And it was a terrible moment when I had to look in my drawer and find it. It was a crisis meeting because they had failed to get a second UN resolution, to give legal cover for the war. Katharine had assumed a journalist would use the letter as a springboard for their own wider investigation. I do not gather intelligence so that the government can lie to the British people. KATHARINE GUN: I work for the British people. KATHARINE GUN, WHISTLEBLOWER: Its you know, its very hard to explain the point of view I had or the mental state I was in at the time. Release date September 13, 2019 AMY GOODMAN: So, Katharine, you read this memo. When asked by Salon how it felt to see a famous actress act out her life for an audience . Almost a decade ago, the world was gripped with anxiety as it watched the legal proceedings against a young Se. Gun was cleared of a charge under the Official Secrets Act after being . Two, there is a shadow intelligence operation going on through the Pentagon, all your favorite names on this programDouglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle. Was it? It would show that there isnt a double standard. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. 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, Senate Holds Equal Rights Amendment Hearing as U.S. Court Denies Attempt to Include in Constitution, Bola Tinubu of Ruling Party Wins Nigeria Election Amid Low Turnout, Rigging Charges, Hundreds of Iranian Schoolgirls Suffered Toxic Poisonings in Last Four Months, Biden Names Labor Advocate Julie Su to Lead Labor Dept. Let us learn more about the duo and where they are currently. AMY GOODMAN: So, but talk about this, your argument to the editors. MARTIN BRIGHT: It was NSA 'dirty tricks' at the U.N. Yeah, yeah. She had a leading role in the 1969 film, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and Elliott had a small, untitled role. All this was a measure of the bloody chaos that was Iraq after the invasion: eventually there were 179 British dead,4,500 Americans, and maybe half a million Iraqis, most of them killed in a sectarian civil war. And Rhys Ifans plays the outraged insanity rather well, to my embarrassment, but he does a good job. Acclaimed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg described Guns action as the most important and courageous leak I have ever seen. Guns incredible story is depicted in the new film Official Secrets, which premieres in the U.S. August 30. AMANPOUR: And that spoke was this memo that had , AMANPOUR: been leaked to you and then you leaked it to the press, not leaked but delivered to you . 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 . Here is a clip of you being interrogated by the police detective. The plan was to persuade them simply to abstain by piling up enough votes from other countries. Real Life Heroes Wiki is a FANDOM Lifestyle Community. I was like, Mmm. 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. is an independent global news hour that airs on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Mary Katherine Higdon of Griffin, Georgia, was arrested for the murder of her live-in boyfriend, Steven Freeman. In 2003, Katharine Gun, a young specialist working for Britains Government Communications Headquarters, exposed a highly confidential memo that revealed the United States collaboration with Britain in collecting sensitive information on United Nations Security Council members in order to pressure them into supporting the Iraq invasion. Yasur is a Turkish Kurd who is married to 47-year-old Katharine. I think the film will help to focus people on those issues again. The Crown Prosecution Service was about to charge her. Two weeks later, on the 15th of February, 2003, a million people took to the streets of London to protest the prospect of Britain joining the war in Iraq. And so we had at least that. She revealed the dirty tricks on the UN Iraq war vote to the world. In 2003, Katharine Gun exposed a plot by U.S. security officials to spy on United Nations members as they ramped up pressure to secure a resolution to go to war with Iraq, and she leaked the classified memo to The Observer newspaper. Currently, Katharine Ross is 82 years old as she was born on 29th January 1940. Between the worlds greatest democracy and a murderous dictatorship, it seemed easy to know whom to believe. You may not know the name Katharine Gun unless you live in the United Kingdom, but she was a pivotal figure in the run-up to the Iraq War.Or at least, she could have been. Katharine Gun's age is listed as 47 years old as of 2021. KATHARINE GUN: The idea was to gather information that they could use to bribe them or, you know, threaten them into voting yes for the resolution. This is Democracy Now! I was quite nervous. AMY GOODMAN: And the idea was they would figure out which way they were going to vote, so that they could sway them. What? Just put me through. And, sure enough, Frank Koza. That was a good brain moment. Amid safety concerns, and anxiety over the fate of a $200 million movie, The Johnny DeppAmber Heard Defamation Trial: The Makings of