katharine gun husband deported

Gavin Hood: Yes, it really sticks in my throat too. A transcript, lightly edited with explainers where necessary, follows. Gavin Hood: Its a question of how conditioned are we to the conventional Hollywood structure. The difficulties of translating Gun's story also made writing the climax of the film tricky. Seven times I've submitted articles to you with an alternate point of view, and seven times you've turned me down. When do the clocks change in 2023? A translator for UK intelligence agency GCHQ, Gun read a brief from the US National Security Agency urging its British sister organisation to spy on members of the UN Security Council, to gain influence i n a vote Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture. We started working on this three years ago and even then it felt relevant in the sense that the challenges we talked about earlier: Where does my loyalty lie? Hood said that this was a purposeful choice by Knightley. I grew up in South Africa in the seventies and eighties, when apartheid was really tightening and tightening and tightening. 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. David Dayen: As someone who works on a magazine, it's the ultimate copyediting failure. To tell too much more of the story would spoil the film, but one part of its ending is clear. And we keep that system alive. .css-gk9meg{display:block;font-family:Lausanne,Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;padding-top:0.25rem;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-gk9meg:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.15;margin-bottom:0.25rem;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0.625rem;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 73.75rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}Facts You Didn't Know About That '70s Show, The Cast of 'The Mandalorian' in Real Life, The Hilarious Reason Why Chris Pine Cut His Hair, 'The Mandalorian' Season 3, Episode 1 Recap, Chris Pine Tells All About Harry Styles SpitGate, 15 Books Chris Pine Thinks Everyone Should Read, Your Guide to Every One of Justin Biebers Tattoos, Movie Sequels That Are Better Than the Original. Rishi Sunak is urgently reviewing his private exchanges with Matt Hancock after bombshell leak of ex-Health 'Drinks cold in fridge at DH!' This included a particular focus on the "swing nations" on the security council, Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, "as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters". And I didnt have work where I was. Theres not a lot of work for translators; shes a Mandarin translator in England. You are sitting in the intelligence services, and Ive spoken to many now because Ive made other films in that world and I have some interesting folks that Ive been able to talk to, and the struggle was were being disloyal if you dont toe a party line, as it were, but we know this isnt right. Just occasionally Abandoned blue sleeping bag, tents and several wooden shelters are found in woodland close to where police Don't just stick to the Malbec! Ed, the real Ed, is absolutely delightful. Such a law is not compatible with openness, transparency, accountability and justice. And I thought this is going to end in the worst civil war. Whistleblower Katherine Gun, right, is played by Keira Knightly in the movie Official Secrets, Gun was outraged after she learned - as part of her job with GCHQ - that the United States wanted Britain to assist in spying on fellow United Nations Security Council members to win a vote in favour of a planned war in Iraq. Cheering crowds have never been my sort of thing. David Dayen: No problem. Would you risk your job? WebHer husband, Yaar Gn, is a Turkish Kurd. And it's not an easy question, it sounds easy, but I don't think it is. And maybe if we went to work for Enron and we liked our job well enough, and its a job. The truth is when she speaks to me, and she says, Gavin, we also go to lunch like everybody else in any other office. The British are quite British, you know. Gavin Hood: There is a kind of cognitive dissonance. And then there is the Gulf of Tonkin incident that led America deeply into war against North Vietnam. And I know whose throat it really sticks in, is [British journalist] Ed Vulliamy, who I adore. Whether you work for Boeing or Enron or Wallstreet? However, she is not without disappointment about how little obvious difference she made. The same countries demanded immediate answers from the British government about its involvement in the spying. It's a fascinating film that really evokes the dangers of speaking out in the post-9/11 age, as well as the press's inability to challenge the official story on Iraq, particularly the U.S. press, which really just blacked out the Gun leak entirely. After the leak was published, hundreds of staff inside the building were questioned in order to discover the identity of the whistleblower. She thought wow, they need a Mandarin translator at GCHQ. Now, Trump says, he wants to see Iran back at the negotiating table. Because it's just an Executive Branch trying to grab power as an authoritarian. Please, become a member, or make a one-time donation, today. 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. 