Whatever, she blew the whistle ultimately revealing the truth behind the build-up to the Iraq War--regime change, disguised as terrifying threats of weapons of mass destruction. It was an interesting experience because you couldn't really go bending things the way you thought would be more dramatic, you just have to make the story itself and hope there was enough drama there. "Still no regrets," she said. He is wonderfully articulate but super pissed off, and his PTSDbecause hes been in Iraq for yearsmanifests at just disdain for that certain person you mentioned. Maybe thats rewarding. David Dayen: As someone who works on a magazine, it's the ultimate copyediting failure. Ed, I know some people have said that Rhys Ifans [who plays Vulliamy] is slightly over the top. Gavin Hood: Yes, it really sticks in my throat too. It was both exhilarating and just a little uncomfortable. 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And then, she said when she got in therenow bear in mind that she still is bound by the Official Secrets Act. 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. WebKatharine Gun, as passionately embodied here by Knightley, skews too noble to be particularly interesting, and the film is weakest when its focused on her and her husband 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. A transcript, lightly edited with explainers where necessary, follows. He is just way out there in a whole other realm. Throughout her own court case, whatonly a few knew wasthat she was also fighting for the right of her husband, who is from Turkey, to remain in the UK. He was actually gone for three days. His philosophy comes from a military intelligence model, which actually, by the time you go to war, now it's about winning. In the matter of a few years. Was it because we had demanded the Attorney Generals legal advice as part of my defence? Sound familiar? We typically, in the movie business, ever since Joseph Campbell wrote The Hero of A Thousand Facesand Im not meaning to be sarcastic because thats a great piece of work, but it spoiled the idea that every development executive is reading these books because the hero we meet and then something upsets their world and the antagonist that must equal the hero, and eventually we go through these loops and the hero triumphs in the end. And it was this book which eventually became the script for Official Secrets. It was almost as if that request was asking for someone within their own nation to do this work; it wasn't asking another completely independent state for co-operation.". 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." The only thing that we altered in that is that I didnt have time to tell it for as long as it went on. The difficulties of translating Gun's story also made writing the climax of the film tricky. Rishi Sunak is urgently reviewing his private exchanges with Matt Hancock after bombshell leak of ex-Health 'Drinks cold in fridge at DH!' Because I'm not ambitious it's not paramount for me to find myself in a high-paid job. It is to say that we need to know the truth behind the decisions to act or not to act. Eventually, it was widely held that at least one of the reports of the attacks, and perhaps even both, were false. Does anyone have any questions? the waning support for public institutions today. But the invasion was forced to proceed with the backing of Bushs coalition of the willinginstead of with the support of the United Nations. And I did the same for the journalists and the lawyers and everybody. Official Secrets Trailer #1 (2019) | Movieclips Trailers, Imagine Donald Trump Running an Actual War. WebAttempts were made by the authorities to deport her husband, who grew disillusioned with Britain. As I walked down the red carpet, I had never in my life experienced the flash of so many cameras. WebGun sacrificed so much when she decided to leak and has worked only intermittently since. However, her husband and the father of her daughters name is Yasar Gun. But Katharine only ever leaked this one memo. So she said, Can I just do nothing with my hair, put on the jeans like Katharine wore? So the wardrobe is accurate to Katharine's style. Actually, there were two incidents at sea, blamed originally on the North Vietnamese. Sorry to digress. She's based (and born and raised) in Brooklyn, New York. But my point is simply this: The underpinnings of this country matter. Gun disclosed details of the spying operation as it was happening to stop something she viewed as terrible happening in the future. WebGun, then 28, received an email about a U.S.-led operation enlisting the help of Britain to spy on other countries, in an attempt to blackmail them into supporting the Iraq War. And for her, this was too much. Keira said no one knows Katharine, and that's not an insult to Katharine. So I said goodbye to my mom and moved to America. Can dementia be spotted in CHILDHOOD? To legitimize an invasion and get rid of Saddam, a new UN Security Council resolution, going beyond SC1441 and specifically sanctioning the invasion, was the answer. I didn't plan to have this movie out today and know what was going to be going on. Yet I do think Keira perfectly captures the strain I was under, the isolation and fear. She said, I was naive. After the leak was published, hundreds of staff inside the building were questioned in order to discover the identity of the whistleblower. Some of those same birds are still flapping wings in the skies above Washington. Just occasionally I never thought Id be choosing a dress for a red carpet appearance at a major film festival. She wasnt charged for eight months a gruelling period which is depicted as just a few David Dayen: So why do you think this is an important story to tell now in 2019? Who spoke to the homeland secretary? By printing off the memo, putting it in her handbag and taking it home, she was already committing a serious breach of the Official Secrets Act. The decision to leak it was almost instant I felt I had no choice. And Where Is Katharine Gun, JUST 36 HOURS TO GO IN OUR WINTER CAMPAIGN. Gun was visiting friends and family in Cheltenham when I talked to her, with the strain obvious on her face but still looking much younger than her 38 years. So thank you for being here, it means a lot. She said, I thought that might be quite interesting and exciting. 