And whereas usually with a whistleblower, you would work very closely with them directly, Katharine didnt come to me. That night, Katharine posted the letter to a contact whose identity she continues to withhold. We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Its not true. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. But we werewithin The Observer, AMY GOODMAN: Of course, thats the time you should run the fastest to the editor, but. Theyre one of Hollywoods brightest starsand most troubled actors. How frustrating it was for Gun to sit in her modest home next to her husband, and see fiction portrayed on the evening news. This Shouldnt Happen: Inside the Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy, Chasing scientific renown, grant dollars, and approval from Dr. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak transformed the environmental nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance into a government-funded sponsor of risky, cutting-edge virus research in both the U.S. and Wuhan, China. Her life had been turned upside down, and for what? today: https://democracynow.org/donateFOLLOW DEMOCRACY NOW! With no plan and no contacts, a duty solicitor who was well out of her depth was called. She is his first try at marriage, and evidently, he's enjoying his beginner's luck. He had no regrets whatsoever about removing Saddam. And I pretty much ran home. I was initially terrified, Gun said, before learning the sad truth of the 24-hour news cycle: But people dont pay that much attention to the news, and they dont remember peoples names and you certainly dont remember what people look like. I asked Mr. Goodman, I asked others, Can you help me find this guy? Because you had to get an extension number. Katharine Gun worked as an analyst for Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the secretive U.S. National Security Agency. You think this is real, but you do have to track it down. It has been suggested that the government was desperate to ensure that documents containing advice about the legality of the war which the defence had requested would not be made public. And also, the memo itself contained language that was consistent with intelligence service language, so we had experts look at that, as well. Soon, Katharine was in touch with John Wadham, then Director of Liberty. AMY GOODMAN: Tony Blair was the prime minister of Britain at the time. And its so relevant to be talking about this today, as the British government is talking about cracking down on the leaker of the memos of the British ambassador to the U.S. that forced him out. AMY GOODMAN: Well, Martin, you tried that. AMY GOODMAN: Rebel Girl by Bikini Kill. to your inbox each morning. 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. The Drudge Report, famous right-wing website, had followed the story up. 2019 | Maturity Rating: R | 1h 51m | Social Issue Dramas. ED VULLIAMY: Yeah, I came upon an extension number. He said there were no WMD left, just a few old mustard gas shells already given to the UN weapons inspectors. Katherine Louisa Ryan was born on June 30, 1983, to Finbar and Julie McCarthy in the city of Sarnia in southwestern Ontario, Canada. She had passed the memo to one of her contacts. I asked her why she decided to leak the memo. After the issue, they moved to Turkey in 2011 with her whole family to avoid the general public eye. It is my fault and I'm sorry. And I knew that Ed was an extremely experienced journalist. I think the film will help to focus people on those issues again. They wont just put you through to a man who doesnt exist in a place that doesnt exist. 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. "At the back of my mind, the question remained: 'What are they going to do to me? Only a select number of people had received the communication, and GCHQ were going to want to know who'd blown the whistle. Real-Time Crime & Safety Alerts . We had just come from a press conference with the Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, better known as Comical Ali. ANDY DUMFRIES: [played by Jack Farthing] The Americans want us to help them get a U.N. resolution for war. And what we are seeing is a movement of people who are trying to stop it. Could you put me through? Whos talking, sir? I cant say. 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 . And so, I was going crazy. Is that right, Katharine? AMY GOODMAN: Twenty-seven years old, working for thewell, for British intelligence. Official Secrets is based on the actions of Brit Katharine Gun, who revealed that America had been eavesdropping on diplomats from other countries. 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 . It's taken a long time for Katharine to feel comfortable talking about everything that happened. I could not get it in the paper. She had leaked a secret email revealing what was called at the time an illegal dirty tricks campaign to fix the UN vote. 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. I mean, what are you doing here? "The officer shook my hand once I was bailed and released," Katharine recalls. Gun believed that this would be illegal, a breach of the Vienna Convention governing diplomatic relations. Katharine Gun. