Was the British government aware of it? 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. Not only was the cable the most sensitive ever to be disclosed on either side of the Atlantic, it was also unique in its timing. 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. 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. The more we find out that in fact the million-person march was a real cause of worry for Downing Street and for Blair personally, it makes you think we were so close and yet so far.". 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. The difficulties of translating Gun's story also made writing the climax of the film tricky. Me, you, not some big picture. His exact words to describe the intelligence method is, The goal of the intelligence is not the truth, but victory. That is a quote from Shulsky. I was 27 when it all began. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, King Charles hosts von der Leyen at Windsor Castle, Police: Urgent search for Constance Marten's missing baby, Shocking video shows machete fight in broad daylight, Gabor Mat: No Jewish state without oppressing local population, Putin spy plane before being 'destroyed by pro-Ukraine Belarus group', Amplified jet stream could lead to 'disruptive snow in places', Pupils take to TikTok as they stage protest at Shenfield High School, Putin orders intelligence service to find 'scum' who oppose him, Moment supermarket cashier is attacked at work in New York, Police search allotment sheds for Constance Marten's missing baby, Huge urgent police search for missing baby of Constance Marten, Dashcam captures moment two cars collide on a roundabout. Would you risk your job? Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). She said, I was naive. Sound familiar? 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. 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. However, Gun was well aware that any attempt to release the memo would find her running afoul of Britains Official Secrets Act, which criminalizes the leaking of intelligence-related information. And Assange is the same. David Dayen: Just the notion that the paper would say, we're for the war, that was their editorial position. 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. 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, Don't mention the Iraq war, William Hague tells cabinet, Tenyears on, the case for invading Iraq is still valid, Occupying Iraq: a US army veteran's ambivalence, Howthe Bush administration sold the war and we bought it, the story the paper published 10 years ago this weekend, was arrested, lost her job and faced trial under the Official Secrets Act, collapsed after the prosecution withdrew its evidence. The central issues of whistle-blower protection, public interest disclosures, journalistic freedom and the accountability of our elected representatives continue to be just as relevant today. She said, I worry what's going to happen, they'll go, Ooh, I don't know if I like Keira Knightly in blonde hair, what's she done to her nose, does she have glasses on? Because they don't have a comparison to make, until you see her at the end of the movie. Rishi Sunak is urgently reviewing his private exchanges with Matt Hancock after bombshell leak of ex-Health 'Drinks cold in fridge at DH!' EXCLUSIVE: Lanzarote sticks to its guns and insists it WILL limit tourists and move away from relying on Jeremy Clarkson is axed as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? ", Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Keira Knightley's Birthday: Her 15 Best Movies Ranked, 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, Keira Knightley as Katharine Gun in "Official Secrets. What resonates to me is the somewhat more, I hope, timeless thing. Ms Gun worked as a translator at the GCHQ building in Cheltenham, pictured. This is my second brief moment of fame. But depicting that climate, people who were not aware or active at that timedidn't realize how difficult this was to talk against the war both from the journalist's perspective and obviously someone who's in the intelligence community. A manufactured provocation. Keira said no one knows Katharine, and that's not an insult to Katharine. When my moment came, I found myself standing alone in the dock facing the judge and surrounded by lawyers, journalists and supporters. We have a blondish-looking Katharine. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images). And then there is the Gulf of Tonkin incident that led America deeply into war against North Vietnam. I had, of course, signed the Official Secrets Act, content in the knowledge I was working within the law for Britains protection. It is to say that a government, for its own reasons may, either by design or through miscalculation, lead a country into an unnecessary and brutal war. "Obviously, we are compressing a story that took place in real life over a period of a year into two hours. President Bush visits the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, January 25, 2006. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. 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. Before 1989, there had been a Public Interest Defence to protect whistleblowers, but that was altered amid the furore surrounding the sinking of the Argentinian Navy cruiser, the General Belgrano, in the course of the Falklands War. Gavin Hood: There is a kind of cognitive dissonance. I grew up in South Africa in the seventies and eighties, when apartheid was really tightening and tightening and tightening. Ed, I know some people have said that Rhys Ifans [who plays Vulliamy] is slightly over the top. Gavin Hood: Its a question of how conditioned are we to the conventional Hollywood structure. Actually, there were two incidents at sea, blamed originally on the North Vietnamese. Because I'm not ambitious it's not paramount for me to find myself in a high-paid job. ", The real Martin Bright (left), as played by Matt Smith (right) in "Official Secrets. It should take the facts as they lead. To legitimize an invasion and get rid of Saddam, a new UN Security Council resolution, going beyond SC1441 and specifically sanctioning the invasion, was the answer. David Dayen: I want to go to the questions now. 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 Secrets (Keira Knightly is Katharine). You have no idea. So thank you for being here, it means a lot. If if wasnt, what does that mean for the rule of law? What might, IKeira Knightley, feel if I'm sitting at my desk and this happened to me?" Over the weekend, I got to work. A transcript, lightly edited with explainers where necessary, follows. WebIts the tale of whistleblower Katharine Gun, a former translator for the UKs Government Communications HQ, who leaked a top-secret memo in 2003 on the eve of a divisive US-led war. I was glad to get back to what I hoped would be normality, but the effect on me had been traumatising. But I do want to give her credit that I think I didn't do her justice enough in the moment that she leaked that memo; it changed so quickly to war that we don't really get a moment to absorb the fact that as a result of her leaking that memo, there was no vote at the UN Security Council. 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. "But the more I think about what happened, the more angry and frustrated I get about the fact that nobody acted on intelligence. 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. The truth is when she speaks to me, and she says, Gavin, we also go to lunch like everybody else in any other office. The truth was that in April of 2002, the two world leaders secretly had agreed on a plan to take out Saddam, all the while giving speeches insisting that the only motivation for even considering war was that horrific stockpile of deadly weapons. And it's also true that we were then attacked by the Drudge Report for what would now be called 'fake news. "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. 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. Please, become a member, or make a one-time donation, today. Gun sacrificed so much when she decided to leak and has worked only intermittently since. Neither my friends nor my family knew what I did all day. 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. Unfortunately, perhaps, I have a conscience and my dishonesty gnawed at me persistently until the next day, when I confessed. As I walked down the red carpet, I had never in my life experienced the flash of so many cameras. We need another Katharine Gun. So here we are in rehearsal, and we're talking one day about the look. Its had far reaching and very negative impacts in all aspects of our institutions and our public life," Gun says. And maybe they were right, I don't know. Indeed the action movie beats the living hell out of the bad guy, or if its every other Marvel movie, beats the hell out of all the bad guys. ", "I think Gavin had a really difficult time telling this story because it doesn't fit into a normal sort of storytelling mode," said Gun. 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. Most directly, it bolstered opposition to the US position from Chilean and Mexican diplomats weary of American "dirty tricks". 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. 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