a Remarkable Moment in American Celebrity. today: https://democracynow.org/donateFOLLOW DEMOCRACY NOW! Theyre lying about what their motives arethat immediately made me think, I have got to get this out. When Katharine blew the secret off the American-British spy efforts in 2003, her husband was thrown into troubled waters, which few people knew. TINTIN: You gather information from peoples phones and computers, and you feed that to your clients. When she arrived, escorted by security, all her colleagues knew too. What were you employed to do? By Nick Wall/IFC Films/Everett Collection. She explained that when she was first arrested, her name wasnt released publicly for eight months. If people knew about this, nobody would support this invasion.. That was when reality hit. Indeed, the Government Communications Headquarterswhich is the equivalent of the U.S.s NSAimmediately began interviewing each person who had received the email. In that time, Katharine was interviewed again, and then escorted to the canteen. And, Ed, youre played by Rhys Ifans brilliantly in this movie, Official Secrets. Youve got CNN, youve got BBC, youve got everyone on the line. The film stars Matthew Goode, Katherine Kelly, Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes. Gun, 29, was . AMY GOODMAN: Rebel Girl by Bikini Kill. Your email address will not be published. We're sitting together in a quiet room at the headquarters of human rights organisation Liberty, just around the corner from the streets through which . Theyre cooking this up. We had at least a name. Bush never wanted yet another UN resolution and when one failed to arrive, Blair decided it wasnt needed after all. GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun speaks out. And those six swing nations, their delegates, they wanted , AMANPOUR: When you say swing nations, they were once at that the U.S. and the U.K. were trying to get on side . The morning of Friday the 31st of January, 2003 started out just like any other. Some of it was to do with complications over an unfortunate spell check within the memo. "The world is moving in a completely fascist, corporate direction," she tells me, when I ask if thinking back she'd do it all again. Sixteen years on, the words are still seared into memory. AMY GOODMAN: Right, because it said like F-A-V-O-U-R, instead of V-O-R. AMY GOODMAN: And so that proves its a fake memo, they think. I asked her why she decided to leak the memo. 2019 | Maturity Rating: R | 1h 51m | Social Issue Dramas. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: But basically, you tried to blow the whistle on what you thought was a false intelligence directive to try to cook up a reason for the Iraq war. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Now, the political thriller, In case you arent too familiar with Guns story, I dont want to give too much away about what the movie shows. Yasar's wife is a British linguist who worked as a translator for the GCHQ, Government Communications Headquarters. Jack Goldsmith, former head of the Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush, discusses the limits of executive power with Christiane Amanpour. On 5 March Gun confessed to leaking the plot and was arrested for violating the Official Secrets Act. She remains an intensely private personbut, when director Gavin Hood began the process of adapting 2008s The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion, by Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, Gun felt it necessary to revisit this difficult chapter of her life to help make the film. Even before the invasion, she suspected that the US was cooking up intelligence about Iraqi WMD. List of Wanted Pages on Real Life Heroes Wiki. Katharine Gun. Now the public knew. "Even thinking about it all would cause me anxiety," she says, "but now I am ready." The 1967 film Guess Whos Coming to Dinner starred Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton as a ne, As the open-hearted matriarch Hattie Mae in Tyler Perrys 2022 film A Jazzmans Blues, Amirah Vann demonstrates a great tenderness and fierce love to b, This story includes spoilers for Saint Omer. delivered to your inbox every day? After the meeting, the Brits and the Americans shook hands on the tarmac and walked to their planes. She'd been reading up on the preparations being made for a US-led invasion and wasn't convinced by the arguments; images of the first Gulf War she'd seen in her teenage years had forever been seared onto her mind. The person responsible for the jeopardy to face Blair and the coalition in invading Iraq was as well as Bush and Blair themselves a young translator at GCHQ, Katharine Gun. I filed that story seven times to The Observer. ANDY DUMFRIES: [played by Jack Farthing] The Americans want us to help them get a U.N. resolution for war. Yes, in 2003, Gun was working for British intelligencethat's GCHQ, the intelligence agency similar to the . When the former husband and wife square off in a Virginia courtroom this week, it will mark the culmination of a divorce that has been without comparison in the annals of