I was arrested for a breach of section one of the Official Secrets Act 1989 and held overnight in a cell in the basement of the Cheltenham Police headquarters. 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." I got that from Yasar. Ive been impressed by the film-makers determination to stick to the facts Gavin Hood, the director, interviewed me at length over five days and I was consulted throughout the process. Perhaps it was no wonder that Tony Blairs government decided to abandon the case without offering any evidence. And I did the same for the journalists and the lawyers and everybody. 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. But that shouldn't be the philosophy pre-war when you're trying to decide whether to go to war. The poor woman is based on a real person. That's really the simplest question: When do you speak up? The real-life Gun said: "The attempt at deportation kind of spiked my stress level again for another period of my life." Jack Straw, then the foreign secretary, has not been challenged on whether he authorised the operation to go ahead, although it is almost certain that he did. I was only a junior analyst, but I knew the email was outrageous: the American government was asking Britain to spy on United Nations diplomats so they could be blackmailed into supporting an invasion of Iraq. The decision to leak it was almost instant I felt I had no choice. 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. We need a truth-sayer. Which really, really, really happened. But this specificinstance is the ugly truth of what goes on.". David Dayen is the Prospects executive editor. It remains entirely to the credit of Roger Alton, at the time the paper's editor, that he stuck with the story, despite its potential implications. Its Straussian, over the top and pretentious but basically amounts to this. She made the point that if you have Helen Mirren playing the Queen or Meryl Streep playing Maggie Thatcher, everybody knows those people and your judged on how well you impersonate, if you will, those people. Then, we all started watching the invasion and we werent how we got into the war. Me, you, not some big picture. We have a blondish-looking Katharine. 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. For several years, just recalling the events would set my heart racing and my hands trembling. By printing off the memo, putting it in her handbag and taking it home, she was already committing a serious breach of the Official Secrets Act. Today, I believe the Act serves as an illiberal, draconian piece of law, little more than a weapon of the state to deter any disclosure, no matter how much in the public interest it might be. And it's not an easy question, it sounds easy, but I don't think it is. She said, You mean I dont have to wear a corset? To your point, in some way, she said to me, As a woman, its kind of ironic as an actress that I so often, even though Im in the modern world, that I have to find heroic women in period dramas wearing corsets. Theres something weird about that. But Katharine only ever leaked this one memo. "But that's partly my own fault because I haven't aggressively pursued a career. Keira said no one knows Katharine, and that's not an insult to Katharine. And that's quite a depressing place to find yourself in when you feel so strongly and passionately about something. David Dayen: But he is not a headline journalist at a newspaper. With the operation blown, the chances of George W Bush and Tony Blair getting the consensus for a direct UN mandate for war were now near zero. So we're in this development meeting, and the executive looks at me and goes, Gavin, I mean we need her running down alleys more, someone needs to throw a brick through her damn window, and when does she don her cape? It was literally the line. Gavin Hood: Thats such an interesting statement, I mean, I just took it at face value that papers take an editorial position, but youre right. [In real life] I saw the email, I immediately thought, 'Oh, my God, this is shocking.' Give today. In leaking it to the Observer, she was also doing something unprecedented in the history of espionage. 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. So I said goodbye to my mom and moved to America. 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? By Katharine Gun, Gchq Whistleblower For The Mail On Sunday, Published: 22:33 GMT, 26 October 2019 | Updated: 16:47 GMT, 8 November 2019. But my point is simply this: The underpinnings of this country matter. And then there is the Gulf of Tonkin incident that led America deeply into war against North Vietnam. We even got as far as the Old Bailey. But the falsehoods and unnecessary wars of yesteryear likely have influenced the waning support for public institutions today. Yet here was a story that had the capacity to derail the war altogether. 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. Eventually, it was widely held that at least one of the reports of the attacks, and perhaps even both, were false. As one of the journalists who broke the story, I feel a certain responsibility for how things have turned out. Cheering crowds have never been my sort of thing. I don't think I've ever met a more determined character and she remained utterly convinced of the justice of her cause: "There's nothing subsequent to the invasion that makes me think it was the right decision made by Bush and Blair." And for her, this was too much. And it was this book which eventually became the script for Official Secrets. Problem number two: Do you shut up or do you speak up? Perhaps a plane painted in UN colors could be shot down over Iraq. Id immediately be transported back to GCHQ and that email the anger I felt and the decisions I made. Feel free to republish and share widely. But ultimately, heres why I thinkthis might sound like a strange statement. Iran, meanwhile, says it doesn't want war, but will