what happened to katharine gun husband

They knew the difference between truth, lies and propaganda. She was the real-life translator who photocopied . He didnt know I had leaked this memo. The difference, I think, is that hereand your program and your viewers are testimony to thisyou have an opposition. This is, sadly, a story of failure. Never mind the number injured. [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. It is not often that a persons character is revealed in two sentences. Although Katharine Gun returned to the public eye in 2019 for the promotional press events for Official Secrets, she has largely retreated from the medias gaze since. 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 ended up, bizarrely, teaching a couple of my former colleagues at GCHQ. "[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. And all of a sudden the news media is not interested in how we got into the war. Truth has a habit of . Ralph Fiennes plays Ben Emmerson. We, as a collective group of countries, decide that we need to stop an event, a humanitarian disaster or a genocide or whatever. And I can remember sitting back and thinking, This guy is not all there. Her life story is depicted in the new film Official Secrets. In Part 2 of our discussion, we speak with Katharine Gun; the British journalists who reported on Guns revelations in The Observer newspaper, Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy; and Gavin Hood, director of Official Secrets.. 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. Some people have very low tolerance of wrongdoing, whether it is fiddling expenses, or whatever. This is Democracy Now! Strange Hollywood person. Gun thinks she might speak out more considering the current state of political affairs and massive citizen involvement in sociopolitical issues. 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.. 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. Yes and no. The relationships that form as a result of Gun's acting are quite inspiring. And a fireman does that if he bashes your house down to get to you. Who is Katharine Gun's Husband? Where is Katharine Gun Now? Shes not wearing tons of makeup. Gun was charged for exposing around the time of Colin Powell's infamous testimony to the UN about Iraq's alleged WMDs a top-secret U.S. government memo showing it was mounting an . We do not accept funding from advertising, underwriting or government agencies. KATHARINE GUN: Well, OK, I know I was guilty in the facts of the matter. Brights story was news to Gun herself, to a large degree. But I wasnt thinking about myself really. And she said, Gavin, I dont want to wear makeup. So, 600,000 Iraqi people died. And at some point, with great respect to Lord Goldsmith, he caves. Woman who tried to stop a war. It was in character, I think. 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. The Observer published the dirty tricks memo as a front-page splash just over two weeks before the invasion. Gun was defended by Alex Bailin KC. You dont know who the GCHQ person is. GAVIN HOOD: These are representatives at the U.N.. There is a small group of us, she says. Among them were Reverend Jesse Jackson, Daniel Ellsberg (the US government official who leaked the Pentagon Papers), and Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Theres no doubt. Then, Katherine Knight took a butcher knife from next to her bed where she had always kept them and stabbed Price 37 times. The people who went in and smashed it up in 2003, do they watch the news? You have the Iraq War continuing today, 16 years after George W. Bush, knowing there were not weapons of mass destruction, invades Iraq with Britain. Katharine Gun outside the Old Bailey after charges had been dropped against her, 2004. So I saw people going in and coming out and going in and coming out. The comedown after they dropped the case, and trying to recover from that, was quite stressful.. At the time, as I well remember, the paper was split in response to the talk of war. Full Interview: Frank Mugisha on New Anti-, Former Guantnamo Prisoners Ask Biden to Let Them Keep Art They Made to Escape Inhumane Conditions, Part 1: In 2003, This U.K. Whistleblower Almost Stopped the Iraq Invasion. First day, what did you feel? No need to prove anything further. AMY GOODMAN: This is the NSA guy who wrote the memo. I felt that I had done the morally right thing to do. You didnt know what would happen with this memo you leaked to someone, who gave it to someone, but you knew you felt it wasI mean, you werent part of a movement. 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. [11], The case came to court on 25 February 2004. Before I was charged, before my name came out, my biggest worry was that I would become a known person. Youre, KATHARINE GUN: And then I was taken away. And you said in places like Chile. Kay Griggs, Former Marine Colonel's Wife Talks Again - WHALE I heard things that stuck. You werent particularly worried. You know, these things happen. "[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. GAVIN HOOD: They failed. AMY GOODMAN: The people Martin was fighting to get this story out. I mean, really, these people need to be held accountable for what theyve done. KATHARINE GUN: Need I say more? But deep inside me, I didnt feel guilty. AMY GOODMAN: So, Katharine, as all of this is unfolding, the U.S. and Britain bomb Iraq. Watching the film was like watching a case that was very similar to my own: Katharine Gun, photographed last month in Durham. Initially, Gun decided to teach Mandarin Chinese in Britain. Katharine Gun is a British Linguist and Iraq War Whistleblower. GAVIN HOOD: So, we meet the first day, and after a few hours I think we warmed to each other. Which agency was it? I wasno, as soon as he didnt come out, I. When Brights story originally landed there were concentrated efforts to rubbish it in the gung-ho parts of the media. MARTIN BRIGHT: Well, I wasof course, the irony of the situation is that when we heard that a GCHQ employee, a 27-year-old GCHQ employee, Mandarin translator, I think we even said at the time, had been arrested, we were absolutely delighted, because we knew for sure that we had a big story at that point. [16], Her husband, Yaar Gn,[17][18] is a Turkish Kurd. Whistleblower Katherine Gun, right, is played by Keira Knightly in the movie Official Secrets. 