You authorized her prosecution. In April 2020, Gun was set to appear as a speaker at the 14th edition of the International Journalism Festival, but the event was canceled in February of the same year due to COVID-19. He knows he cant save the child. This is Democracy Now! Youre terrified. Some people have very low tolerance of wrongdoing, whether it is fiddling expenses, or whatever. There have been other attempts to make a film over the years. Good for him. You werent particularly worried. AMY GOODMAN: Whatever you tried to do didnt succeed. KATHARINE GUN: Yeah. 'Official Secrets': The True Story Behind the Keira - Newsweek Frequent Fox News guest and conservative commentator Mary Katharine Ham announced the death of her husband, Jake Brewer, on Sunday morning in a heartfelt Instagram post . It is not often that a persons character is revealed in two sentences. Youre a bit, AMY GOODMAN: So, there is an uproar. What I did is a very unusual thing to do, because the results are not generally good. Im Amy Goodman, as we bring you Part 2 of our extended look at a new film thats out called Official Secrets, thats coming out at the end of August, that tells the story of a British intelligence specialist, Katharine Gun, who risked everything to blow the whistle on U.S. dirty tricks at the United Nations in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003. You know, he couldntand it was the first time he had heard about it. Martin Bright and Ben Emmerson stick by Kathrine the whole time . How am I possibly going to do that? In its absence, Tony Blair won another election in 2005. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: The horror of what you did not succeed in preventing, though, which was the deaths of so many in Iraq, and that continues today, but you certainly touched the conscience of not just the nation, but the world, in what you did, talking about what womanwhat one woman could do. They said, Plead out., AMY GOODMAN: We dont want you to go to jail for years. Now, the defense of necessity is usually used in very more simple circumstances. You know, banks of civil servants couldnt do that. AMY GOODMAN: And then what happened? Later, he stands by her as the many intricacies and dangers of his wifes profession and act of bravery surface. With me, it was this. Iraq War Whistle Blower Katharine Gun Shares Her Story But then I thought, Well, no, I just cant go on calling in sick. So I went in, and my manager said, you know, Katharine, you look dreadful. But this gets out, and suddenly you see it on the front page of The Observer when you go to buy, what, milk in the morning for you and your husband. is a 501(c)3 non-profit news organization. And so I did. I mean, not the greatest decision of my life, I have to say. Her whistleblowing was not enough to change the path of history, of course, and her last-gasp act of courage was all but forgotten in the brutal "shock and awe" of war. Of course I did, yes. [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. Fox News' Kat Timpf Marries Cameron Friscia: See the Photos - People So I tried to look for work. . My GCHQ career obviously came to an end. 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 . Im going, No, II dont. He said, Just google Katharine Gun and official secrets. So I googled official secrets Katharine Gun, becausethe title of our film comes from the Official Secrets Act, which is what she breached when she leaked the memo. You know, the conservative estimates are 125,000 up to a million. Guns story is not only an inspiration to her own daughter, but also to people around the world trying to be honest and brave citizens. The difference, I think, is that hereand your program and your viewers are testimony to thisyou have an opposition. UPDATED with latest attendees, livestream link: President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, will attend Saturday's . Following the incident, Gun struggled to find work that she loved, and her husband had grown disillusioned with Britain. And its sothe nonpermanent members, who realized they were being hacked and their personal things were beingin order to try and blackmail them into a vote. Yeah, so it was panic stations after that. Its incredibly daunting, you know. It was in character, I think. Koza's email requested aid in a secret operation to bug the United Nations offices of six nations: Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, and Pakistan. You want to know where he is?. The woman in her 20s attempted to stop the war and firmly stood to her truthful morals. AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain that. The Observer team in a scene from the film, with Matt Smith, front, as home affairs editor Martin Bright. GAVIN HOOD: These are representatives at the U.N.. One foundered for lack of funds, another strayed further from the truth than she would have liked. Interview with Joel Looper by Schenck Talks Bonhoeffer 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. GAVIN HOOD: Yes, strong women. AMY GOODMAN: the person in charge of news. How dodo they join the dots? ED VULLIAMY: Well, he was the political editor at the time, who was giving me a lot of trouble over getting my cooked intelligence story into the paper. 