The diplomats were due to vote on a second United Nations resolution on the prospective 2003 invasion of Iraq. "That story" concerns British whistleblower Katharine Gun, played by Keira Knightley in a film that premiered at Sundance festival in January.Fluent in Mandarin, the 28-year-old Gun was . 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. I think most people have red lines that they wont cross. is a 501(c)3 non-profit news organization. Nobody knows if whistleblowing is nurture or nature. [16], Her husband, Yaar Gn,[17][18] is a Turkish Kurd. This was all cooked up, unpublished and. And so, I immediately went home, and Iand at the time, actually, well, my dad was staying with me, because it was Chinese New Year, and he was back from Taiwan, and he was supporting me, so he was at home. [21], Gun received the Sam Adams Award for 2003 and was supported in her case by the UK human rights pressure group Liberty and in the US by the Institute for Public Accuracy. So, Lord Goldsmith decides to prosecute Katharine Gun. Right? So, they immediatelywell, first of all, my manager said, What would you like to do? And I said, Well, pfff, what can I do? You know, we have to tell internal security. If the war was illegal and she broke the law in order to expose an illegal war and potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives, I can use this defense of necessitythats usually used in more mundane, dare I say, contextsin this great political trial., And so he says, All right, now I need to know whether the war was legal or illegal. And he says, I need to find out what Lord Goldsmiths, the attorney-generals, legal position was in the run-up to that war. So. You know, the conservative estimates are 125,000 up to a million. Her father had studied Chinese at Durham University and now teaches at Tunghai University in the city of Taichung, central Taiwan. I would love to know. Don't let 'the intelligence and the facts be fixed around the policy' this time. So I tried to look for work. The trials and tribulations of daringly telling the truth and facing its consequences must certainly not be a light burden to bear. There is a sense of, Did it really happen? Is that really me?. I havent watched the films about either of them, she says. . Lord Goldsmith must have saidI mean, I imagine. Consider donating here. And you had a showing in San Francisco. They may have chosen to push those boundaries, but they did know the difference, and they knew that it mattered if they were caught. All I want to do is feel the emotions that this young woman felt, and dont want to be fussed over. And it was great. Whats the defense? We thought maybe it would be some crusty old senior guy from a rival agency. Certain friends did not want to see me any more, or be seen with me some people get very paranoid. AMY GOODMAN: And, Katharine, describe that moment, when you come into court in this very dramatic waybut this is not just a feature film; this is your lifeand youre facing years in prison, your husband not there because youre concerned he will become the story as a refugee in Britain. GAVIN HOOD: She did work for the attorney general, right up until a matter of weeks or so before the war, at which point, when he changed his mind, under massive pressure, having visited Washington and spoken to Gonzales and all the various lawyers who worked for Rumsfeld and Bush and Cheney, and theyd sold him on this idea of using Resolution 678, which authorized the 1991 Gulf War, and said, Really, that war didnt end, and were really still at war with Iraq. He would have had to have the authority of Lord Goldsmith to prosecute. AMY GOODMAN: And so, you decide to go back and revealwho was it that was questioning you? The Tony Blair Conscience Fund or something? When you think, Oh, well, I wish we tried hard with the Americanwith our American colleagues. Ellsberg has called Katharine Guns action the most important and courageous leak I have ever seen. Some people have very low tolerance of wrongdoing, whether it is fiddling expenses, or whatever. When Katharine Gun came across a memo while working for the British government in 2003, her whole world changed. So I saw people going in and coming out and going in and coming out. You know, this is hundreds of thousands of people killed. The Observer team in a scene from the film, with Matt Smith, front, as home affairs editor Martin Bright. 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. I ask her first if it is gratifying to finally have it out there? And so, theyre first prize was get the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution saying that we, as a collective United Nations, are going to take out Saddam Hussein. as Katharine knows, it can be tougher to be right than to be wrong sometimes, if on those lucky occasions that one is right. AMY GOODMAN: Were going to leave it there, and I want to thank you all so much for being with us, Katharine Gun, the whistleblower; Observer journalists at the time, Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy; and Gavin Hood, who is the director of Official Secrets, the story of Katharine Gun revealing the lies that led to the Iraq War on both sides of the ocean, in Britain and the United States, and led to so many deaths. Considering the support it has received from its central character and the journalist who helped get the story published, 'Official Secrets' is an accurate dive into the events that happened. AMY GOODMAN: Whatever you tried to do didnt succeed. And we can say that, you know, thatso, he comes back, under all this pressure. If we found other information, it may have been different, but this information seemed to show us that wed been lied to. It just means that the job is even more difficult than it was before. You know, banks of civil servants couldnt do that. When Gun was approached with the idea for a script by Gavin Hood (who had recently made Eye in the Sky, the film about drone warfare, with Helen Mirren), the pair of them first talked for five days in London, getting the