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. I've seen that happen. Progressive values. "Still no regrets," she said. Is this a matter of threatening to launch a war, or is it a matter of responding to the US positioning itself for war? You work for the government. They live on a smallholding, renting a house, in rural Turkey. Thankfully, time passes and the intensity of feelings fades. In one pivotal scene in the film, all of Gun and Bright's work is nearly undone by one mistake, as a member of The Observer team accidentally changed the American spelling of the memo into British spelling, something The Drudge Report then used to discredit the memo. So there is sometimes a thought in my head that says: What if Katharine hadn't leaked that memo? Now the goal is not truth, it is victory. Donald Trump also is saying he doesn't want war, which is probably true. I got that from Yasar. Gavin Hood: After the spellcheck. The other was Coleen Rowley, former FBI special agent and counsel at the Minneapolis bureau, who blew the whistle on FBI and other shortcomings Or at least, she could have been. The paper had taken the controversial decision to back intervention in Iraq. For the future, I hope the film will help locate the missing pieces from the story. It left me in an impossible predicament. Sometimes movies can be an effective way to make forgotten stories part of our national narrative, and in that sense, Official Secrets comes not a moment too soon. The film also captures my determination to do what I believed was right and reveals how divisive the Iraq War was, particularly highlighting the anger within certain sections of the intelligence services as the sabre-rattling statements of Mr Blair and his spokesman Alastair Campbell were accepted without proper challenge by some in the media. It was only later in the green room that I asked what all the fuss had been about, wondering aloud if it had been the environmental protest group Extinction Rebellion. Eventually, it was widely held that at least one of the reports of the attacks, and perhaps even both, were false. It should take the facts as they lead. It is written by Sara and Gregory Bernstein, a California-based husband-and-wife writing partnership who have worked with British director Jonathan Lynn. Gavin Hood: Hes not in journalism. Who authorised the NSA email, for example? 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. These superheroes, and I don't just mean superheroes in the movie sense, but larger-than-life big political figures, or Edward Snowden is almost mythical in his brilliance whether you like what he did or not, he is sort of not me. If Keira Knightleys remarkable performance in Official Secrets can help change that, the film will truly have been worthwhile. This meant that a lot of the things that we see Gun go through in the film actually took far longer in real life. Perhaps a plane painted in UN colors could be shot down over Iraq. As I walked down the red carpet, I had never in my life experienced the flash of so many cameras. Warning: The following contains spoilers for Official Secrets. We must not be flummoxed by exaggerated claims of threats against America and our interests. Everyone involved assumed the project had run into the dust, but then it appeared on the Black List, a Hollywood website for unmade film scripts, which has featured Slumdog Millionaire and The King's Speech in the past. I didnt know until I looked really deeply into this that theres really two schools of thought. The story of Katharine Gun, a whistle-blower who exposed NSA spying in the lead-up to the Iraq War, gets the Hollywood treatment. 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. Id immediately be transported back to GCHQ and that email the anger I felt and the decisions I made. 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. The email was demonstrating the depths to which the American and British governments would descend in order to get spurious legal cover for a war in the Middle East which would have utterly catastrophic consequences, as we know to our cost today. We even got as far as the Old Bailey. She had been following that war, as many of us had, for a year. She's based (and born and raised) in Brooklyn, New York. 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. He was actually gone for three days. David Dayen: One thing I think you depict really brilliantly in this story is what the climate was like at the time. Sixteen years ago, I became headline news after I leaked an internal email from GCHQ, the communications intelligence gathering centre near Cheltenham. "But that's partly my own fault because I haven't aggressively pursued a career. For several years, just recalling the events would set my heart racing and my hands trembling. What It Feels Liketo Survive a Chemical Attack. 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." However, when her friends start being interrogated about the leak, Gun confesses to being the whistleblower, leading to her being arrested and taken to court for breaching the Official Secrets Act. You took this job and didnt even know what it was. Although the story made headlines around the world at the time of the leak and later at the time of her trial, which collapsed after the prosecution withdrew its evidence, it remains largely missing from the official narratives of the build-up to the Iraq war. They published the scoop in March 2003putting Gun directly in the crosshairs of law enforcement, and sparking a legal fight for her freedom. 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. 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. [Gun was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act in Britain, but ultimately the case never went to trial.]. Though celebrated Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg would later call Guns actions the most important and courageous leak in history due to her efforts to save lives through preventing a war, she obviously didnt succeed in stopping the invasion. What appealed to me in the end is that Katharine is in fact, far more like us. His exact words to describe the intelligence method is, The goal of the intelligence is not the truth, but victory. That is a quote from Shulsky. Us, in any situation, wherever you work, I thought that's what this timeless about it. "You get to the end, and there's this court case. Sound familiar? "That really happened," Hood confirmed, though it did not go quite as it is shown in the film. Neither my friends nor my family knew what I did all day. Her story, which reveals what a country will do when it wants war and claims it does not, is told in an updated book and a major motion picture soon to be released--Official Secrets (Keira Knightly is Katharine). That means that, in theory, the war could still be classified as an illegal war, Gun says. Which is to say that GCHQ was being asked to dig dirt on foreign officials so that they could be blackmailed, bribed or both in order to secure a UN resolution authorising an invasion. Copyright 2023 | The American Prospect, Inc. | All Rights Reserved, The Alt-Labor Chronicles: Americas Worker Centers, Official Secrets: A Conversation With Director Gavin Hood. 