Your defense becomes: It was necessary to break the law in order to achieve a higher purpose, which is the saving of human life. The second act of the movie is concerned with the internal newspaper politics of that decision. The simple fact is, she says: Truth always matters at the end of the day., Official Secrets is released on 18 October. Strange concept, but you do. But lets talk about that moment in the courthouse. Katharine Gun Net Worth. [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. Katharine Gun (ne Harwood), 47, is married to Yasar Gn, a Turkish Kurd, with whom she has a 13-year old daughter. They called for your documents. Bright has also been closely involved with the film. MARTIN BRIGHT: Well, they didnt even say why. Does he try to treat it? We still dont know who Frank Koza is, or hes still not given a public interview about about what went on. The Observers front page story on 2 March 2003. After they charged me, thats when they tried to deport my husband. GAVIN HOOD: Yes, strong women. They said, Plead out., AMY GOODMAN: We dont want you to go to jail for years. I was teaching Mandarin in the local college in Cheltenham. Im going to start with you, Gavin. You know, any tiny lingering doubts we had about whether this was a sophisticated Russian forgery, as some people suggested, or, you knowwe absolutely knew that this was real. You know, the conservative estimates are 125,000 up to a million. She had just recently married her husband at age 27 when her life suddenly took an extreme turn at the next moment. After the incident, Katharine struggled to find work, and her husband had grown disillusioned with Britain and then kept away from the general public eye. KATHARINE GUN: My MP, yes, at the time. It is vital to speak up in a democracy. So give us the nutthe nutshell description of this story. They live on a smallholding, renting a house, in rural Turkey. This is a great space to write long text about your company and your services. 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. And he didnt come back out again. But that is unbelievably difficult now especially in the digital world.. We knew for sure. In the very typical British manner, we just pretended we had never met.. You know, this is hundreds of thousands of people killed. And then, on Tuesday, they called me in, and I went in. Youre a bit, AMY GOODMAN: So, there is an uproar. For the American gamer, see, Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, United Nations Security Council and the Iraq War, "Whistleblowerin Katharine Gun - "Ich frchtete, sie knnten meine Gedanken lesen", "The US spymaster, the whistleblower, and the secret email she exposed", "Profile: Katherine Gun, Iraq war wistleblower", "Katharine Gun: Ten years on what happened to the woman who revealed dirty tricks on the UN Iraq war vote? The film, Official Secrets, comes out officially at the end of August. So, in the film, when the director of public prosecutions says to Ben Emmerson, trying to wiggle out of it, Listen, it wasnt my decision to prosecute. Thats actually true. Im on the whole a fairly shy person, she confessed in an interview. Yes and no. He was Kurdishhe is Kurdish. We sat in the bar of a city centre hotel, and talked about the ancient history of 2003. We could haveyou know, you always have regrets, dont you? I wanted to stop bombs dropping on Iraq., The consequences have been damaging not just for Guns career. oceanside high school football schedule. I was aware I was doing something I wasnt supposed to be doing. Film-makers generally like to glamorise newspaper offices, making them All the Presidents Men hothouses of high-level argument and intrigue. [3], Katharine Harwood moved to Taiwan in 1977 with her parents, Paul and Jan Harwood. For the past nine years she has been living in Turkey with her Turkish husband and their 11-year-old daughter. He knows he cant save the child. [12] At the time, the reasons for the Attorney-General to drop the case were murky. 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?. If we found other information, it may have been different, but this information seemed to show us that wed been lied to. I hadnt realised the extent to which Martin in particular had gone out on a limb for this at the paper. [21], Gun received the Sam Adams Award for 2003 and was supported in her case by the UK human rights pressure group Liberty and in the US by the Institute for Public Accuracy. Its a paper that supported fascism between the wars, and sort of still does, in its way. Now, that doesnt mean we shouldnt try to hold them to account. And so, a lot, a lot later. Katharine Gun, former intelligence specialist turned whistleblower, discusses the new film "Official Secrets" which details why she leaked a classified memo. There are lots of loose ends here still. Your question about now, this is all terribly relevant. It was in a police cell that she uttered those two sentences that now seem to define the person she was and is. And so I did. You know, banks of civil servants couldnt do that. Katharine Gun. Among them were Reverend Jesse Jackson, Daniel Ellsberg (the US government official who leaked the Pentagon Papers), and Congressman Dennis Kucinich. AMY GOODMAN: I mean, youre the guy who broke the story that showed that Britain was collaborating with the U.S. in trying to get dirt on U.S. ambassadors, AMY GOODMAN: to get them to vote for the war in Iraq, which ended up killingwhat do you say at the end of the film? And all we were focused on was what might it felt like in this moment to have been Katharine. But, yes, I did. But it may say more about the BBC than it does about him, that with this track record you can get to the top. 