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. And at some point, with great respect to Lord Goldsmith, he caves. Get Democracy Now! Her performance reminds you of the sentiment of Daniel Ellsberg, the man who famously leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971, revealing the full truth of American involvement in Vietnam. Interview: Whistleblower Katharine Gun. Get Democracy Now! Her act of whistleblowing cost her a career as a translator at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), made her stand in a highly publicized trial for violating the Official Secrets Act, and reduced her chances of getting another job due to being an internationally recognized whistleblower. How Lurking On Wall Street Influenced 'Succession' Fashion We still dont know who within the American administration ordered the operation. I was the U.S. correspondent indeed, but very soon I was in Najaf, Nasiriyah, Fallujah, unembedded, watching this bloody carnage, thisthe implosion of this country. [5] While waiting to hear whether she would be charged, Gun embarked on a postgraduate degree course in global ethics at the University of Birmingham. KATHARINE GUN: Well, hes Turkish, from a Kurdish background, yeah. But she sails in with Gavin and comes straight up to me and goes, Oh, Katharine! and gives me a big hug. And you said in places like Chile. Be consistent. So, was that Frank Koza? The trials and tribulations of daringly telling the truth and facing its consequences must certainly not be a light burden to bear. Published on May 3, 2021 08:23 PM. A full trial might have exposed any such documents to public scrutiny, as the defence was expected to argue that trying to stop an unlawful war of aggression outweighed Gun's obligations under the Official Secrets Act. The film captures well the inspired and stubborn efforts of Bright (Matt Smith in the movie), and colleagues Ed Vulliamy (played with brio by Rhys Ifans) and Peter Beaumont (played by Matthew Goode), to stand the story up, based on the few details it betrayed, and to get it into the paper, despite the strong misgivings of the political desk. In the very typical British manner, we just pretended we had never met.. Im sure that what Katharine felt when in 2010 we found out that Lord Goldsmith had declared the war, in his advice, illegal, must have been pretty painful for Katharine to hear, as it was for me when Congress said, I think around 2004, '05, we knew, actually, there were no weapons of mass destruction. So how am I, with my tiny team of researchers, going to do anything like that? And so, its one of those moments where you realizeI mean, the chill went up my spine, like I thought, Ive got to get out of here. So, yes, that was not a good moment, yeah. The repercussions of a lot of what happened are still being felt today.. Certain friends did not want to see me any more, or be seen with me some people get very paranoid. I think our problem now, and I think this applies on both sides of the Atlantic, is that we have populist politicians for whom that doesnt matter. I watched it in San Francisco, at the premiere, and my friend from childhood who lived there was with me. So, 600,000 Iraqi people died. And they attempt to deport your husband, who is a? The Bold True Story Of Official Secrets Katharine Gun - Refinery29 In this episode of Schenck Talks Bonhoeffer, TDBI Founder and President, Rev. AMY GOODMAN: And, Ed, you see whats going on in this country, in the United States, not to mention where youre from, in Britain. AMY GOODMAN: And then what happened? Never used in the idea of, youve broken the law, breached the Official Secrets Act. Gun, too, had expressed relief that the events are now part of a broader discussion due to the film and that she can finally talk about it without stress. I thought you said youre sick. And I said, I need to talk to you. And so we went into a small room, and I just said, I did it. And then she put her arm around me and went, Oh, Katharine. And then I burst out crying. Gun had given a copy of the memo, with no supporting verification, to a friend of a friend who eventually brought it to the Observers investigative reporter Martin Bright. And I justI just determined to deny it. So I was . 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. But, yes, I did. But he certainly was suggesting that people would know. Laggies. MARTIN BRIGHT: Well, they didnt even say why. You come home. "The U.S. government, through the NSA, was spying in violation of international law on other UN Security Council members in order to better coerce them to back the invasion of Iraq. Gun was outraged after she learned - as part of her job with GCHQ - that the United States wanted . [12] The Guardian newspaper had reported plans to drop the case the previous week. And they had already taken him down into the custody suite, which is, by the way, where I had been before, Gun revealed. KATHARINE GUN: Oh, yeah. She continues to reside in Turkey and occasionally visits Britain. Guns leak was perhaps the last example of whistleblowing that involved a red telephone