Because it was toughthe guy wouldnt print his stuff. Can dementia be spotted in CHILDHOOD? Who knows whether they would've bent those other nations to vote for a resolution. He said she didnt even know what the job was. The email, which was sent by an American NSA official, suggested that the US was just as well aware that it couldnt earn UN support through valid arguments alone: The memo outlined a plan to bug diplomats from non-permanent UN Security Council Nations Chile, Pakistan, Bulgaria, Guinea, Angola, and Cameroon in search of intelligence that could be used to cajole and possibly even blackmail them into supporting the invasion. David Dayen: As someone who works on a magazine, it's the ultimate copyediting failure. Katharine Gun and Martin Bright could be forgiven for fielding Hollywoods overtures with a degree of skepticism. "But the more I think about what happened, the more angry and frustrated I get about the fact that nobody acted on intelligence. For several years, just recalling the events would set my heart racing and my hands trembling. 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. Following the incident, Gun struggled to find work that she A decade on, sitting in a cafe in Cheltenham, not far from GCHQ, I asked her if she still stood by what she had done. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Does anyone have any questions? I dont know if theyd have discovered me eventually, but the fact is I couldnt live a lie for ever. Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. She wasnt planning to get caught and then the dilemma was, My friends are all going to have their lives ruined.. Was the British government aware of it? David Dayen: But he is not a headline journalist at a newspaper. Eventually, it was widely held that at least one of the reports of the attacks, and perhaps even both, were false. 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? Later, she gave the document to a friend, who passed it onto a contact in the anti-war movement, until it finally landed with journalists Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy The Observer. However, she is not without disappointment about how little obvious difference she made. Does your loyalty lie to your own conscious, does your loyalty lie to your marriage, does your loyalty lie to your government, does your loyalty lie to your country? Maybe that was naive, but she didn't think that. We need another Katharine Gun. I was 27 when it all began. They had published not some coded version of events, but the email itself in full. 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. Gun, her husband, and their four-year-old daughter shed their coveted privacy long enough to allow Katharine to be one of two former Sam Adams Award winners to present this year's award. But again, I cant help but make some small jokes about these things. After the leak was published, hundreds of staff inside the building were questioned in order to discover the identity of the whistleblower. Seven times I've submitted articles to you with an alternate point of view, and seven times you've turned me down. ", Keira Knightley and Katharine Gun at the London premiere of "Official Secrets. To look at someone who I thought was quite accessible and ordinaryand she doesn't mind me saying this because Katharine is someone who keeps her head below and is quiet, and did something extraordinary. She said, I was naive. Because I'm not ambitious it's not paramount for me to find myself in a high-paid job. Thank you! So when, on the first Sunday of March, 2003, my leak appeared on the front page of The Observer newspaper, I was overcome with shock. WebKatharine Gun was a young specialist working for Britains Government Communications Headquarters when she exposed a highly confidential memo that revealed the United Copyright 2023 | The American Prospect, Inc. | All Rights Reserved, The Alt-Labor Chronicles: Americas Worker Centers, Official Secrets: A Conversation With Director Gavin Hood. She's based (and born and raised) in Brooklyn, New York. And I thought this is going to end in the worst civil war. Yet to this day there has been barely a mention of the Bush regimes disgraceful demand in official histories of the period, as if its been deliberately written out. The truth is when she speaks to me, and she says, Gavin, we also go to lunch like everybody else in any other office. What do you think resonates? 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. Sound familiar? Right now my priorities are to ensure I am there for my daughter.". [Gun was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act in Britain, but ultimately the case never went to trial.]. Guided by her conscience, Katharine Gun defied her government and leaked the memo to the press, setting off a chain of events that jeopardized her freedom, her safety, but also opened the door to putting the entire Iraq invasion on trial. Keira said no one knows Katharine, and that's not an insult to Katharine. It was almost as if that request was asking for someone within their own nation to do this work; it wasn't asking another completely independent state for co-operation.". I did feel like, Well, I failed.. Which really, really, really happened. 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? "There seems to be this blas attitude the spying goes on, everyone does it and so it's nothing to get all hot under the collar about. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. Much to the distress of our former partners in the Iran nuclear deal, Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the agreement and announced tougher sanctions. And those two are great actresses. When you support The American Prospect, youre supporting fellow readers who arent able to give, and countering the class system for information. Gavin Hood: And that really happened. Warning: The following contains spoilers for Official Secrets. But the invasion was forced to proceed with the backing of Bushs coalition of the willinginstead of with the support of the United Nations. 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. 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. WebKatharine Gun, as passionately embodied here by Knightley, skews too noble to be particularly interesting, and the film is weakest when its focused on her and her husband She went to this interview, the next minute were down this rabbit hole, the next minute my wifes telling the world. Last week in Los Angeles, I got to interview the director, South African-born Gavin Hood, after a screening. 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. [In the movie, Gun says I dont work for the government, I work for the people.]. 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. 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. The story went around the world and the leak electrified the international debate during the weeks of diplomatic deadlock. the waning support for public institutions today. Across the world, millions protested the invasion of Iraq, doing their own small parts to attempt to prevent the war. Despite the millions affected by the Iraq War, its now far removed from British and American news cycles, displaced from the headlines by todays political turmoil. She was a spythe communications she translated had been obtained covertly, but she did the work in the interest of protecting Britain. And just coming from my perspective, the press, because a lot of this is a story about the press, and how they handle it. His most recent book is Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.. Who, one must ask, is provoking whom? The comments below have been moderated in advance. This content is imported from youTube. Americans find it hard to believe that it could happen, but it happens, it happens fast. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. Now, Trump says, he wants to see Iran back at the negotiating table. Unfortunately, perhaps, I have a conscience and my dishonesty gnawed at me persistently until the next day, when I confessed. Jeb Bush Just Botched the Iraq Question. 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. Look at what happened to Reality Winner in this country. WebThe Katharine Gun Case. She got into a plea bargain, they still gave her five years. So we just worked on the performance from the very what if it's you? Yet here was a story that had the capacity to derail the war altogether. You work for the government. As of 2020 Gun lives in Turkey and Britain. And that's quite a depressing place to find yourself in when you feel so strongly and passionately about something. Her husband said its a job, its just a goddamn job, I work at a caf. [Gun's husband Yasar, a Kurd, was nearly deported back to the Middle East at one point, even though he had nothing to do with the leak.]. Such a law is not compatible with openness, transparency, accountability and justice. I grew up in South Africa in the seventies and eighties, when apartheid was really tightening and tightening and tightening. And then there is the Gulf of Tonkin incident that led America deeply into war against North Vietnam. Gun was followed, denied legal advice and her Turkish husband faced deportation. We have a blondish-looking Katharine. Weve said it before: The greatest threat to democracy from the media isnt disinformation, its the paywall. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. And she said, I dont work for the government. That was my first thoughtwhat do you mean you dont work for the government? And Assange is the same. 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. And I didnt have work where I was. Theres not a lot of work for translators; shes a Mandarin translator in England. Unfortunately. This whole intelligence didn't match what the politicians were saying.
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