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. But, yes, I did. 'Official Secrets': the story of the British spy who tried to stop a war She is played, with steely English resolve, by Keira Knightley. AMY GOODMAN: And these ambassadors are the ambassadors of? And whats so marvelous about what Gavins done is to just sort of bring this back into the present. So give us the nutthe nutshell description of this story. [9] Gun spent a night in police custody, and eight months later was charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act. How Did Catherine the Great's Husband Really Die? - Harper's BAZAAR Mary Katharine Ham's Husband Jake Brewer Killed - Mediaite And we can say that, you know, thatso, he comes back, under all this pressure. Gun, a translator with the British intelligence service known as Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), received a document just before the war from an NSA manager, seeking British intelligence support in spying on . Gavin Hoods 2019 film Official Secrets is the thrilling political drama that explores the events that followed British linguist Guns 2003 media leak. I havent watched the films about either of them, she says. KATHARINE GUN: It was GCHQ internal security, yeah. In the very typical British manner, we just pretended we had never met, she recalled. I watched it in San Francisco, at the premiere, and my friend from childhood who lived there was with me. Maybe? Its the intelligence agency, like the NSA, the National Security Agency, in the U.S. She leaked a memo revealing that the United States was collaborating with Britain in collecting sensitive information on United Nations Security Council members, countries, in order to pressure the members, the ambassadors, into supporting the Iraq invasion of March 2003. KATHARINE GUN: Well, yeah, yeah. 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. KATHARINE GUN: Actually, time-wise, I was bailed for eight months. GAVIN HOOD: By Ralph Fiennes. AMY GOODMAN: And when did that come out? She becomes the corporate sister-daughter, she dives into the power suit and high-waisted pants or Katharine Hepburn moment. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Following the incident, Gun struggled to find work that she loved, and her husband had grown disillusioned with Britain. Whistleblower Katharine Gun and journalist Martin Bright are interviewed for their new movie Official Secrets for the film's LFF screening. A film, Official Secrets, has been made of her story. Youre a bit, AMY GOODMAN: So, there is an uproar. GAVIN HOOD: Theres an outrage. Katharine Teresa Gun (ne Harwood; born 1974) is a British linguist who worked as a translator for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). I was very exercised about what was happening. It was very difficult initially. But to discover that it was such a young and such a junior employee was extraordinary to us, yeah. If we found other information, it may have been different, but this information seemed to show us that wed been lied to. It is loud, clear, confident, creative, interesting. 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. Iraq now, nightmare. So, I thought it would be great. She was arrested and charged with breach of the Official Secrets Act. And that was it. 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. AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain that. We sat in the bar of a city centre hotel, and talked about the ancient history of 2003. They live on a smallholding, renting a house, in rural Turkey. Nobody knows if whistleblowing is nurture or nature. I was very concerned about joining any kind of organisation like Stop the War, and being used as a focal point or something. I would love to know. AMY GOODMAN: What was it called? MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, who wrote the memo. In 2003, Gun was working as a translator of Mandarin at the government intelligence agency, GCHQ, in Cheltenham. How Katherine Knight Slaughtered Her Boyfriend And Made Him Into Stew According to evidence, he woke up during the attack but could not fight her off. I ask her first if it is gratifying to finally have it out there? There was a feeling ofas what you felt, Ed, in this case, yeah. BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | Interview: Whistleblower Katharine Gun But my closest friends stuck by me.. But lets talk about that moment in the courthouse. AMY GOODMAN: The San Francisco Film Festival. So, I just lay that out, really. Megan (Knightley) is having a quarter-life crisis after her boyfriend proposes, so she escapes for a week to her new friend, a 16-year-old named Annika's ( Chlo Grace Moretz) house . You know, lets say Iyoure a bit of a gambler, arent you? So, where is Gun now? I think. I felt awful. The film stars Ma. Her upbringing later led her to describe herself as a "third culture kid". I wish wed pushed it harder with the boss class within The Observer. You know, in the end, there was a feeling, I think, whatI know that Katharine and I have talked about this a lot. 