box and a photocopier, rather than downloads. Shes beginning to understand the issues, but she hasnt seen it yet. At first they dont name you, but then they do. Details at membership.theguardian.com. Why did you choose to do this film? And they say, Were not even going to vote on this resolution. And the next day, we invade. AMY GOODMAN: So, the Daily Mail, very sympathetic also to President Trump. We can all have a view on Saddam Hussein and whether he should be deposed or not. [16], Her husband, Yaar Gn,[17][18] is a Turkish Kurd. I was teaching Mandarin in the local college in Cheltenham. The film stars Ma. We will never know. I was calling Nigel Jones, my MP. I mean, no ones going tono crocodile tears over that. AMY GOODMAN: And, Katharine, describe that moment, when you come into court in this very dramatic waybut this is not just a feature film; this is your lifeand youre facing years in prison, your husband not there because youre concerned he will become the story as a refugee in Britain. AMY GOODMAN: So, theyre processing him. In a BBC interview with Jeremy Paxman, she said that she had not raised the matter with staff counsellors as she "honestly didn't think that would have had any practical effect". Just trying to figure out what to do next. Woman who shot and killed boyfriend says she didn't know her gun had a Explain what happened at the Q&A, Martin. Megan (Knightley) is having a quarter-life crisis after her boyfriend proposes, so she escapes for a week to her new friend, a 16-year-old named Annika's ( Chlo Grace Moretz) house . Enter Katharine Gun. AMY GOODMAN: So, before the time of the trial, Katharine, youthey have clamped down on you. KATHARINE GUN: Actually, time-wise, I was bailed for eight months. Young, in love, with a beautiful toddler and a baby on the way, Mary Katharine expected her husband of four years, Jake Brewer, to return from cycling in a charity event. Thats our job. Strange concept, but you do. Therefore, it is not surprising that Gun chose to move away from the center point of all the chaos once it died down. 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. And Jed called me up and said, Have you heard of Katharine Gun? And you get this moment where you feel like you should have, because of the way hes saying it. Gun thinks she might speak out more considering the current state of political affairs and massive citizen involvement in sociopolitical issues. Your question about now, this is all terribly relevant. I mean, this has been going on for a number of years, and it always sort of ended up kind of petering out, so, GAVIN HOOD: Other people had approached you before. There are almost no defenses to this act. So her moral certainty was rooted in those formative experiences? I was aware I was doing something I wasnt supposed to be doing. AMY GOODMAN: So you just thought this was routine. Were also joined by Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy, the two journalists who reported Guns revelations in The Observer newspaper, at a time when the paper was editorially openly supporting the Iraq invasion. There are plenty of opportunities here for other journalists to take up the baton and find out what really happened. And yeah, it was, AMY GOODMAN: And what did you think, whenbefore you had seen Katharine and met her, what did you imagine she would be like, this young woman, 27-year-old woman of conscience, who. I heard things that stuck. KATHARINE GUN: Well, OK, I know I was guilty in the facts of the matter. But lets talk about that moment in the courthouse. And nor do newspaper stories. [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]. Katharine 'Kay' Griggs knows what it's like to have a gun pointed in her face. And all we were focused on was what might it felt like in this moment to have been Katharine. Just occasionally Gun is invited to speak at conferences organised by the likes of accuracy.org or VIPS (the Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity). And also, I didnt want to even risk having a criminal record. Following the dropping of the case, Liberty commented, "One wonders whether disclosure in this criminal trial might have been a little too embarrassing. Following the incident, Gun struggled to find work that she loved, and her husband had grown disillusioned with Britain. [13] Speculation was rife in the media that the prosecution service had bowed to political pressure to drop the case so that any such documents would remain secret. The war did not end when George W. Bush said, Mission accomplished. It was only just beginning. Gun was charged for exposing around the time of Colin Powell's infamous testimony to the UN about Iraq's alleged WMDs a top-secret U.S. government memo showing it was mounting an . KATHARINE GUN: I dont know. How did she go about rebuilding her life? Iraq war whistleblower Katharine Gun: Truth always matters. Katharine Gun - who's played by Keira Knightley in a forthcoming film - blew the whistle on a dodgy scheme by the American government. Some of the information that would have been revealed at her trial, in particular Lord Goldsmiths conflicting arguments as to the legality of the