And he was the barrister who ultimately put the case before the court, as short as that trial was, on behalf of Katharine, and came up with a truly original defense to the Official Secrets Act, which is the defense of necessity. If we found other information, it may have been different, but this information seemed to show us that wed been lied to. [24] In July 2019, in a lengthy interview on the US program Democracy Now!, Gun, Gavin Hood (the film's director), and Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy (the journalists who broke the story of the leaked memo) discussed the events that the film describes. Gun is not active on social media and occasionally participates in small-scale conferences and discussions pertaining to politics. MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, I mean, the story doesnt end. In Official Secrets, Gun is played by Keira Knightley while Matt Smith takes on the role of Martin Bright. And as Martin has just said, and as Katharine put it so well in the film, you know, wars, unlike football and basketball games, do not end when the whistle blows. To see Part 1 of our discussion, go to democracynow.org. So I was in a dreadful state. Katharine Gun was a young specialist working for Britains Government Communications Headquarters when she exposed a highly confidential memo that revealed the United States was working with the United Kingdom to collect sensitive information on United Nations Security Council members in order to pressure them into supporting the Iraq invasion. Macdonald stated that Gun would not have received a fair trial without the disclosure of information that would have compromised national security. The film -- quite plausibly -- depicts the charges being dropped against Gun for the simple reason that the British government feared . AMY GOODMAN: And then what happened? Katharine Gun Husband: Learn Everything About Iraq War Whistleblower I hope, when shes ready for this story, she will. ED VULLIAMY: At the time, yes, the editor and the political. KATHARINE GUN: And yeah, becauseanyway, he was going in every week to basically prove that he was still resident or that they could pinpoint where he was. You know, youre the attorney general. The film stars Ma. 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 . Authorities had attempted to deport Yasar back to the Middle East. For example, youre racing to the hospital with your wife. But it was, yeah, a moment of great humility, actually. We thought maybe it would be some crusty old senior guy from a rival agency. 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. MARTIN BRIGHT: Yes, we had a great, a dramatic moment at the Q&A session. So I tried to look for work. The diplomats were due to vote on a second United Nations resolution on the prospective 2003 invasion of Iraq. KATHARINE GUN: Well, I mean, its terrifying. [5] Less than a week after the Observer story, on Wednesday 5 March, Gun confessed to her line manager at GCHQ that she had leaked the email, and was arrested. When Katharine Gun came across a memo while working for the British government in 2003, her whole world changed. Official Secrets: A Conversation With Director Gavin Hood Katharine Gun leaked that memo to the Observer, in the belief that the revelation of the proposed bugging and blackmail tactics might be enough to stop the war. Dr. Consider donating here. [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. How am I possibly going to do that? About five months or something? Certain friends did not want to see me any more, or be seen with me some people get very paranoid. So how am I, with my tiny team of researchers, going to do anything like that? And so, its one of those moments where you realizeI mean, the chill went up my spine, like I thought, Ive got to get out of here. So, yes, that was not a good moment, yeah. We knew for sure. So a very big story got crushed very quickly. It was like watching a case that was very similar to my own. 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. For the American gamer, see, Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, United Nations Security Council and the Iraq War, "Whistleblowerin Katharine Gun - "Ich frchtete, sie knnten meine Gedanken lesen", "The US spymaster, the whistleblower, and the secret email she exposed", "Profile: Katherine Gun, Iraq war wistleblower", "Katharine Gun: Ten years on what happened to the woman who revealed dirty tricks on the UN Iraq war vote? It cost Gun, who now lives in Turkey with her husband and daughter, her job. I wonder what she made of the scattershot download methods of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange? GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun speaks out - Daily Mail How the NSA Pushed Iraq Invasion - accuracy.org AMY GOODMAN: What was it called? Don't let 'the intelligence and the facts be fixed around the policy' this time. Is that when you both met? AMY GOODMAN: So, the Daily Mail, very sympathetic also to President Trump. "[12] In May 2019 The Guardian stated the case was dropped "when the prosecution realised that evidence would emerge that even British government lawyers believed the invasion was unlawful. I watched it in San