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, you work for the British government? But, many in the U.S. might not know the story of the 2003, In 2003, Gun worked for GCHQ, the British government agency that is equivalent to the National Security Agency across the pond. This month, a new film Official Secrets, in which she's played by Keira Knightly will be released, telling her story. Katharine Gun, Martin Bright, Ed Vulliamy and Gavin Hood. The advice was that, by accepting what she'd done was illegal, the jail time might end up reduced. And you were what? AMY GOODMAN: And then everyoneFOX, CNNand then they all cancel. Katharine read the content carefully, and immediately felt sick to her stomach: it was a classified directive from the American authorities asking the British to spy on six UN Security Council members. Back in 30 seconds. AMY GOODMAN: The guy at the NSA. Official Secrets is released in cinemas on the 18th of October, 2019. Thought-provoking commentary and opinion on politics, books and the arts. In January 2003, 28-year-old GCHQ translator Katharine Gun received an email from the US National Security Agency that would turn her world upside down. But the difficulty was that it was just words typed on a piece of paper. Gun says the film-makers were not projecting backwards what we learned later. Gun, youre a spy. And Rhys Ifans plays the outraged insanity rather well, to my embarrassment, but he does a good job. Right here. And I was petrified. And I hope that it can get people, Americans, to follow their conscience, and do the right thingstand up for what they believe in., With the world at an even more critical inflection point under controversial leadership, Gun hopes that others might find the courage to speak up if they come across as damning evidence as she dideven if it means temporarily sacrificing comfort. interviewed Katharine Gun. What were you employed to do? 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 she'd been marching. KATHARINE GUN: No. She headed up to Yorkshire and went into hiding, as a media circus descended onto Cheltenham to find her. This presented a problem. Therefore, on August 27, 2002, he was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder by a jury and subsequently sentenced to death. After university and a couple of years teaching in Japan, she was back in Britain and looking for a job. You didnt know who Katharine Gun was, who had leaked it, but you had the story of the memo that was going to get the goods on these U.N. Security Council members, which would force them to vote for the invasion of Iraq. [2] r 2003 lckte hon ut hemlig information till tidningen The Observer, angende en begran frn USA om att samla in knslig information om diplomater frn medlemslnder i FN:s . She was the real-life translator who photocopied . Official Secrets is a 2019 British drama film based on the case of whistleblower Katharine Gun, who leaked a memo exposing an illegal spying operation by American and British intelligence services to gauge sentiment of and potentially blackmail United Nations diplomats tasked to vote on a resolution regarding the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Katharine Gun was a translator at GCHQ, when she received an email in her inbox from Frank Koza, a leading figure in the American National Security Agency. I do not gather intelligence so that the government can lie to the British people. 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. KATHARINE GUN: Well, no, I was in a shock when I saw it. But I felt like straightaway it was emblazoned across my forehead: Its me! No, you just do not do stuff like that. Economist Jomo Kwame Sundaram on World Bank, Climate Emergency, Global Debt Crisis & More, We Want a Better Future: Meet an Asylum Seeker Evicted from, Jeremy Scahill on Mistreatment of Whistleblowers & Uneven Enforcement of Laws over Classified Papers, Part 1: In 2003, This U.K. Whistleblower Almost Stopped the Iraq Invasion. But when she arrived for her trial at the Old Bailey, the prosecution dropped the case with no explanation. MARTIN BRIGHT: Yes. "Yeah, I suppose so," she says. We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work. Yes, in 2003, Gun was working for British intelligencethat's GCHQ, the intelligence agency similar to the . The ripple effect from that initial invasion is continually being felt in worldwide institutions, in the U.S. and the U.K. Nobody really has been held responsible for it, and the fact remains that the nation of Iraq is still very much traumatized by what happened. Katharine McPhee shared a sweet snap of her 6-month-old son, Rennie, playing with husband David Foster in the cabin of a private jet. KATHARINE GUN: When I saw this email asking GCHQs help to bug the six swing nations to gather a vote for war with Iraq, I was very angry at first and very saddened that it had come to this, and that despite all the talk from both Tony Blair and George Bush about how important it was to get the U.N. on board and to legitimize any kind of aggression, that they were actually going around it in such low-handed manner. Amirah Vann Brings Heart & Depth to Black Womens Stories i British whistleblower named Katharine Gun, Gun how she felt looking back on her decision, Blair has been given the opportunity to speak about Brexit. Sound familiar? Even before the invasion, she suspected that the US was cooking up intelligence about Iraqi WMD. The invasion proceeded more or less on time with a coalition of the willing led by the United States and Britain. Never even come close to it! Gun was cleared of a charge under the Official Secrets Act after being . I do not gather intelligence so that the government can lie to the British people. It wasn't the news Katharine had been preparing for. When Gun exposed that the U.S. and U.K. wanted information on United Nations diplomats to persuade the vote on the invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush was President of the United States and Tony Blair was the British Prime Minister of the U.K. Guns information affected Blairs politics and government at the time, but he has seemingly recovered from the incident. It isn't a crime, it's a responsibility.". Gun is in her forties now and living quietly in Turkey. It actually didnt really make a big difference at all., Gun and her legal team decided to fight charges in late 2003. Katharine Gun. It seemed inevitable. She is known for having exposed a plan by the US government to spy on the United Nations shortly before a vote concerning America's