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: You mean period dramas of strong women have to be a hundred years ago. MARTIN BRIGHT: But once everyone did, there waswe knew that there was somethingthere was something going on. So, where is Gun now? Katharine Gun (ne Harwood), 47, is married to Yasar Gn, a Turkish Kurd, with whom she has a 13-year old daughter. AMY GOODMAN: Martin, you went on to work with Tony Blair, didnt you? But as we said last night, this is the purpose of Albert Camuss great story La Peste, when Dr. Rieux is given the child dying of plague. how many children did jayne mansfield have. These folksbecause there are two legal ways you can go to war in international law. She then went on to get a Masters degree in Global Ethics. Authorities had attempted to deport Yasar back to the Middle East. The Observer published the dirty. Katharine Gun junto al director de la pelcula "Official Secrets", Gavin Hood, en el festival de cine internacional de San Francisco. And now you go back into work. And I called Jed back, and I said, This is an amazing way into how we got into the Iraq War, thatwhy isnt it better known? And he saidI said, Could I come and meet Katharine? We are defending ourselves. Gun is not active on social media and occasionally participates in small-scale conferences and discussions pertaining to politics. In fact, Iyou know, I couldnt bear to watch the scenes. 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. [5] After contemplating the email over the weekend, Gun gave the email to a friend who was acquainted with journalists. . "[12], Two years after her trial, Gun wrote an article titled "Iran: Time to Leak",[22] which asked whistleblowers to make public any information about plans for a potential war against Iran. He was going in every week to the authorities to prove that he was still a resident and kept an eye on his location to . And I was tasked to set up a website to look into this. September 12, 2019 | 12:17 pm. Gun was asked by Special Branch officers why she had chosen to act as she had. AMY GOODMAN: And, Ed, you see whats going on in this country, in the United States, not to mention where youre from, in Britain. She was arrested and charged with breach of the Official Secrets Act. LED411IR1110cm6.7cm6.7cm(1 . Yasar Gun is the husband of a British whistleblower Katharine Gun who revealed top-secret information. AMY GOODMAN: Now, he goes in for a regular check-in. Together they have a 13-year-old daughter. So I saw people going in and coming out and going in and coming out. In 2003, Gun was working as a translator of Mandarin at the government intelligence agency, GCHQ, in Cheltenham. I said, I think Ive got a scoop, Martin. I mean, thisI dont want this to sound sanctimonious. AMY GOODMAN: And a story that could have saved so many lives, except. The Observer team in a scene from the film, with Matt Smith, front, as home affairs editor Martin Bright. Initially, Gun decided to teach Mandarin Chinese in Britain. 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. \!! ! Chicago Mayor Lightfoot Loses Election; Candidates Backed by Police & Teacher Unions Head to Runoff, Death Toll from Migrant Shipwreck Reaches 67 While Italy Cracks Down on, Student Debt Relief in Jeopardy as Conservative Supreme Court Justices Question Bidens Plan, Longest Alabama Strike Ends as Warrior Met Coal Miners Return. 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. Jed didnt sort of put the two of us together. AMY GOODMAN: the person in charge of news. There is a small group of us, she says. 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. We were mostly in our mid-20s, so it was the usual stuff, who is going out with who. 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. Never mind the number injured. And, you know, he had nothing on him. KATHARINE GUN: Yeah, I was very excited to meet Keira in London before they started shooting. After she was acquitted in 2004, she found it difficult to find a new job. We have estimated Katharine Gun's net worth, money, salary, income, and assets. So, no, I mean, I didnt want to say I was guilty when I didnt feel guilty. Many wonder whether Guns young daughter has seen the film or been told of the importance of her mothers extraordinary actions. But I wasnt thinking about myself really. Our Daily Digest brings Democracy Now! [24] In July 2019, in a lengthy interview on the US program Democracy Now!, Gun, Gavin Hood (the film's director), and Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy (the journalists who broke the story of the leaked memo) discussed the events that the film describes. KATHARINE GUN: Oh, no. Nobody knows if whistleblowing is nurture or nature. And the situation, the toxic abomination of Brexit in our country, has sort of rehabilitated Blair in a sort of bizarre way. I had made a film called Eye in the Sky, with the producer Ged Doherty, and we were looking for another project to do together. He gets more and more pressure from Blair. is katharine gun still married to yasar. I think its important for people to find that truth and follow through on it, Gun opined, and its certainly worth remembering. What does she hope people will take from the film? did nicole brown simpson sleep with her painter . They were just going to pick him up, and took him out. Let us learn more about the duo and where they are currently. Soon after, they moved to Turkey in 2011, and for the most part, the family has stayed away from the public eye. . 