defend itself. Gun said that the UK government still had some explaining to do: "I thinkthere need to be more questions asked about whether they responded to that request, why they felt it was within their scope of work to respond to that sort of request, and what is the manner of the relationship between UK politics and US politics. Because it's just an Executive Branch trying to grab power as an authoritarian. So thats how the scene happened, but she didnt know where he was for three days, he was at Harmonsworth, before she got him out. The other was Coleen Rowley, former FBI special agent and counsel at the Minneapolis bureau, who blew the whistle on FBI and other shortcomings She also opposed the pending war. And I know whose throat it really sticks in, is [British journalist] Ed Vulliamy, who I adore. As the working day came to close, I tried to project a sense of calm I didnt feel, walked out of the gates and put the incriminating email in the post. At some point, as you probably know, Bush and Rumsfeld decided to bypass the CIA and take out that Office of Special Plans. It was what I was thinking, what I was feeling. Gun made the choice to leak the document, which Martin Bright of The Observer in Britain published in a story on March 2, 2003. And she and many in her world knew, and many in the CIA knew, as Mel Goodman who's the man in the boathouse in Washington knew, that this was B.S. Chile and Mexico and the other smaller countries were so outraged that they refused to even bring it to a vote. So she said, Can I just do nothing with my hair, put on the jeans like Katharine wore? So the wardrobe is accurate to Katharine's style. I didnt know the story and I googled her. Interestingly I think we faced a challenge, which some of you may or may not agree with. Instead, the American coalition was forced to stake its claim to a legal invasion on grounds of self defense, including now-infamously untrue claims about weapons of mass destruction. Who spoke to the homeland secretary? This whole intelligence didn't match what the politicians were saying. 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. 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 team of hawks circling George Bush had long wanted to take out Saddam Hussein, as did Bush. So we start with hair, and then we start with glasses, and Keira says, "Gavin, what if I just was me?" But, did it change the way I approached it? However, she is not without disappointment about how little obvious difference she made. [Gun was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act in Britain, but ultimately the case never went to trial.]. Rishi Sunak is urgently reviewing his private exchanges with Matt Hancock after bombshell leak of ex-Health 'Drinks cold in fridge at DH!' Maybe thats rewarding. The contents were explosive, implicating America in a blackmail plot to swing UN votes in favor of an invasion. But when Gun's lawyers threaten to question the U.K. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith about Britain's involvement in the Iraq war, the government drops their case against Gun. US firms waiting in the wings read to pump 'billions Parents' fury as schools STILL won't tell them if they are closed tomorrow as teacher strikes continue. Questioner: The only thing that I've wondered while watching the film, since it's a true story, is how could Ms. Gunn, who was a spy, who was a member of an intelligence agency, be surprised when her husband got deportedor when the government came after her husband, how could she be surprised when all of the different reactions she got came forward? Martin Bright, who is in the movie very briefly I guess, is no longer in journalism as I understand it. 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. As I walked down the red carpet, I had never in my life experienced the flash of so many cameras. Again. To tell too much more of the story would spoil the film, but one part of its ending is clear. 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. Gun discusses her attempt to stop the Iraq War, which is the subject of the new movie Official Secrets. 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. What It Feels Liketo Survive a Chemical Attack. I know what it is like to watch the system become completely authoritarian. That kind of propaganda has to stop. America, Britain, and Spain withdrew their proposed resolution on invading Iraq when it became clear that it would not garner the necessary Security Council votes, in part because of the information Gun brought to light. My job had been to listen to Chinese communications, translate them from Mandarin to English and produce reports for different government departments. But she still was not uncomfortable with the other things we've talked about. So, that's where we had to go for WMD. "One of the things that we discovered quite early on when he was interviewing me was that a lot of stuff was just happening in my head. Only later did I appreciate the extent to which the journalists involved Martin Bright, Peter Beaumont and Ed Vulliamy had to go in order to prove that the email was legitimate. When my moment came, I found myself standing alone in the dock facing the judge and surrounded by lawyers, journalists and supporters. He is just way out there in a whole other realm. They had published not some coded version of events, but the email itself in full. Truth and accountability were drilled into me as a child. 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. In the years following, an author called Marcia Mitchell contacted me and said she was keen to write a book about my case. She was a spythe communications she translated had been obtained covertly, but she did the work in the interest of protecting Britain. Then the most almighty cacophony erupted, a roar so loud we could barely hear to speak. WebHer husband, Yaar Gn, is a Turkish Kurd. And just coming from my perspective, the press, because a lot of this is a story about the press, and how they handle it. 