illegal invasion of Iraq. GAVIN HOOD: We have to protect the innocent and source, yeah. You walk in. The email wasnt even meant for her. Theyre cooking this up. That level of pressure, stress and attention took its toll. Yasars wife is a British linguist who worked as a translator for the GCHQ, Government Communications Headquarters. Yasur is a Turkish Kurd who is married to 47-year-old Katharine. In fact, your husbandwould they attempt to deport him? Katharine Teresa Gun (ne Harwood; born 1974) is a British whistleblower who worked as a linguist at the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ; a British intelligence facility) from 2001 to 2003. At the time, the paper, their paper, The Observer, was openly supporting the Iraq invasion, leading up to it. The Americans had sent GCHQ a request to spy on the UN ambassadors of the six countries with the important, perhaps swing, votes. It was as it happened. "I immediately felt like I was in danger," she says, describing her internal panic, the desperation to look calm and to not draw any attention to herself. She was arrested and held at the police station in Cheltenham for 24 hours before being bailed. "I'd have a criminal record for doing what was right." What Really Happened During the Making of. Your email address will not be published. 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. And then, one by one, the American networks pulled out. And it was. Right away, Katharine knew the significance of this message. Katharine Gun speaks out for 'Official Secrets'. As of 2020, Gun and her husband Yasar live in both Turkey and Britain. The film stars Matthew Goode, Katherine Kelly, Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes. I felt guiltylike, I leaked this memo, and now theres going to be a witch hunt for the person who did it, and Im not going to be able to deny it. Sixteen years on, the words are still seared into memory. Theyre basically cooking it. Our obligation is to the truth. And she sees this memo that says that the evidence for going to war would not be based on intelligence of whether there were WMD, but on trying to get something on the U.N. Security Council members, personal or whatever, to get them to vote for the invasion, to back President George W. Bush. Yasur Gunnis is the husband of Katharine Gun, a linguist who specializes in translating Mandarin Chinese into English. There was also the question of the plea: would she admit to being guilty or argue her innocence? 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. Martin faced potential charges too. I was very much aware of what the leaders of our countries, Tony Blair and George W. Bush, were saying at the time. I had bought a couple of books which had been rushed into print at that pointone called War Plan Iraq and the other was called Target Iraq. I was convinced that there was nothing Iraq had done [to warrant the invasion]. This information could be huge for the growing anti-war effort Katharine thought it might even help put an end to talk of invasion once and for all. When an American is asked to define the term whistleblower," they will probably reference Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning. Powell span a story of mobile biological weapons factories in trucks and intercepted radio messages about chemical weapons already deployed in the field. Raising the issue with a manager briefly crossed Katharine's mind, but time was limited the threat of war was escalating fast and ultimately this operation had already been signed off by British top brass. Gavin, who worked on the screenplay and is the director. Gun leaked the memo to the press, setting off a chain of events that jeopardized her freedom and safety, but also opened the door to putting the entire legality of the Iraq invasion on trial. I did, rather naively, try calling the press office and getting an interview. The Man Who Deleted His Past Before He Was Found Dead. The former British intelligence officer leaked a document to the press that announced an illegal NSA spy operation created to convince the UN Security Council to approve the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Husband: Not Available: Sibling: Not Available: Children: Not Available: Katharine Gun Net Worth. I was trembling like a leaf. Woman who tried to stop a war. Whistleblower Katharine Gun and journalist Martin Bright are interviewed for their new movie Official Secrets for the films LFF screening. Ross weighs about 50 kg or 110 lbs. We need another Katharine Gun. When asked by Salon how it felt to see a famous actress act out her life for an audience . Yeah, and those are the. In 2019, she finally returned to the general public eye for the promotional press occasions for Official Secrets. 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. In that time, Katharine was interviewed again, and then escorted to the canteen. As he spoke at the base, a volley of mortars came in. "As soon as I got home I sat with my husband, who was still in bed. Youve got CNN, youve got BBC, youve got everyone on the line. "And I immediately decided the public should know the lengths the Americans were going to in order to secure legitimacy for this war. Don't worry, we'll never share or sell your information. How did it come to this? At great personal and professional risk, journalist Martin Bright published the leaked document in The Observer newspaper in London, and the story made headlines around the world. Guns story being told in Official Secrets. By Gabrielle Bruney . AMANPOUR: by somebody within your organization. Some call that treason. Blogus by Themeansar. 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. KATHARINE GUN: Youre putting me on the spot now. A breach of the Vienna Convention governing diplomatic relations Available: Katharine Gun, linguist... 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