and then I referred back to her many times, subsequently, but I had literally just said, let's start at the beginning and let me hear first-hand from you your story and then I'll tell that story. Happy and carefree, Id recently married my handsome husband and was working at GCHQ as a linguist. One by one, all those who received the email approximately 100 people were taken in for a grilling. I did feel like, Well, I failed.. Problem number two: Do you shut up or do you speak up? Taking Vitamin D each day could cut your chances of getting dementia, study claims. Warning: The following contains spoilers for Official Secrets. And Assange is the same. But again, I cant help but make some small jokes about these things. Martin Bright, who is in the movie very briefly I guess, is no longer in journalism as I understand it. Do you vote, do you analyze who you should vote for or do you just take it for granted? Ed, I know some people have said that Rhys Ifans [who plays Vulliamy] is slightly over the top. And maybe if we went to work for Enron and we liked our job well enough, and its a job. To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page. 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". I didn't plan to have this movie out today and know what was going to be going on. Meanwhile, Kamal Ahmed, who is the guy at The Observer, is now the editorial director of the BBC. Exaggerating threats to provoke a war? The truth is when she speaks to me, and she says, Gavin, we also go to lunch like everybody else in any other office. So it was a pretty awful thing to happen to her. After the leak was published, hundreds of staff inside the building were questioned in order to discover the identity of the whistleblower. Throughout her own court case, whatonly a few knew wasthat she was also fighting for the right of her husband, who is from Turkey, to remain in the UK. Hundreds of thousands were killed. During the American-lead 2003 campaign for United Nations support for an invasion of Iraq, Gun, who's played in the film by Keira Knightley, was a 28 year-old Mandarin translator working for the UKs Government Communications Headquarters, the nations equivalent of the American NSA. Iraq All Over Again? Quality journalism. This is not to say that Iran does not have a trick up its sleeve, or that wild-eyed Iranian hawks aren't circling its leaders. Was it because we had demanded the Attorney Generals legal advice as part of my defence? 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 email was demonstrating the depths to which the American and British governments would descend in order to get spurious legal cover for a war in the Middle East which would have utterly catastrophic consequences, as we know to our cost today. And those two are great actresses. Keira said no one knows Katharine, and that's not an insult to Katharine. Director Gavin Hood Writers Sara Bernstein Gregory Bernstein Gavin Hood Stars Keira Knightley Matt Smith Matthew Goode The risks Gun took in revealing the UN email's existence were huge. Who, one must ask, is provoking whom? First, I contacted someone to this day Ive never named them who had the details of a journalist and anti-war activist. Webdeport Guns husband, Yasar (Adam Bakri), a Muslim Kurdish Turk who was awaiting permanent leave to remain in the U.K. She's based (and born and raised) in Brooklyn, New York. 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. 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. To this day, however, there has been barely a mention of the year I spent living under a cloud. WebAnd they failed, in part, I believe, because Katharine Gun leaked that memo, Official Secrets director Gavin Hood told Democracy Now!. 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