It is not often that a persons character is revealed in two sentences. Democracy Now! Why did you come in? But that is unbelievably difficult now especially in the digital world.. But as it happened, I wasnt called up on Monday. AMY GOODMAN: And the U.S. is still in Iraq. Well, this article is all about the Katherine Johnson childhood, Katherine Johnson husband (s), Katherine Johnson family and Her career in NASA. We didnt talk about politics much. Lord Goldsmith must have saidI mean, I imagine. AMY GOODMAN: So then you have Scotland Yard taking over. We still dont know who Frank Koza is, or hes still not given a public interview about about what went on. It was a very big audience, lovely, lovely theater. Gun was asked by Special Branch officers why she had chosen to act as she had. When he didnt come out, I was panicking, you know, and I ran inside. Katharine Teresa Gun (ne Harwood;[1] born 1974) is a British linguist who worked as a translator for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Iraq now, nightmare. I wasno, as soon as he didnt come out, I. Presumably the events mark a before and after in her life. [5] Gun heard no more of the email, and had all but forgotten about it until Sunday 2 March, when she saw it reproduced on the front page of The Observer newspaper. How dodo they join the dots? Katharine Gun (ne Harwood), 47, is married to Yasar Gn, a Turkish Kurd, with whom she has a 13-year old daughter. I mean, really, these people need to be held accountable for what theyve done. We knew for sure. AMY GOODMAN: And so, you decide to go back and revealwho was it that was questioning you? Shes ordinary. It was in character, I think. It wasn't that she was naive . I was very exercised about what was happening. There is a sense of, Did it really happen? Is that really me?. Most people do. Indeed, your point about Bush is right. Its all so resonant. British linguist, translator and whistleblower, This article is about the British whistleblower. AMY GOODMAN: Whatever you tried to do didnt succeed. Some journalist needs to go and have a hardcore interview with Lord Goldsmith. "That story" concerns British whistleblower Katharine Gun, played by Keira Knightley in a film that premiered at Sundance festival in January.Fluent in Mandarin, the 28-year-old Gun was . The official editorial line, led by the then editor Roger Alton (now an executive editor at the Daily Mail) and political editor Kamal Ahmed (now editorial director of BBC News) was in close support of the Blair governments position on the invasion. When Gun was approached with the idea for a script by Gavin Hood (who had recently made Eye in the Sky, the film about drone warfare, with Helen Mirren), the pair of them first talked for five days in London, getting the story straight. Woman who tried to stop a war. And they attempt to deport your husband, who is a? And a fireman does that if he bashes your house down to get to you. Maybe there will be sympathy.. KATHARINE GUN: It was GCHQ internal security, yeah. You know, youre not waiting for someone for hours in makeup. 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. And, of course, I was sitting in the restaurant waiting for her to come in, and I had no idea what to expect. MARTIN BRIGHT: Yes, we had a great, a dramatic moment at the Q&A session. I ask her first if it is gratifying to finally have it out there? There have been other attempts to make a film over the years. GAVIN HOOD: Ben Emmerson. GAVIN HOOD: Yes, strong women. Director Gavin Hood resists this for the most part though I cant recall Martin being applauded into the office the morning after the story broke (muttered sarcasm and grudging praise was more likely the tone). Considering the support it has received from its central character and the journalist who helped get the story published, 'Official Secrets' is an accurate dive into the events that happened. I was very concerned about joining any kind of organisation like Stop the War, and being used as a focal point or something. You want to know where he is?. Im going to start with you, Gavin. And she said, I have to go, mostlyto find strong female characters, I have to go back 100 and 200 years and wear a corset to play a strong female character. And she said, This isI want to do this, because its a strong female character not in a corset. KATHARINE GUN: to police custody, yes, and kept overnight in a police cell. My marriage to my husband was very new at that juncture, and he had a very unstable status in the UK. AMY GOODMAN: Gavin, introduce us to Ben Emmerson. Starring Kiera Knightley, Matt Smith, Matthew Goode, and Ralph Fiennes in pivotal roles, the film is one of the more accurate cinematic explorations of real-life instances. Does she tell her story when she meets new people? as Katharine knows, it can be tougher to be right than to be wrong sometimes, if on those lucky occasions that one is right. It cost Gun, who now lives in Turkey with her husband and daughter, her job. "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. Yes and no. You know, youre the attorney general. Get Democracy Now! The film -- quite plausibly -- depicts the charges being dropped against Gun for the simple reason that the British government feared . KATHARINE GUN: I was waiting outside in the police station, yes. And now you go back into work. We could haveyou know, you always have regrets, dont you? 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. I ended up, bizarrely, teaching a couple of my former colleagues at GCHQ. The Case Against Mary Katherine Higdon 43:11. What were your thoughts then? delivered to your inbox every day! I was calling Nigel Jones, my MP. There are lots of loose ends here still. 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. Something like. AMY GOODMAN: And so, what did you do when they said, Were going to take each one of you into a room.. Theyre watching, you know, video games and bombs landing on Baghdadshock and awe. Which agency was it? And they failed, in part, I believe, because Katharine Gun leaked that memo. Now, that doesnt mean we shouldnt try to hold them to account. He says, Wait a minute. And Im saying, Ben, but how did you know, when you called for those documents, that theyd be there? And theres this pause. That accountability is key. So give us the nutthe nutshell description of this story. So, where is Gun now? 