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. The email, which was sent by an American NSA official, suggested that the US was just as well aware that it couldnt earn UN support through valid arguments alone: The memo outlined a plan to bug diplomats from non-permanent UN Security Council Nations Chile, Pakistan, Bulgaria, Guinea, Angola, and Cameroon in search of intelligence that could be used to cajole and possibly even blackmail them into supporting the invasion. The poor woman is based on a real person. Yet to this day there has been barely a mention of the Bush regimes disgraceful demand in official histories of the period, as if its been deliberately written out. Jack Straw, then the foreign secretary, has not been challenged on whether he authorised the operation to go ahead, although it is almost certain that he did. My shock turned to anger as the significance sank in. She also opposed the pending war. ", 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. She thought wow, they need a Mandarin translator at GCHQ. Times have often been tough, not least because of the itinerant life she has chosen for herself. The contents were explosive, implicating America in a blackmail plot to swing UN votes in favor of an invasion. ", "I think Gavin had a really difficult time telling this story because it doesn't fit into a normal sort of storytelling mode," said Gun. But again, I cant help but make some small jokes about these things. For the Observer too, it was a story full of risks. And I went, Oh, that's how much that superhero myth is in our system. We didn't end up making it with that studio. And I didnt have work where I was. Theres not a lot of work for translators; shes a Mandarin translator in England. So, I guess we all have a threshold. She could easily have been me or you at your place of work, where something comes across your desk and you go, This doesn't smell right. So there is sometimes a thought in my head that says: What if Katharine hadn't leaked that memo? [U.S. media dropped the story because the Drudge Report noted that the NSA memo in The Observer had British spellings for words like favourable, which nobody in the U.S. would write. David Dayen: No problem. We must not be flummoxed by exaggerated claims of threats against America and our interests. Twenty-eight, pretty naive. Because it was toughthe guy wouldnt print his stuff. And just coming from my perspective, the press, because a lot of this is a story about the press, and how they handle it. Do you vote, do you analyze who you should vote for or do you just take it for granted? But I know some folks because of films I made like Eye in the Sky, and before that I made a film called Rendition. So important was this email, I knew it might even derail the case that Tony Blair was making for joining the Americans in an invasion. Most whistleblowers leak after the event to expose perceived wrongdoing. We need a truth-sayer. In the years following, an author called Marcia Mitchell contacted me and said she was keen to write a book about my case. She got into a plea bargain, they still gave her five years. Meanwhile, Kamal Ahmed, who is the guy at The Observer, is now the editorial director of the BBC. He said: "Very close. Over the weekend, I got to work. Then, the following Monday, I printed out a copy of the email, folded it up, and tucked it carefully in my bag. I had, of course, signed the Official Secrets Act, content in the knowledge I was working within the law for Britains protection. But get out of that trailer as fast as possible, get onto the set, and work from inside? She didnt know where he was for three days and she took the train down from Charlton to London to see the MP, Nigel Jones, who said exactly what he says in the movie. 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. For the future, I hope the film will help locate the missing pieces from the story. So when, on the first Sunday of March, 2003, my leak appeared on the front page of The Observer newspaper, I was overcome with shock. For example, a scene where Gun tries to get her husband out of an immigration detention center actually played out over three days during which she did not know where he was. On the other hand, she and Ben, to this day, feel they never got their day in court. For several years, just recalling the events would set my heart racing and my hands trembling. 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. Gavin Hood: And that really happened. Gun sacrificed so much when she decided to leak and has worked only intermittently since. And I thought this is going to end in the worst civil war. Was the British government aware of it? Maybe that was naive, but she didn't think that. The editorial position should never be that. WebI disappeared with my husband down to the coast in Brighton, on the coast of England, and spent some time away from the limelight, Gun said in the interview. 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? So, she began to feel uncomfortable in the work she was doing at that point. Do you go vote? Gun said that the UK government still had some explaining to do: "I thinkthere need to be more questions asked about whether they responded to that request, why they felt it was within their scope of work to respond to that sort of request, and what is the manner of the relationship between UK politics and US politics. A script has been doing the rounds in Hollywood for five years. Webdeport Guns husband, Yasar (Adam Bakri), a Muslim Kurdish Turk who was awaiting permanent leave to remain in the U.K. After the charges against her were dropped in 2004, she found it difficult to find a new 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. And they failed, in part, I believe, because Katharine Gun leaked that memo, Official Secrets director Gavin Hood told Democracy Now!. Does your loyalty lie to your own conscious, does your loyalty lie to your marriage, does your loyalty lie to your government, does your loyalty lie to your country? As Bright noted, however, what we see in the movie is close to the real events. It left me in an impossible predicament. [Ahmed is depicted in the film as strongly pro-war, resistant to running stories that conflict with his opinion.]. Since 2003, my life and Gun's have continued to cross from time to time. As one of the journalists who broke the story, I feel a certain responsibility for how things have turned out. 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. 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. You might say I am biased. There were some audience questions as well. According to the Guardian, 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. I became a mother, we moved countries and I have come to terms with that year of my life, though it will always define me in some ways. Then the most almighty cacophony erupted, a roar so loud we could barely hear to speak. 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. She will not talk about it anything else. She had been following that war, as many of us had, for a year. ", Left: Dave Benett/Getty. 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