'You've caused an international incident': how my work mistake came And now you go back into work. Katharine Gun, a shy and studious 28-year-old who spent her days listening in to obscure Chinese intercepts, decided to tell the world about a secret plan by the US government to spy on the United Nations.. She had received an email in her inbox asking her and . Domination, Sing Your Song: Remembering Harry Belafonte, Who Used His Stardom to Help. And they say, Were not even going to vote on this resolution. And the next day, we invade. I was aware I was doing something I wasnt supposed to be doing. And the situation, the toxic abomination of Brexit in our country, has sort of rehabilitated Blair in a sort of bizarre way. What happened next is the subject of a new Hollywood movie starring Keira Knightley as Katharine Gun. AMY GOODMAN: And you actually said you hadnt heard of Katharine Gun at the time, which is interesting in itself, because the story, in a sense, was almost killed for a bit. [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. KATHARINE GUN: My MP, yes, at the time. And I went back, and I felt worse that day at home. 'Official Secrets' - The True Story of the British Spy Film - Vice As of 2020[update] Gun lives in Turkey and Britain. TOP 9 what happened to katharine gun husband BEST and NEWEST The Case Against Mary Katherine Higdon 43:11. Katharine 'Kay' Griggs knows what it's like to have a gun pointed in her face. I wonder what she made of the scattershot download methods of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange? Its all so resonant. [6] She left teaching in 1999, and after some temporary jobs, finding it difficult to find work as a linguist, Gun applied to GCHQ in 2001, after reading a newspaper advertisement for the organisation. . KATHARINE GUN: Actually, time-wise, I was bailed for eight months. AMY GOODMAN: What did you think about your own prime minister? The legal case against Gun was eventually dropped by the British government in 2004, after her lawyer, Ben Emmerson QC (played in the film with fabulous charisma by Ralph Fiennes), threatened to use disclosure to put the legal basis of the war itself on trial. I watched you last night at one of the premieres of the film, a kind of secret showing of Official Secrets. 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. All I want to do is feel the emotions that this young woman felt, and dont want to be fussed over. And it was great. Within half an hour, the case was dropped because the prosecution declined to offer evidence. AMY GOODMAN: Martin, you went on to work with Tony Blair, didnt you? It cost Gun, who now lives in Turkey with her husband and daughter, her job. So, lots of leads there. 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. Iraq war whistleblower Katharine Gun: 'Truth always matters' Woman who shot and killed boyfriend says she didn't know her gun had a It wasn't that she was naive . Now, the defense of necessity is usually used in very more simple circumstances. We can all have a view on Saddam Hussein and whether he should be deposed or not. So, no, I mean, I didnt want to say I was guilty when I didnt feel guilty. There are almost no defenses to this act. It was in a police cell that she uttered those two sentences that now seem to define the person she was and is. It was weird. AMY GOODMAN: And then what happened? We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work. [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: Yeah, I mean, around that time. 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. Its millions. Ralph Fiennes, fantastic, wonderful actor. ED VULLIAMY: But my point is not against Mr. Ahmed. You know, my initial instinct was Ive got to remain anonymous. The cop says, you know, Heres your ticket. Youre guilty of breaking the speed, but youre guilty of a crime. 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. AMY GOODMAN: So, the Daily Mail, very sympathetic also to President Trump. Before I knew it, I had spent two hours researching Katharine. Lets find out! Dr. But he certainly was suggesting that people would know. 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). Something like. Gun, too, had expressed relief that the events are now part of a broader discussion due to the film and that she can finally talk about it without stress. I said, I think Ive got a scoop, Martin. Get Democracy Now! MARTIN BRIGHT: I mean, there are a series of questions of accountability here. MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, I mean, the story doesnt end. Your defense becomes: It was necessary to break the law in order to achieve a higher purpose, which is the saving of human life. Ben Emmerson is. The film, Official Secrets, comes out officially at the end of August. AMY GOODMAN: Gavin, introduce us to Ben Emmerson. They said, Plead out., AMY GOODMAN: We dont want you to go to jail for years. The argument was then subsumed by the war. The law requires you to. GAVIN HOOD: Well, for me, what I love about the story is actually, on the one hand, its got this huge global political relevance, and it resonates still today. So a very big story got crushed very quickly. And she hadnt said why she had resigned. 15 Years Later: How U.K. Whistleblower Katharine Gun Risked Everything 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. as Katharine knows, it can be tougher to be right than to be wrong sometimes, if on those lucky occasions that one is right. But, I mean, I ended up being a whistleblower myself within that organization. is katharine gun still married to yasar. And he says, Well, I called Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who is the assistant attorney general, who had resigned. 