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. Perhaps they knew it would come out in the courtroom that the entire conflict was based on lies about Saddams weapons of mass destruction and that key UN officials could have been blackmailed. 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? Anyway, the Office of Special Plans and Abram Shulsky make an interesting Wikipedia read, it won't take you very long. In the runup to the critical vote on war in Iraq, Katharine Gun exposed a US plot to spy on the UN. Such a law is not compatible with openness, transparency, accountability and justice. Gavin Hood: After the spellcheck. "Financially it's the toughest," she said. So there is sometimes a thought in my head that says: What if Katharine hadn't leaked that memo? Official Secrets Trailer #1 (2019) | Movieclips Trailers, Imagine Donald Trump Running an Actual War. A script has been doing the rounds in Hollywood for five years. For the Observer too, it was a story full of risks. 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 The Observer, which then publishes it on their front page. According to the Guardian, 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. I've seen that happen. In the matter of a few years. If Keira Knightleys remarkable performance in Official Secrets can help change that, the film will truly have been worthwhile. Since 2003, my life and Gun's have continued to cross from time to time. Some of those same birds are still flapping wings in the skies above Washington. Iran has been filmed loading missiles aboard some of its vessels. It turned out a copyeditor at The Observer had run the memo through spellcheck before printing it.]. Provocation? Two hours later after this deep dive, I called Ged back and said, How come we dont know this story? I guess the answer to that is that her story was big news for the day, and then very quickly got crushed by a bigger story, which was the story of the invasion. Despite the risk of a harsher sentence, I decided to plead not guilty because I felt strongly that my actions had been intended to prevent the unnecessary loss of life in an illegal war. 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 Nations. Look at what happened to Reality Winner in this country. This, remember, was a conflict that caused the deaths of 179 British servicemen, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and caused countless more to suffer serious wounds, both physical and psychological. And the reason? You can look up Nicole Mowbray, she wrote an article in The Guardian a couple weeks ago, about this worst day of her life. Hood said that this was a purposeful choice by Knightley. 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. For all the relief, there was a weird sense of anti-climax that we would now be unable to give our side of the story to the public. This, despite credible evidence that Iran was in full compliance with terms of the agreement. So right there, you are pulling out the highlights," said Hood of the key issue with making Official Secrets. Gun disclosed details of the spying operation as it was happening to stop something she viewed as terrible happening in the future. Katharine Gun and Martin Bright could be forgiven for fielding Hollywoods overtures with a degree of skepticism. Ed, the real Ed, is absolutely delightful. At first, I heard nothing. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. She leaked a memo, she thought she'd get away with it, and she faced another one of these little moral dilemmas which was a few days later all her friends were being interrogated. If the email did reach the newspapers, I reasoned, there would be no more than a discreet summary. 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. WebGun was followed, denied legal advice and her Turkish husband faced deportation. Following the incident, Gun struggled to find work that she I actually think the little memo lands on our lap more often than we think, even if it's just who I should vote for. But I know some folks because of films I made like Eye in the Sky, and before that I made a film called Rendition. Gun was visiting friends and family in Cheltenham when I talked to her, with the strain obvious on her face but still looking much younger than her 38 years. WebKatharine Gun was a young specialist working for Britains Government Communications Headquarters when she exposed a highly confidential memo that revealed the United She had been following that war, as many of us had, for a year. That would be awkward. Gavin Hood: Hes not in journalism. This and her other writings about intelligence issues have been critically acclaimed. She was charged She said, I thought that might be quite interesting and exciting. Official Secrets is, for the most part, a historical account of these events in 2003, but as with nearly all films based on a true story, some things have been changed to aid the drama of the narrative. And Assange is the same. By the time Gun and around 100 of her colleagues received the emailed memo that would change her life, she had already come to the conclusion that the arguments for war with Iraq were not really valid arguments, she tells me. We were in development with a particular studio, and I don't mean to be funny after such a heavy film but sometimes we need a little bit of humor. Throughout her own court case, what only a few knew was that she was also fighting for 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. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. Id never seen anything like it. You have no idea. By design. 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. They published the scoop in March 2003putting Gun directly in the crosshairs of law enforcement, and sparking a legal fight for her freedom. 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