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. Koza was in effect issuing a direct order to the employees of a UK security agency to gather "the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises". What resonates to me is the somewhat more, I hope, timeless thing. And then, she said when she got in therenow bear in mind that she still is bound by the Official Secrets Act. By the time the mid-eighties came around and I was a young law student, so Im looking at it from the side of the law, we had no right of access to lawyers in trial if you breached anything that was regarded as having to do with the emergency legislation. The poor woman is based on a real person. Anyway, the Office of Special Plans and Abram Shulsky make an interesting Wikipedia read, it won't take you very long. I even thought, naively, Id be able to keep my anonymity. She said, I worry what's going to happen, they'll go, Ooh, I don't know if I like Keira Knightly in blonde hair, what's she done to her nose, does she have glasses on? Because they don't have a comparison to make, until you see her at the end of the movie. Give today. 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? To me, it was a way of showing that Iraq cannot be dismissed as a horror show of suffering, but is an ancient and sophisticated culture that goes back thousands of years. But, maybe if I didn't know and maybe if I went into that job and discovered oh my God, maybe I really can stop a terrorist attack today. Was it because we had demanded the Attorney Generals legal advice as part of my defence? And they failed, in part, I believe, because Katharine Gun leaked that memo, Official Secrets director Gavin Hood told Democracy Now!. Ed, I know some people have said that Rhys Ifans [who plays Vulliamy] is slightly over the top. In leaking it to the Observer, she was also doing something unprecedented in the history of espionage. So thank you for being here, it means a lot. At some point, as you probably know, Bush and Rumsfeld decided to bypass the CIA and take out that Office of Special Plans. Gun made the choice to leak the document, which Martin Bright of The Observer in Britain published in a story on March 2, 2003. 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. I answered an advert in The Guardian newspaper for a translator. As it was, a second UN resolution directly to authorise war against Iraq never materialised and air strikes began on 19 March 2003. The spin in this country and in the UK was the threat of deadly weapons ready to be deployed by Saddam. Taking Vitamin D each day could cut your chances of getting dementia, study claims. And I went back in 93 and did another two years with the new Department of Health. To separate fact from fiction, Newsweek spoke to the real Gun and Bright, as well as Official Secrets director Gavin Hood. Unfortunately, perhaps, I have a conscience and my dishonesty gnawed at me persistently until the next day, when I confessed. The issue is provocation. The decision to leak it was almost instant I felt I had no choice. This, despite credible evidence that Iran was in full compliance with terms of the agreement. Or at least, she could have been. 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. In a year that the U.S. president is accused of pressuring foreign governments for political gain, the story behind the film Official Secrets seems particularly timely. We go to the canteen and we talk.. I don't think she thought they would deport her husband, I really don't think she thought that. Daniel Ellsberg, the celebrated American whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers about the build-up to the war in Vietnam, described it as "the most important and courageous leak I have ever seen".He added: "No one else including myself has ever done what Katharine Gun did: tell secret truths at personal risk, before an imminent war, in time, possibly, to avert it.". And people do this in every country; they spy, they listen to what are the Chinese going to do when they get to this conference. And she said, Yep, I have no problem being asked to listen in, in instances where I might help prevent a terror attack. What this memo suggested was neither of those things it was a bridge too far for her. 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. Ms Gun worked as a translator at the GCHQ building in Cheltenham, pictured. And it's also true that we were then attacked by the Drudge Report for what would now be called 'fake news. But, did it change the way I approached it? But the falsehoods and unnecessary wars of yesteryear likely have influenced the waning support for public institutions today. So, she began to feel uncomfortable in the work she was doing at that point. At first, I heard nothing. Webdeport Guns husband, Yasar (Adam Bakri), a Muslim Kurdish Turk who was awaiting permanent leave to remain in the U.K. Iran, meanwhile, says it doesn't want war, but will defend itself. But my point is simply this: The underpinnings of this country matter. ", Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Keira Knightley's Birthday: Her 15 Best Movies Ranked, 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, Keira Knightley as Katharine Gun in "Official Secrets. Brilliantly in this country and in the Guardian newspaper for a year UN colors could shot. Where necessary, follows in theory, the film to keep my anonymity as authoritarian! You get to the Iraq war, as many of us had, for a year true that we then! Pursued a career apartheid was really tightening and tightening and tightening Katharine is fact. 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