story straight. She was arrested and charged with breach of the Official Secrets Act. This is viewer supported news. And that mattered, because, for all their faults, it seems to me that Tony Blair and George Bush understood that if they were caught out in a lie, that was a problem for them. Then we see her become this woman who's starting to really know herself and starting to try and identify her own feminine being and trying to find her own place in the boardroom as a woman, as an entity, as a sister and . diamond a ranch new mexico hunting using the weber burger press what does it mean when a willie wagtail follows you. You know, any tiny lingering doubts we had about whether this was a sophisticated Russian forgery, as some people suggested, or, you knowwe absolutely knew that this was real. And I managed to get through to his assistant. He was Kurdishhe is Kurdish. AMY GOODMAN: And so, what did you do when they said, Were going to take each one of you into a room.. [25][26] Together with journalist Peter Beaumont, Gun advised and consulted over the years it took to make the film and they are "very happy with the result.[20]. Katharine Gun (ne Harwood), 47, is married to Yasar Gn, a Turkish Kurd, with whom she has a 13-year old daughter. 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. I mean, I think we did feel that we journalisticallyyou know, we could have done more as a newspaper. These were the six "swing nations" on the UN Security Council that could determine whether the UN approved the invasion of Iraq. I think our problem now, and I think this applies on both sides of the Atlantic, is that we have populist politicians for whom that doesnt matter. (modern). And I called Jed back, and I said, This is an amazing way into how we got into the Iraq War, thatwhy isnt it better known? And he saidI said, Could I come and meet Katharine? AMY GOODMAN: This is the NSA guy who wrote the memo. Im going to start with you, Gavin. I think the number isand forgive me, I should have the figurethree-and-a-half thousand British and American soldiers, 37,000 wounded. There was a feeling ofas what you felt, Ed, in this case, yeah. And she hadnt said why she had resigned. MARTIN BRIGHT: But once everyone did, there waswe knew that there was somethingthere was something going on. You know, lets say Iyoure a bit of a gambler, arent you? And I was tasked to set up a website to look into this. When Brights story originally landed there were concentrated efforts to rubbish it in the gung-ho parts of the media. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. [5], On 13 November 2003, Gun was charged with an offence under section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1989. The day before the trial, Gun's defence team had asked the government for any records of legal advice about the lawfulness of the war that it had received during the run-up to the war. And, of course, I was sitting in the restaurant waiting for her to come in, and I had no idea what to expect. So, no, I mean, I didnt want to say I was guilty when I didnt feel guilty. Gun owned up to the leak a few days later to save her GCHQ colleagues from a witch-hunt. And then I went on to interview Martin and Ed and then Ben Emmerson, the lawyer. The law requires you to. We have sort of, you know, I want to take my country back from all those Portuguese nurses and Polish plumbers, that we really must get rid of, and sort of whats best for Britain. You know, we dont have an opposition in our country, whereas you do in yours, thank god. And nor do newspaper stories. I heard things that stuck. Counted amongst the likes of Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and John Kiriakou is Katharine Gun, a whistleblower whose actions revealed the shocking underbelly of international politics and also inspired a big-budget movie that introduced many to the issue. So, I thought it would be great. MARTIN BRIGHT: You know, I mean, you dont want to get too conspiratorial about this. She becomes the corporate sister-daughter, she dives into the power suit and high-waisted pants or Katharine Hepburn moment. [20] After the charges against her were dropped in 2004, she found it difficult to find a new job. Yeah, so it was panic stations after that. [9] Gun spent a night in police custody, and eight months later was charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act. We still dont know who Frank Koza is, or hes still not given a public interview about about what went on. I mean, thisI dont want this to sound sanctimonious. So, where is Gun now? Get Democracy Now! And I dont know how authentic it appeared to the person interviewing me, but I just felt terrible. There is no single answer to that, she says, but Bright had the best stab at it: The only thing you can do is do your job right, and be a good citizen., In other words, she says, whatever your job is, do the things that you are supposed to do. MARTIN BRIGHT: I have an abiding interest in the link between religion and conflict. Youre terrified. I call them the Usual Suspects., She thinks, given the current state of politics, that she might start to speak out more. Katharine Gun and Martin Bright could be forgiven for fielding Hollywood's overtures with a degree of skepticism. Shes ordinary. Youre the guy who got the goods on the author of the memo in the NSA, who wrote to GCHQ and said, Were going to bug the U.N. ambassadors.. [5], Gun graduated with an upper second-class degree, then took a job as an assistant English teacher with the JET program in Hiroshima, Japan. GAVIN HOOD: What she discovers saysis a request from the NSA to GCHQ to hack, bug the private communications and the office communications of U.N. Security Council members, in particular the nonpermanent members, the more junior members. KATHARINE GUN: Actually, time-wise, I was bailed for eight months. 