And they had already taken him down into the custody suite, which is, by the way, where I had been before, Gun revealed. So, 600,000 Iraqi people died. AMY GOODMAN: Katharine, has your 11-year-old daughter seen the film? She worked at the time at GCHQ, the British equivalent of the NSA." Well, extremely. These folksbecause there are two legal ways you can go to war in international law. A New Film Tells Her Story, 15 Years Later: How U.K. Whistleblower Katharine Gun Risked Everything to Leak a Damning Iraq War Memo, Links to news stories (20032006) about Katharine Gun, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katharine_Gun&oldid=1149317616, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2020, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2019, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 11 April 2023, at 13:29. After competing in the singing competition, she launched an acting career and was . Guns words will, in the coming weeks finally receive the much wider audience they deserve. Official Secrets, directed by Gavin Hood, is the third in a loose trilogy of political . Shes ordinary. Guns leak was perhaps the last example of whistleblowing that involved a red telephone box and a photocopier, rather than downloads. I mean, thats why MartinI remember Martin and Ed. "[5], Gun's regular job at GCHQ in Cheltenham was to translate Mandarin Chinese into English. 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. And I had already not been able to eat for about 24 hours. 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. AMY GOODMAN: Whatever you tried to do didnt succeed. Shes beginning to understand the issues, but she hasnt seen it yet. AMY GOODMAN: And a story that could have saved so many lives, except. Shes confessed to breaching the Official Secrets Act. He didnt know I had leaked this memo. GAVIN HOOD: So, we meet the first day, and after a few hours I think we warmed to each other. Iraq War Whistle Blower Katharine Gun Shares Her Story I had had my own story on the fabrication of the weapons of mass destruction, the existence of a shadow intelligence-cooking agency within the Pentagon, which we at The Observer had for five months before Sy Hersh, with great respect to Sy, published it in The New Yorker. And when he didnt come out, I was panicking, you know, and I ran inside. Katharine Gun Official Secrets True Story Interview - Esquire 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. We do not accept funding from advertising, underwriting or government agencies. In 2003, Katharine Gun, a young specialist working for Britain's Government Communications Headquarters, exposed a highly confidential memo that revealed the United States' collaboration with . Also with us, the director of Official Secrets, Gavin Hood. And my husband was desperately worried about what was going on. What does she hope people will take from the film? How am I possibly going to do that? The film -- quite plausibly -- depicts the charges being dropped against Gun for the simple reason that the British government feared . The last few hectic days have left her relieved and happy, she says, but completely uncertain as to her future. I was very concerned about joining any kind of organisation like Stop the War, and being used as a focal point or something. AMY GOODMAN: So you just thought this was routine. I was teaching Mandarin in the local college in Cheltenham. As Coordinator for Shalom Mission Communities, a peace church fellowship near the southern border, Joel, his wife, Anali, and their new baby girl, Daniela Bea, are actively helping . AMY GOODMAN: And then what happened? You know, my initial instinct was Ive got to remain anonymous. And we can say that, you know, thatso, he comes back, under all this pressure. Dont just swallow what politicians tell you. 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. The author advocates anonymity. Her act of whistleblowing cost her a career as a translator at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), made her stand in a highly publicized trial for violating the Official Secrets Act, and reduced her chances of getting another job due to being an internationally recognized whistleblower. Your defense becomes: It was necessary to break the law in order to achieve a higher purpose, which is the saving of human life. KATHARINE GUN: Oh, no. AMY GOODMAN: They said you could have pled. GAVIN HOOD: These are representatives at the U.N.. I mean, youre talking about the editorial leadership of The Observer, the editor-in-chief. But I wasnt thinking about myself really. But deep inside me, I didnt feel guilty. AMY GOODMAN: And this is a critical moment, when you say October, because thats when the U.S. Senate voted to authorize war. You may not know the name Katharine Gun unless you live in the United Kingdom, but she was a pivotal figure in the run-up to the Iraq War.Or at least, she could have been. Plead out. I met her in August in Durham, when she was on a brief visit to see her father. [5] While waiting to hear whether she would be charged, Gun embarked on a postgraduate degree course in global ethics at the University of Birmingham. I think the number isand forgive me, I should have the figurethree-and-a-half thousand British and American soldiers, 37,000 wounded. How often does she go through that fateful weekend, where she wrestled with her conscience after seeing the memo? Katharine Gun Husband: Learn Everything About Iraq War Whistleblower I wanted to stop bombs dropping on Iraq., The consequences have been damaging not just for Guns career. I was teaching Mandarin in the local college in Cheltenham. AMY GOODMAN: Ed Vulliamy, you were the U.S. correspondent for The Observer.

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