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. What's more, her decision and movement to expose lies about the Iraq invasion made it be titled as the courageous and vital leak as per Democracy Now. The love between Katharine and her husband, Yasar Gun, is undeniable, and the punishment they must to endure together is heart stopping. When asked by Salon how it felt to see a famous actress act out her life for an audience . Jed didnt sort of put the two of us together. 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. You're KATHARINE GUN: . "[22], In January, 2019, the film Official Secrets, recounting Gun's actions in 2003, received its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, with Keira Knightley playing Gun. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. AMY GOODMAN: And then what happened? GAVIN HOOD: And then, for five days, I interviewed Katharine and just made notes. At the time, Katharine Gun was working for Britains Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ. We are defending ourselves. We thought that maybe it would be a security expert who had got wind of this, or someone, I mean, relatively senior within GCHQ who was worried about what was going on, and, you know. What was he telling Blair until the 11th hour, where he changed his mind, it seems, at the 11th hour, and said, 'Oh, well, you can justify on the basis of Resolution 678 from 1991,' this fringe idea that no decent international lawyerand Im an ex-lawyerbelieves to be even remotely sensible?. She has a younger brother who teaches in Taiwan. She grew up in Taiwan, where her father had gone to teach, and her accent is hard to place. Katharine Gun is the Most Important Whistleblower You've Never Heard of. You know, he couldntand it was the first time he had heard about it. Strange Hollywood person. Domination, Sing Your Song: Remembering Harry Belafonte, Who Used His Stardom to Help. The side of that history that Gun didnt really know in its fullest detail until she worked on the film was the drama of how the story made it into the pages of the Observer. 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. Soon after, they moved to Turkey in 2011, and for the most part, the family has stayed away from the public . [2] 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. And they had already taken him down into the custody suite, which is, by the way, where I had been before, Gun revealed. We were mostly in our mid-20s, so it was the usual stuff, who is going out with who. Please do your part today. [9] Gun spent a night in police custody, and eight months later was charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act. Well, extremely. So, from a dramatic point of view, you have someone whos just going to their job every day, as most of us do, happens to be a spy working for GCHQ, but could have been a person working for an accounting firm or Enron or Boeing or any other organization, who sees something that is simply wrong, sees, you know, and says, GAVIN HOOD: and says, Im going to speak up.. This is her story. So I tried to look for work. She is played, with steely English resolve, by Keira Knightley. KATHARINE GUN: Well, OK, I know I was guilty in the facts of the matter. 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. 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. Theyre going to send him back to Turkey. AMY GOODMAN: So, before the time of the trial, Katharine, youthey have clamped down on you. This is, sadly, a story of failure. We, as a collective group of countries, decide that we need to stop an event, a humanitarian disaster or a genocide or whatever. And the potential chink in the Official Secrets Act we had found, which could have become a defence for others, the defence of necessity [of speaking up to save imminent danger to life], it wasnt tested in court.. ED VULLIAMY: At the time, yes, the editor and the political. These were, as I said before, bitter times. . KATHARINE GUN: My MP, yes, at the time. But it was, yeah, a moment of great humility, actually. 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. But lets go back to the moment. Initially, Gun decided to teach Mandarin Chinese in 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. In 2003, Gun was working as a translator of Mandarin at the government intelligence agency, GCHQ, in Cheltenham. As soon as I opened the door and he saw me coming in, and he could see something was wrong, and thenand I said, Theyve taken him. And he went, The bastards! So, anyway, I was on the phone. It was very difficult initially. As of 2020[update] Gun lives in Turkey and Britain. Hes repackaged himself as sort of the European. And also, I didnt want to even risk having a criminal record. whistleblower and former specialist for Britains Government Communications Headquarters. I heard things that stuck. KATHARINE GUN: Oh, yeah. You didnt have that kind of support. 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. It is loud, clear, confident, creative, interesting. The online Drudge Report used the fact that the reproduced NSA memo used English spelling to cast doubt on its veracity. And so, I immediately went home, and Iand at the time, actually, well, my dad was staying with me, because it was Chinese New Year, and he was back from Taiwan, and he was supporting me, so he was at home. Then we see her become this woman who's starting to really know herself and starting to try and identify her own feminine being and trying to find her own place in the boardroom as a woman, as an entity, as a sister and . 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. Nobody knows if whistleblowing is nurture or nature. Shes just wearing her jeans and jumpers, you know, to work. She worked at the time at GCHQ, the British equivalent of the NSA." I think I found like the missing piece. Anyway, thats why the scene. You have the U.S. in the longest war in U.S. history, in Afghanistan. ED VULLIAMY: Thank you. I denied it. And I went back to Martin. I mean, obviously, at that point, then felt very sorry that someone had been arrested, but it was a huge relief at the time. The comedown after they dropped the case, and trying to recover from that, was quite stressful.. AMY GOODMAN: But so, did you have any conversations with the former prime minister at the time, Tony Blair? You know, banks of civil servants couldnt do that. This is a rush transcript. And the case was dropped. Anyway. You know, the conservative estimates are 125,000 up to a million. Youre terrified. Hood uses chemistry among each character to bring them to life.
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