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. ED VULLIAMY: Mr. Alton, screechy, ultra-right-wing. And she said, I have to go, mostlyto find strong female characters, I have to go back 100 and 200 years and wear a corset to play a strong female character. And she said, This isI want to do this, because its a strong female character not in a corset. In a BBC interview with Jeremy Paxman, she said that she had not raised the matter with staff counsellors as she "honestly didn't think that would have had any practical effect". We could haveyou know, you always have regrets, dont you? AMY GOODMAN: So, Katharine, as all of this is unfolding, the U.S. and Britain bomb Iraq. And the case was dropped. Anyway. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. As Coordinator for Shalom Mission Communities, a peace church fellowship near the southern border, Joel, his wife, Anali, and their new baby girl, Daniela Bea, are actively helping . The film captures well the inspired and stubborn efforts of Bright (Matt Smith in the movie), and colleagues Ed Vulliamy (played with brio by Rhys Ifans) and Peter Beaumont (played by Matthew Goode), to stand the story up, based on the few details it betrayed, and to get it into the paper, despite the strong misgivings of the political desk. I wasno, as soon as he didnt come out, I. And at some point, with great respect to Lord Goldsmith, he caves. Martin Bright and Ben Emmerson stick by Kathrine the whole time . to your inbox each morning. [6] Gun had previously been unaware of GCHQ, later saying that "I didn't have much idea about what they didI was going into it pretty much blind. To see Part 1 of our discussion, go to democracynow.org. The side of that history that Gun didnt really know in its fullest detail until she worked on the film was the drama of how the story made it into the pages of the Observer. Initially, Gun decided to teach Mandarin Chinese in Britain. No, Gun replied, steadily. The war did not end when George W. Bush said, Mission accomplished. It was only just beginning. And so I did. Gun was charged for exposing around the time of Colin Powell's infamous testimony to the UN about Iraq's alleged WMDs a top-secret U.S. government memo showing it was mounting an . And they failed, in part, I believe, because Katharine Gun leaked that memo. Katharine Teresa Gun (ne Harwood; born 1974) is a British linguist who worked as a translator for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). AMY GOODMAN: Youre watching that on television. We will never know. Enter Katharine Gun. She is also well known as a GCHQ spy. You dont know who the GCHQ person is. 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 . There are plenty of opportunities here for other journalists to take up the baton and find out what really happened. Later, he stands by her as the many intricacies and dangers of his wifes profession and act of bravery surface. 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. Why did you drop the case? Naturally, people are curious to know more about this courageous linguist who stood her ground even as political heavyweights descended upon her. He gets more and more pressure from Blair. On the one hand I was relieved because my life wouldnt have to be scrutinised in court. Following the incident, Gun struggled to find work that she loved, and her husband had grown disillusioned with Britain. Guardian Australia acknowledges the traditional owners and custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to land, waters and community. 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. She then went on to get a Masters degree in Global Ethics. And I went back to Martin. It was shown in the Castro Theatre. At first they dont name you, but then they do. KATHARINE GUN: Mm-hmm. But jokes aside, the reason she said to methe reason I constantly find myself going. 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 . [23] Daniel Ellsberg praised the swiftness and importance of Gun taking action, saying it was in some ways more significant than his own whistleblowing on the Vietnam War. AMY GOODMAN: Martin, you went on to work with Tony Blair, didnt you? You get pulled over. When do you first meet, you, the person who exposed this story, Martin Bright, and Katharine Gun? I was called up on Tuesday. MARTIN BRIGHT: this was the real deal. Im Amy Goodman, as we bring you Part 2 of our extended look at a new film thats out called Official Secrets, thats coming out at the end of August, that tells the story of a British intelligence specialist, Katharine Gun, who risked everything to blow the whistle on U.S. dirty tricks at the United Nations in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003. And so, we went down together to internal security, and they called Scotland Yard. Photo: Kevin RC Wilson. My marriage to my husband was very new at that juncture, and he had a very unstable status in the UK. What I did is a very unusual thing to do, because the results are not generally good. But yeah, I mean, I was hugely impressed. In 2003, she leaked top-secret information to The Observer, concerning a request by the United States for compromising intelligence on diplomats from member states of the 2003 Security Council.The diplomats were due to vote on a second United . Gun splits her time between Turkey and Britain. MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, I mean, around that time. 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.. You authorized her prosecution. She said, you know, its ironic that here we are in the age when women now have the vote, and theyre supposed to beand were all supposed to be equal, and yet so many roles are still about women being the sidekick, women being raped, so much violence, use ityou know, a woman whos in jeopardy. They said, Plead out., AMY GOODMAN: We dont want you to go to jail for years. We can all have a view on Saddam Hussein and whether he should be deposed or not. [5] After contemplating the email over the weekend, Gun gave the email to a friend who was acquainted with journalists. Gun had, of course, been forced to abandon her career in the civil service and finally, struggling for work, left Britain altogether.
13 mai 2023