But I wasnt thinking about myself really. And if you are working in government, make sure that you are really clued up about what is going on, and think very hard where your responsibility lies.. And that was it. Plead out. The claims were similar to those coming from the Bush administration. The Observers front page story on 2 March 2003. I think of journalists as being bullet-proof in a way, she says, but obviously not., She and Bright have done several question and answer sessions in the US after the film has been screened at various festivals. Yeah, I mean, they knew, in fact, GCHQ, I think, because theres this system whereby, you know, before the news goes to print, the government and various organizations get the front pages, so they know whatslike, before it goes to press. MARTIN BRIGHT: You know, I mean, you dont want to get too conspiratorial about this. And he says, Well, I called Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who is the assistant attorney general, who had resigned. And we had to sit and wait for two hours while they winged it down from London. [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. Shes confessed to breaching the Official Secrets Act. I think a lot of our current issues go back to that time. That was in this moment, moment by moment, as the story evolves, what would it feel like if you were in her shoes. The memo was a top-secret request to monitor the private communication of UN delegates for scraps of information, personal or otherwise, that could be used to give the US an edge in leveraging support for the invasion. ED VULLIAMY: Yes. There are lots of loose ends here still. The film, Official Secrets, comes out officially at the end of August. AMY GOODMAN: Gavin, introduce us to Ben Emmerson. [9] Gun spent a night in police custody, and eight months later was charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act. You can use this space to go into a little more detail about your company. And at some point, with great respect to Lord Goldsmith, he caves. I mean, obviously, at that point, then felt very sorry that someone had been arrested, but it was a huge relief at the time. She is from United Kingdom. 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. 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. Let us learn more about the duo and where they are currently. KATHARINE GUN: And also, Im justwell, whether its natural inclination or whether its what was kind of drummed into us at GCHQ, but it was, you know, this the sense of being private and not trusting journalists or people who are trying to ferret out information from you. But on the other hand, its just a deeply personal story aboutand I hope Katharine will forgive me saying thisabout an ordinary person, like one of us, who does something extraordinary. I didnt want to be that. 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. I was teaching Mandarin in the local college in Cheltenham. AMY GOODMAN: And your feelings at that time, Katharine? 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. So, of course, it was justyou know, he was kind of thinkinghe knew I worked for the intelligence services, but he didnt know what that was. Yasur is a Turkish Kurd who is married to 47-year-old Katharine. GAVIN HOOD: Almost a million. There is a sense of, Did it really happen? Is that really me?. June 21, 2022. I wanted to stop bombs dropping on Iraq., The consequences have been damaging not just for Guns career. KATHARINE GUN: Yeah, and he had no money in his pocket. (In fact, those -our and -ise endings had been introduced by an Observer editorial assistant, innocently following house style guidelines as she copied out the memo into the system.) Our Daily Digest brings Democracy Now! Posted on Haziran 25, 2022 | By Byline. It is not often that a persons character is revealed in two sentences. In the very typical British manner, we just pretended we had never met, she recalled. Certain friends did not want to see me any more, or be seen with me some people get very paranoid. is katharine gun still married to yasar . I felt that I had done the morally right thing to do. How many times has she seen the film now? I felt awful after I denied it. So I saw people going in and coming out and going in and coming out. Brights story was news to Gun herself, to a large degree. I mean, I dont think we imagined that we would be still friends and still talking about it 14, 15 years later. Together they have a 13-year-old daughter. Youre terrified. As well as illuminating Guns story, though, the film gives what was, by any standards, one of the great scoops of recent British journalism the credit that is long overdue. 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. And, he says to me, she explained that Goldsmiths positionif I called for those documents, I would find out that he had been consistently saying that war without a U.N. resolution would be illegal. The online Drudge Report used the fact that the reproduced NSA memo used English spelling to cast doubt on its veracity. 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: They failed. And so, we talked about motherhood and all sorts of things, but I was just so impressed with how intelligent she was and how incisive she was in getting to the crux of the matter. AMY GOODMAN: They said you could have pled. is katharine gun still married to yasarvpower777 referral code. There are familiar spy-movie pleasures to be had, too - one secret rendezvous between Ridley and Bright in a subterranean car park has . AMY GOODMAN: Martin, you went on to work with Tony Blair, didnt you? When he didnt come out, I was panicking, you know, and I ran inside. 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. Following the incident, Gun struggled to find work that she loved, and her husband had grown disillusioned with Britain. Ahead of a new film, Official Secrets, the GCHQ worker who tried to prevent the 2003 invasion of Iraq recalls those feverish days and their consequences Keira Knightley on playing whistleblower Katharine Gun: Iraq was the first time Id been politically engaged. Although Katharine herself publicly appears in front of the whole world, she has only disclosed limited information about . And when he didnt come out, I was panicking, you know, and I ran inside. Katharine Teresa Gun (ne Harwood) (born 1974) is a British linguist who worked as a translator for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Protesters against the invasion of Iraq, February 2003. 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. Chronicling Gun's annus horribilis in methodical, albeit sometimes ponderous strokes, the film elicits a palpable chill as the full, sinister weight of the state apparatus bears down on Katharine and Yasar. is katharine gun still married to yasar. Its all so resonant. When do you first meet, you, the person who exposed this story, Martin Bright, and Katharine Gun? You know, I felt totally at ease in her company. Don't worry, we'll never share or sell your information. You work for the British government, her interrogator said, with a sneer. And so I did. When the film opens, Gun (Keira Knightley) is happily married to Yasar (Adam Bakri), a Turkish national living in the . AMY GOODMAN: No, you thought it was routine when he walked in. So, 600,000 Iraqi people died. And Im saying, Ben, but how did you know, when you called for those documents, that theyd be there? And theres this pause. Gavin Hood, the director of Official Secrets, expressed scepticism about Macdonald's statement and called for the declassification of the official documents referred to by Macdonald. [5] Less than a week after the Observer story, on Wednesday 5 March, Gun confessed to her line manager at GCHQ that she had leaked the email, and was arrested. Counted amongst the likes of Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and John Kiriakou is Katharine Gun, a whistleblower whose actions revealed the shocking underbelly of international politics and also inspired a big-budget movie that introduced many to the issue. We, as a collective group of countries, decide that we need to stop an event, a humanitarian disaster or a genocide or whatever. They called for your documents. Ms Gun from Moor End Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, is charged under Section 1 of the Official. [5] In February, she travelled to London to take part in the demonstration against the impending invasion of Iraq. I was teaching Mandarin in the local college in Cheltenham. He was going in every week to basically prove that he was still resident or that they could pinpoint where he was. However, during one such trip, her husband was detained by the authorities. You want to know where he is? he said. Guns leak was perhaps the last example of whistleblowing that involved a red telephone box and a photocopier, rather than downloads. Ben Emmerson is. He would have had to have the authority of Lord Goldsmith to prosecute. MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, who wrote the memo. There is no single answer to that, she says, but Bright had the best stab at it: The only thing you can do is do your job right, and be a good citizen., In other words, she says, whatever your job is, do the things that you are supposed to do. We can all have a view on Saddam Hussein and whether he should be deposed or not. And nor did the story end. Authorities had attempted to deport Yasar back to the Middle East. But it is tempting to believe that is the case with Katharine Gun. In a way, President Trump has been a gift for the previous president, George W. Bush, because it has really rehabilitated his reputation. It opens on August 30th. Now, what we were doing when we were breaking this story was we were attempting to show that our governments had lied to us. It is loud, clear, confident, creative, interesting. They knew the difference between truth, lies and propaganda. 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