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. And he says, I need toso, Im interviewing Ben in a pizza shop, right? Gun owned up to the leak a few days later to save her GCHQ colleagues from a witch-hunt. And so, we went down together to internal security, and they called Scotland Yard. [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. How many times has she seen the film now? Shes confessed to breaching the Official Secrets Act. GAVIN HOOD: This amazing lawyer, with great dignityElizabeth Wilmshurst, whos in the movie, Ralph Fiennes playing Ben Emmersonhas the cup of tea with her. 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.. [5] After contemplating the email over the weekend, Gun gave the email to a friend who was acquainted with journalists. The Tony Blair Conscience Fund or something? And I did this sort of dive. We met in London. AMY GOODMAN: So you just thought this was routine. In 2003, This U.K. Whistleblower Almost Stopped the Iraq - Truthout I ended up, bizarrely, teaching a couple of my former colleagues at GCHQ. He says, Wait a minute. 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. White bread, white Trump, white, or this America, the one of every color, creed? You know, we dont have that. Gun splits her time between Turkey and Britain. So I was bailed until November, when they charged me. 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. We didnt talk about politics much. This was all cooked up, unpublished and. Read More: Is Official Secrets a True Story? And they failed, in part, I believe, because Katharine Gun leaked that memo. 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. She worked at the time at GCHQ, the British equivalent of the NSA." The woman in her 20s attempted to stop the war and firmly stood to her truthful morals. I'm Amy Goodman. [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. She is also well known as a GCHQ spy. Oh, yeah. Protesters against the invasion of Iraq, February 2003. For the past nine years she has been living in Turkey with her Turkish husband and their 11-year-old daughter. KATHARINE GUN: And yeah, becauseanyway, he was going in every week to basically prove that he was still resident or that they could pinpoint where he was. And Ben comes up with this idea. Im on the whole a fairly shy person, she confessed in an interview. And they said they would try their best. At the time, Katharine Gun was working for Britains Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ. Shes just wearing her jeans and jumpers, you know, to work. I could not get it in. Get Democracy Now! 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. This is Democracy Now! This is notthis fringe idea of the war has never ended since 1991, what nonsense. We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work. We speak with a British whistleblower whose attempts to expose lies about the Iraq invasion was called "the most important and courageous leak" in history by. 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. AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. AMY GOODMAN: And, Ed, you see whats going on in this country, in the United States, not to mention where youre from, in Britain. We're looking at the real-life political thriller 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. In January that year, Katharine Gun was copied into a classified memo sent to GCHQ by a senior figure in the NSA, its US equivalent. March 29, 2023 Posted by is vimto squash good for you; (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.) They were just going to pick him up, and took him out. KATHARINE GUN: Well, I mean, its terrifying. 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. MARTIN BRIGHT: OK, youre making me feel really bad about going to work for him now. what is the true story behind the Keira Knightley film? - The Sun When asked by Salon how it felt to see a famous actress act out her life for an audience . GAVIN HOOD: She did work for the attorney general, right up until a matter of weeks or so before the war, at which point, when he changed his mind, under massive pressure, having visited Washington and spoken to Gonzales and all the various lawyers who worked for Rumsfeld and Bush and Cheney, and theyd sold him on this idea of using Resolution 678, which authorized the 1991 Gulf War, and said, Really, that war didnt end, and were really still at war with Iraq. 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. is katharine gun still married to yasar. I think a lot of our current issues go back to that time. Authorities had attempted to deport Yasar back to the Middle East. KATHARINE GUN: So, on Wednesday morning, I called in sick. AMY GOODMAN: And so, what did you do when they said, Were going to take each one of you into a room.. Democracy Now! And he didnt come back out again. You know, I mean, once itsif you plead guilty and you go away for three months, and its, you know, maybe not so bad as going away for two years, but still I would have had a record. The online Drudge Report used the fact that the reproduced NSA memo used English spelling to cast doubt on its veracity. In 2003, Katharine Gun exposed a plot by U.S. security officials to spy on United Nations members as they ramped up pressure to secure a resolution to go to war with Iraq, and she leaked the . Naturally, people are curious to know more about this courageous linguist who stood her ground even as political heavyweights descended upon her. The film -- quite plausibly -- depicts the charges being dropped against Gun for the simple reason that the British government feared . . The Whistleblower Who Almost Stopped the Iraq Invasion This is a rush transcript. I do not gather intelligence so the government can lie to the British people., Sixteen years have passed since Katharine Gun said those words, but they still ring in the air. Gun had, of course, been forced to abandon her career in the civil service and finally, struggling for work, left Britain altogether.

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