Francisco, at the premiere, and my friend from childhood who lived there was with me. Soon after, they moved to Turkey in 2011, and for the most part, the family has stayed away from the public eye. And we had to sit and wait for two hours while they winged it down from London. Shes not wearing tons of makeup. A New Film Tells Her Story, Part 2: 15 Years Later: How U.K. Whistleblower Katharine Gun Risked Everything to Leak a Damning Iraq War Memo, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License, John le Carr (1931-2020) on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa & More, U.S. Plans Migrant Processing Centers in Latin America and Rapid Deportations from Southern Border, Food Shortages Worsen in Sudan as Battles Continue Despite Ceasefires, Abortion Ban Bills Fail in South Carolina and Nebraska, Keeping Abortion Legal Until 22 Weeks, Climate Protesters Descend on Podesta Talk to Demand Biden Admin Halt Fossil Fuel Projects, Mike Pence Testifies Before Jan. 6 Grand Jury, Vice News Tonight Canceled as Vice Media Fires Over 100 Staff, White Woman Whose False Accusation Led to Emmett Tills Lynching Dies Without Ever Facing Justice, Jeffrey Sachs on Chinas Historic Push for Multipolar World to End U.S. In this episode of Schenck Talks Bonhoeffer, TDBI Founder and President, Rev. 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 didnt want to be that. KATHARINE GUN: Well, OK, I know I was guilty in the facts of the matter. The Case Against Mary Katherine Higdon 43:11. The Observer published the dirty tricks memo as a front-page splash just over two weeks before the invasion. [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. MARTIN BRIGHT: But once everyone did, there waswe knew that there was somethingthere was something going on. I felt awful. [4], After spending her childhood in Taiwan, where she attended Morrison Academy until the age of 16, Katharine returned to Britain to study for her A-levels at Moira House School, a girls' boarding school in Eastbourne. Mary Katherine Higdon of Griffin, Georgia, was arrested for the murder of her live-in boyfriend, Steven Freeman. The memo was a top-secret request to monitor the private communication of UN delegates for scraps of information, personal or otherwise, that could be used to give the US an edge in leveraging support for the invasion. I felt that I had done the morally right thing to do. Indeed, your point about Bush is right. Well, if Bush and Blair could have got a U.N. resolution, they would have had perfect cover for going to Iraq without having to bring up the WMD, the weapons of mass destruction, argument, because the whole weapons of mass destruction argument is the self-defense, that they needed a legalyou know, you do want to be going to war legally. But to discover that it was such a young and such a junior employee was extraordinary to us, yeah. So, of course, it was justyou know, he was kind of thinkinghe knew I worked for the intelligence services, but he didnt know what that was. I think youll find hes hiding in plain sight. And there was a dramatic hush in the audience. Full Interview: Frank Mugisha on New Anti-, Former Guantnamo Prisoners Ask Biden to Let Them Keep Art They Made to Escape Inhumane Conditions, Part 1: In 2003, This U.K. Whistleblower Almost Stopped the Iraq Invasion. 'Official Secrets': the story of the British spy who tried to stop a war "[22], In January, 2019, the film Official Secrets, recounting Gun's actions in 2003, received its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, with Keira Knightley playing Gun. "The Most Important Leak" -- How Katharine Gun Tried to Stop the Iraq How Katherine Knight Slaughtered Her Boyfriend And Made Him Into Stew Katharine Gun, a shy and studious 28-year-old who spent her days listening in to obscure Chinese intercepts, decided to tell the world about a secret plan by the US government to spy on the United . Maybe there will be sympathy.. Interview with Joel Looper by Schenck Talks Bonhoeffer The legal case against Gun was eventually dropped by the British government in 2004, after her lawyer, Ben Emmerson QC (played in the film with fabulous charisma by Ralph Fiennes), threatened to use disclosure to put the legal basis of the war itself on trial. And I had already not been able to eat for about 24 hours. The comedown after they dropped the case, and trying to recover from that, was quite stressful.. They may have chosen to push those boundaries, but they did know the difference, and they knew that it mattered if they were caught. AMY GOODMAN: The networks, like Fox, and The Drudge Report, CNN refused to interview you, saying that this couldnt be a real memo because, unfortunately, your newspaper translated it into British. And so, we went down together to internal security, and they called Scotland Yard. 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. I mean, couldnt have been happier with the casting choice, because Ben Emmerson is a force of nature, absolute force of nature, and a great international lawyer. Shes beginning to understand the issues, but she hasnt seen it yet, Gun said in 2019 when her daughter was 11-years-old. Why did you drop the case?
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