invasion, did not fully emerge until the publication of the report of the Chilcot inquiry in 2016. In the very typical British manner, we just pretended we had never met, she recalled. And I did this sort of dive. MARTIN BRIGHT: Well, I wasof course, the irony of the situation is that when we heard that a GCHQ employee, a 27-year-old GCHQ employee, Mandarin translator, I think we even said at the time, had been arrested, we were absolutely delighted, because we knew for sure that we had a big story at that point. Katharine Gun at Bow Street magistrates court in 2003 after being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act. So, you know, it doesnt end, as Martin said. Woman who tried to stop a war. Jed didnt sort of put the two of us together. "I never set out to be a whistleblower": Katharine Gun tells - Salon AMY GOODMAN: And did they say they were going to charge you with the Official Secrets Act? MARTIN BRIGHT: But once everyone did, there waswe knew that there was somethingthere was something going on. The comedown after they dropped the case, and trying to recover from that, was quite stressful.. We were mostly in our mid-20s, so it was the usual stuff, who is going out with who. Ben Emmerson decides the way to defend Katharine Gun is to ask for Lord Goldsmiths documents. And they failed, in part, I believe, because Katharine Gun leaked that memo. And, with great respect, I think he did. When he didnt come out, I was panicking, you know, and I ran inside. In an interview with Democracy Now!, Gun explained, After they charged me, thats when they tried to deport my husband. Gun is grimly amused to see his current return to the moral high ground over Brexit. Who is Katharine Gun's Husband? Where is Katharine Gun Now? I ended up, bizarrely, teaching a couple of my former colleagues at GCHQ. GAVIN HOOD: Well, its interesting you say that, because one of things Keira said to me that drew her to the script was, first of all, that she didnt have to wear a corset, because she does all these period dramas. Plead out. AMY GOODMAN: You succeeded in preventing his deportation. I think. He didnt know I had leaked this memo. AMY GOODMAN: That was 2014. In 2003, she leaked top-secret information to The Observer, concerning a request by the United States for compromising intelligence on diplomats from member states of the 2003 Security Council.The diplomats were due to vote on a second United . As of 2019[update] she has lived in Turkey with her husband and daughter for several years. I felt awful. I think a lot of our current issues go back to that time. Of course he does. So I really didnt want any of that to be scrutinized because it just felt too vulnerable, stated Gun, on why she chose to retreat from the limelight once the dust had settled. "[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. I wasno, as soon as he didnt come out, I. AMY GOODMAN: Shes then arrested. MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, who wrote the memo. You cannot talk to anyone about your intelligence work. Im going to start with you, Gavin. I was very exercised about what was happening. She worked at the time at GCHQ, the British equivalent of the NSA." But a part of me thought: Damn we could have put the war on trial. I had, you know, encounters with Blair. So, you get this memo. GAVIN HOOD: And then, for five days, I interviewed Katharine and just made notes. She urged "those in a position to do so to disclose information which relates to this planned aggression; legal advice, meetings between the White House and other intelligence agencies, assessments of Iran's threat level (or better yet, evidence that assessments have been altered), troop deployments and army notifications. And he says, Well, I called Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who is the assistant attorney general, who had resigned. MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, I mean, the story doesnt end. She grew up in Taiwan, where her father had gone to teach, and her accent is hard to place. AMY GOODMAN: And this is a critical moment, when you say October, because thats when the U.S. Senate voted to authorize war. "[12] In May 2019 The Guardian stated the case was dropped "when the prosecution realised that evidence would emerge that even British government lawyers believed the invasion was unlawful. And, of course, I was sitting in the restaurant waiting for her to come in, and I had no idea what to expect. Her upbringing later led her to describe herself as a "third culture kid". So, lots of leads there. As of 2020[update] Gun lives in Turkey and Britain. Mary Katharine Ham - Smart Women Smart Money Magazine AMY GOODMAN: This is the NSA guy who wrote the memo. In fact, Iyou know, I couldnt bear to watch the scenes. There are 15 members of that council, and there are these nonpermanent members who could swing the vote in favor of an invasion of Iraq in U.N. resolution. KATHARINE GUN: Yeah, and he had no money in his pocket. 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. So I was bailed until November, when they charged me. It wasn't that she was naive .
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