I watched it in San Francisco, at the premiere, and my friend from childhood who lived there was with me. KATHARINE GUN: My MP, yes, at the time. [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. KATHARINE GUN: Yeah. You come home. ED VULLIAMY: But my point is not against Mr. Ahmed. MARTIN BRIGHT: We didI tell you what, though, we did feel that we had failed. What I did is a very unusual thing to do, because the results are not generally good. Now, that doesnt mean we shouldnt try to hold them to account. Katharine Gun is the Most Important Whistleblower You've Never Heard of Gun discusses her attempt to stop the Iraq War, which is the subject of the new movie Official Secrets. 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. Gun owned up to the leak a few days later to save her GCHQ colleagues from a witch-hunt. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Gavin Hoods 2019 film Official Secrets is the thrilling political drama that explores the events that followed British linguist Guns 2003 media leak. Maybe there will be sympathy.. whistleblower and former specialist for Britains Government Communications Headquarters. 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. [12] At the time, the reasons for the Attorney-General to drop the case were murky. At the time, as I well remember, the paper was split in response to the talk of war. AMY GOODMAN: The people Martin was fighting to get this story out. And we can say that, you know, thatso, he comes back, under all this pressure. AMY GOODMAN: Martin, you went on to work with Tony Blair, didnt you? Just occasionally Gun is invited to speak at conferences organised by the likes of accuracy.org or VIPS (the Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity). MARTIN BRIGHT: I have an abiding interest in the link between religion and conflict. [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. And Im saying, Ben, but how did you know, when you called for those documents, that theyd be there? And theres this pause. Do you think shed meet with me? Because I think we were both a little skeptical of each other. The difference, I think, is that hereand your program and your viewers are testimony to thisyou have an opposition. But anyway. ED VULLIAMY: Its a story of endeavor, to no avail. [5] While at work at GCHQ on 31 January 2003, Gun read an email from Frank Koza, the chief of staff at the "regional targets" division of the American signals intelligence agency, the National Security Agency.[7]. Gun had, of course, been forced to abandon her career in the civil service and finally, struggling for work, left Britain altogether. And we had to sit and wait for two hours while they winged it down from London. Were on the set. MARTIN BRIGHT: this was the real deal. And my husband was desperately worried about what was going on. But it may say more about the BBC than it does about him, that with this track record you can get to the top. How often does she go through that fateful weekend, where she wrestled with her conscience after seeing the memo? Gun was 28 in 2003 and had been working at GCHQ as a Mandarin Chinese linguist for only a couple of years, when she became alarmed at Blair's public statements supporting an invasion of Iraq by insisting that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. I was very concerned about joining any kind of organisation like Stop the War, and being used as a focal point or something. [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. This is a rush transcript. Katharine Teresa Gun (ne Harwood) (born 1974) is a British linguist who worked as a translator for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). If the war was illegal and she broke the law in order to expose an illegal war and potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives, I can use this defense of necessitythats usually used in more mundane, dare I say, contextsin this great political trial., And so he says, All right, now I need to know whether the war was legal or illegal. And he says, I need to find out what Lord Goldsmiths, the attorney-generals, legal position was in the run-up to that war. Within half an hour, the case was dropped because the prosecution declined to offer evidence. . And the other way is the good, old-fashioned self-defense. Many wonder whether Guns young daughter has seen the film or been told of the importance of her mothers extraordinary actions. Few are aware that her husband had also been thrown into troubled waters when Gun blew the lid off the alleged spy efforts in 2003. You work for the British government, her interrogator said, with a sneer. Jed didnt sort of put the two of us together. how many children did jayne mansfield have. Dont just swallow what politicians tell you. Most people do. samsung dw80j3020us parts diagram; stephen king reading checklist; global security 17 academy street newark, nj; is bletchley a nice place to live; mordecai the jeweler las vegas Katharine Mcphee's Early Life, Career, Married Life And . And they attempt to deport your husband, who is a? . MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, I must say, when I found out how young she was, it did take me by surprise, and the fact that she was a translator. Best Interior Designers in Noida. But he certainly was suggesting that people would know. Pie de foto, KATHARINE GUN: I was waiting outside in the police station, yes. "[15], In September 2019 Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, said the case against Gun was not dropped in order to stop the Attorney General's advice on the legality of the Iraq War from being revealed. These were, as I said before, bitter times. - present) (1 child) You were just waiting. I havent watched the films about either of them, she says. And all of a sudden his safe, you know, this civil servant wife is in a whole lot of bother that he never expected to have to deal with. Theyre going to send him back to Turkey. I took up teaching. 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. AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I mean, my initial encounter with him at the Faith Foundation was extremely concerning, in fact, because he said that what he wanted me to do was develop a heat map, you know, an interactive map of all the madrassas, you know, Islamic schools, around the world, with my tiny team of two or three interns, showingand he looked me in the eye, and he said, I want you to be ableI want people who are looking on our website to be able to see how radical those madrassas are, by color coding.. KATHARINE GUN: I dont know. There are familiar spy-movie pleasures to be had, too - one secret rendezvous between Ridley and Bright in a subterranean car park has . And, of course, I was sitting in the restaurant waiting for her to come in, and I had no idea what to expect. I grew up in Taiwan, which was a military dictatorship. After the case was dropped I did some media for 24 hours and then I immediately decided to run away and hide and not pursue the story any more. Your defense becomes: It was necessary to break the law in order to achieve a higher purpose, which is the saving of human life. They live on a smallholding, renting a house, in rural Turkey. AMY GOODMAN: So, before the time of the trial, Katharine, youthey have clamped down on you. 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. And they say, Were not even going to vote on this resolution. And the next day, we invade. I mean, I literallyI couldnt eat. Because it offered her both a resolution, and none? AMY GOODMAN: How rarely a woman actress, an actor, gets to play, you know, the protagonist, the solid, strong hero, Gavin. I had had my own story on the fabrication of the weapons of mass destruction, the existence of a shadow intelligence-cooking agency within the Pentagon, which we at The Observer had for five months before Sy Hersh, with great respect to Sy, published it in The New Yorker. 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. And he says, Well, I called Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who is the assistant attorney general, who had resigned. So, you know, it doesnt end, as Martin said. All I want to do is feel the emotions that this young woman felt, and dont want to be fussed over. And it was great. I think I found like the missing piece. Anyway, thats why the scene. GAVIN HOOD: Theres an outrage. Explain what happened at the Q&A, Martin. AMY GOODMAN: Were you actually in the car with him, waiting for him to go in for his check-in? But as we said last night, this is the purpose of Albert Camuss great story La Peste, when Dr. Rieux is given the child dying of plague. I mean, no ones going tono crocodile tears over that. Katharine Gun (ne Harwood), 47, is married to Yasar Gn, a Turkish Kurd, with whom she has a 13-year old daughter. Please do your part today. In its absence, Tony Blair won another election in 2005. [20] After the charges against her were dropped in 2004, she found it difficult to find a new job. AMY GOODMAN: And you actually said you hadnt heard of Katharine Gun at the time, which is interesting in itself, because the story, in a sense, was almost killed for a bit. ; Democrats Reintroduce, Mississippi Enacts Transgender Healthcare Ban for Youth Amid Spate of Anti-Trans Laws in Red States, Tennessee Gov. 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