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. AMY GOODMAN: So, theyre processing him. The biggest story was: Who cares why were in the war? My marriage to my husband was very new at that juncture, and he had a very unstable status in the UK. what happened to katharine gun husbandrequirements to be a ufc fighterrequirements to be a ufc fighter Yasur is a Turkish Kurd who is married to 47-year-old Katharine. . Katharine Gun is the Most Important Whistleblower You've Never Heard of Gun discusses her attempt to stop the Iraq War, which is the subject of the new movie Official Secrets. [5], Gun graduated with an upper second-class degree, then took a job as an assistant English teacher with the JET program in Hiroshima, Japan. AMY GOODMAN: This is the NSA guy who wrote the memo. AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain that. . (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.) Keira Knightley as Katharine Gun in the film Official Secrets. I hope, when shes ready for this story, she will. Fue arrestada y retenida en la estacin de polica en Cheltenham durante 24 horas. But as it happened, I wasnt called up on Monday. I mean, this is difficult for me to say this, but, for those of your viewers who are interested in what happens in the mediaMartin and I, here we are, doing our bestthe two people involved, who are in the film, ED VULLIAMY: The top people are, respectively, managing editor of the Daily Mail, which is a sort of rather. AMY GOODMAN: And then what happened? There is a sense of, Did it really happen? Is that really me?. A New Film Tells Her Story, Part 2: 15 Years Later: How U.K. Whistleblower Katharine Gun Risked Everything to Leak a Damning Iraq War Memo, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License, John le Carr (1931-2020) on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa & More, Senate Holds Equal Rights Amendment Hearing as U.S. Court Denies Attempt to Include in Constitution, Bola Tinubu of Ruling Party Wins Nigeria Election Amid Low Turnout, Rigging Charges, Hundreds of Iranian Schoolgirls Suffered Toxic Poisonings in Last Four Months, Biden Names Labor Advocate Julie Su to Lead Labor Dept. [19] Did everything change? Shes just wearing her jeans and jumpers, you know, to work. La farmacia siempre en tu barrio No one else including myself has ever done what Gun did: tell secret truths at personal risk, before an imminent war, in time, possibly, to avert it.. Gun owned up to the leak a few days later to save her GCHQ colleagues from a witch-hunt. It doesnt matter if you catch them out in a lie, because they dont care, because they lie as a matter of course, and they change what they say from day to day. "[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. The trials and tribulations of daringly telling the truth and facing its consequences must certainly not be a light burden to bear. I mean, thats why MartinI remember Martin and Ed. AMY GOODMAN: And these ambassadors are the ambassadors of? MARTIN BRIGHT: I did, yes. KATHARINE GUN: No, I felt a huge sense of relief after I had, you know, confessed. Is that when you both met? MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, I mean, the story doesnt end. I had, you know, encounters with Blair. Together they have a 13-year-old daughter. I mean, we certainly did meet in the courthouse. The repercussions of a lot of what happened are still being felt today.. KATHARINE GUN: Mm-hmm. Therefore, it is not surprising that Gun chose to move away from the center point of all the chaos once it died down. AMY GOODMAN: Katharine, has your 11-year-old daughter seen the film? [8] The plan might have contravened Articles 22 and 27 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which regulates global diplomacy. Whatever you think of Kamala Harris, you can say, Which America do you want? Katharine Teresa Gun, fdd Katharine Teresa Harwood 1974, r en brittisk lingvist och visselblsare. You come home. is katharine gun still married to yasar. 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. MARTIN BRIGHT: this was the real deal. I mean, I think we did feel that we journalisticallyyou know, we could have done more as a newspaper. Katharine Gun outside the Old Bailey after charges had been dropped against her, 2004. How many times has she seen the film now? And you said in places like Chile. KATHARINE GUN: Actually, time-wise, I was bailed for eight months. MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, I mean, around that time. 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. A very good book by Britains most decorated journalist, called Nick Davies, called Flat Earth Newsits about the British press, but it applies everywhererealized that actually the then-editors of our paper were effectively accountable to the Tony Blair enforcement machine. 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. [14] On the day of the court hearing, Gun said, "I'm just baffled in the 21st century we as human beings are still dropping bombs on each other as a means to resolve issues. MARTIN BRIGHT: Not until around the time of the trial. When do you first meet, you, the person who exposed this story, Martin Bright, and Katharine Gun? 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.. KATHARINE GUN: No, nothing atwell, they said they were arresting me on suspicion of breaking the Official Secrets Act. Most people do. He would have had to have the authority of Lord Goldsmith to prosecute. Katharine Teresa Gun (ne Harwood)[1] (born 1974) is a British linguist who worked as a translator for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). I think a lot of our current issues go back to that time. AMY GOODMAN: You only lasted what? No need to prove anything further. It was like watching a case that was very similar to my own. You know, lets say Iyoure a bit of a gambler, arent you? 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