modern American celebrity. AMY GOODMAN: This is a remarkable story. BEN EMMERSON: [played by Ralph Fiennes] You might need our help. Our obligation is to the truth. Don't worry, we'll never share or sell your information. Katharine Gun. This is her story. January of 2003. Discover Katharine Gun's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. And then, one morning, Katharine popped to her local shop to pick up the paper, as she did every Sunday, and there, on the front page of The Observer, was the email she'd leaked. ED VULLIAMY: Well, oh, indeed, brilliantly played his subject. We were handed a simple sheet of A4 paper that had a series of words typed on it. Your viewers will recall them; I hope not, for their sake, but some of them will. This is Democracy Now! The AFI Life Achievement recipient discusses her most memorable filmsand what moviegoers actually misremember. Due to the pandemic, the event was then canceled. Former British intelligence officer Katharine Gun didn't set out to become a whistle-blower. And yeah, it was just a request from the NSA tofor GCHQ to assist them in bugging the domestic and office communications of the six U.N. Security Council delegates. AMY GOODMAN: You said, May I please speak to Mr. Koza?, MARTIN BRIGHT: May I please speak to Mr. Koza? And they said, We dont give out names. And he says, Excuse me, Mr. Bright.. Scott Davis was asking the questions.Synopsis: The true story of a British whistleblower who leaked information to the press about an illegal NSA spy operation designed to push the UN Security Council into sanctioning the 2003 invasion of Iraq.A morality tale for the 21st century, Official Secrets tells the true story of British Intelligence whistle-blower Katharine Gun who, during the immediate run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, leaked a top-secret NSA memo exposing a joint US-UK illegal spying operation against members of the UN Security Council. With the emotional adventure of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever closing out the controversial fourth, Minor spoilers ahead. Martin Bright, youre able to move forward with this story. In 2019, she finally returned to the general public eye for the promotional press occasions for Official Secrets. At the time, her actions received very little attention from journalists in the United Statesunless you were watching Democracy Now! Manage all your favorite fandoms in one place! Tweet. Katharine Gun has a much better grasp of the true spirit of democracy than Tony Blair. She tried to stop the impending . The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. It was a Friday when I saw the email. AMY GOODMAN: But, Katharine Gun, youre home. The moment she walked out of GCHQ, she was breaking the Official Secrets Act, perhaps committing an act of treason. Theyre one of Hollywoods brightest starsand most troubled actors. And then, on Monday morning, I went back into my workplace, and I just photowell, I made a copy of it, and I printed it out and folded it up into my handbag and put it for the end of the day to take it out of the office. So, I decided that the risk to my career was minute compared to the upcoming war in Iraq, and the best thing to do for me was to leak this information to the press, so that everybody else could have the information, and hopefully it could avert this disastrous course of events that have occurred. Democracy Now! It took a maddeningly long periodeight months of existential limbobefore Gun was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act. MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, so, initially, we were quite nervous. The film stars Ma. This article was originally published inThe Spectators UK magazine. Youre sitting at the equivalent of the NSA. Sound familiar? It actually didnt really make a big difference at all., Gun and her legal team decided to fight charges in late 2003. Her case became awidespread controversy among activists, and many people stepped forward to urge the government to drop the case. Instead, the memo had been produced on the front page in its entirety. Tell us the moment. Gun sits down with Christiane to share her story. After the incident, Katharine struggled to find work, and her husband had grown disillusioned with Britain and then . We speak with Katharine Gun; the British journalists who reported on Guns revelations in The Observer newspaper, Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy; and Gavin Hood, director of Official Secrets.. She'd be tried at the High Court; the press and the public would know this whistleblower's name. But you see this memo that went out to everyone in your area. So, when I met Yvonne Ridley, who is the former journalist who handed me the document, it was immensely infuriating. Is that right, Katharine? Katharine's house was searched before she was sat down to be interviewed the following morning. BEN EMMERSON: You chose loyalty to your country over loyalty to your government, your marriage and yourself. You worked for GCHQ in Britain. 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