what happened to katharine gun husband
And when he didnt come out, I was panicking, you know, and I ran inside. GAVIN HOOD: Ben Emmerson. Spoiler: After Katharine Gun's identity became known, we at the Institute for Public Accuracy brought on Jeff Cohen, the founder of FAIR, to work with Hollie Ainbinder to get prominent individuals to support Gun. Gun had, of course, been forced to abandon her career in the civil service and finally, struggling for work, left Britain altogether. And now you go back into work. 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 . They live on a smallholding, renting a house, in rural Turkey. But lets talk about that moment in the courthouse. Just occasionally Gun is invited to speak at conferences organised by the likes of accuracy.org or VIPS (the Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity). The simple fact is, she says: Truth always matters at the end of the day., Official Secrets is released on 18 October. I mean, we certainly did meet in the courthouse. You know, lets say Iyoure a bit of a gambler, arent you? And a fireman does that if he bashes your house down to get to you. Its millions. I mean, no ones going tono crocodile tears over that. 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 . Katharine 'Kay' Griggs knows what it's like to have a gun pointed in her face. This is Democracy Now! [16], Her husband, Yaar Gn,[17][18] is a Turkish Kurd. But this gets out, and suddenly you see it on the front page of The Observer when you go to buy, what, milk in the morning for you and your husband. KATHARINE GUN: No, she hasnt. And Mr.. If the war was illegal and she broke the law in order to expose an illegal war and potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives, I can use this defense of necessitythats usually used in more mundane, dare I say, contextsin this great political trial., And so he says, All right, now I need to know whether the war was legal or illegal. And he says, I need to find out what Lord Goldsmiths, the attorney-generals, legal position was in the run-up to that war. [9] Gun spent a night in police custody, and eight months later was charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act. And he says, Well, I called Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who is the assistant attorney general, who had resigned. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. First day, what did you feel? 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. Domination, Sing Your Song: Remembering Harry Belafonte, Who Used His Stardom to Help. AMY GOODMAN: The San Francisco Film Festival. The Case Against Mary Katherine Higdon 43:11. They were just going to pick him up, and took him out. Mr. Davies, in his book, has done more recently, AMY GOODMAN: And he said to you, Martin, at least in the film, This will jeopardize our access.. 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: This amazing lawyer, with great dignityElizabeth Wilmshurst, whos in the movie, Ralph Fiennes playing Ben Emmersonhas the cup of tea with her. The argument was then subsumed by the war. We still dont know who Frank Koza is, or hes still not given a public interview about about what went on. I took up teaching. So, 600,000 Iraqi people died. Ben Emmerson decides the way to defend Katharine Gun is to ask for Lord Goldsmiths documents. So how am I, with my tiny team of researchers, going to do anything like that? And so, its one of those moments where you realizeI mean, the chill went up my spine, like I thought, Ive got to get out of here. So, yes, that was not a good moment, yeah. AMY GOODMAN: And so, what did you do when they said, Were going to take each one of you into a room.. Be consistent. The Tony Blair Conscience Fund or something? Instead, Jake suffered a fatal bicycle accident. Almost a million Iraqis. Katharine Gun is the Most Important Whistleblower You've Never Heard of. 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.. I hadnt realised the extent to which Martin in particular had gone out on a limb for this at the paper. But then I thought, Well, no, I just cant go on calling in sick. So I went in, and my manager said, you know, Katharine, you look dreadful. KATHARINE GUN: Well, yeah, yeah. And they had already taken him down into the custody suite, which is, by the way, where I had been before, Gun revealed. And I was tasked to set up a website to look into this. We were mostly in our mid-20s, so it was the usual stuff, who is going out with who. I felt awful after I denied it. The law requires you to. It cost Gun, who now lives in Turkey with her husband and daughter, her job. Some people have very low tolerance of wrongdoing, whether it is fiddling expenses, or whatever. Initially, Gun decided to teach Mandarin Chinese in Britain. We sat in the bar of a city centre hotel, and talked about the ancient history of 2003. 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. 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: I mean, there are a series of questions of accountability here. I mean, I think we did feel that we journalisticallyyou know, we could have done more as a newspaper. The relationships that form as a result of Gun's acting are quite inspiring. March 29, 2023 Posted by is vimto squash good for you; Who is her husband? There are lots of loose ends here still. He was Kurdishhe is Kurdish. It wasn't that she was naive . I think its important for people to find that truth and follow through on it, Gun opined, and its certainly worth remembering. The author advocates anonymity. AMY GOODMAN: Gavin, introduce us to Ben Emmerson. [5] While at work at GCHQ on 31 January 2003, Gun read an email from Frank Koza, the chief of staff at the "regional targets" division of the American signals intelligence agency, the National Security Agency.[7]. I mean, MI6 couldnt do that. Your defense becomes: It was necessary to break the law in order to achieve a higher purpose, which is the saving of human life. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. And so he went to Elizabeth and had a cup of tea, as you do in England. I felt that I had done the morally right thing to do. As of 2020[update] Gun lives in Turkey and Britain. I felt like saying, I tried to tell you this seven times, and you would not let me print it. You know, it's tough. 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. AMY GOODMAN: And did they say they were going to charge you with the Official Secrets Act? AMY GOODMAN: the person in charge of news. 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. But, yes, I did. You know, we had it in October 2002. So. GAVIN HOOD: Thats exactly right. And you had a showing in San Francisco. That is a tricky question, she says. I think youll find hes hiding in plain sight. And there was a dramatic hush in the audience. KATHARINE GUN: Oh, yeah. 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? KATHARINE GUN: Need I say more? "[5], Gun's regular job at GCHQ in Cheltenham was to translate Mandarin Chinese into English. Brights story was news to Gun herself, to a large degree. This is her story. And we had to sit and wait for two hours while they winged it down from London. Gun is on Mondays episode of the Guardian podcast Today in Focus, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. I didnt want to be that. KATHARINE GUN: So, on Wednesday morning, I called in sick. You work for the British government, her interrogator said, with a sneer. We continue our conversation now with Katharine Gun, the whistleblower and former employee of GCHQ. This is, sadly, a story of failure. Katharine Gun is a British Linguist and Iraq War Whistleblower. "[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. He succumbed to his wounds and Knight dragged his body downstairs, skinned him, and hung his body from a meat hook in the living room. "[12] In May 2019 The Guardian stated the case was dropped "when the prosecution realised that evidence would emerge that even British government lawyers believed the invasion was unlawful. And then, on Tuesday, they called me in, and I went in. And through the lights, I couldnt quite see who the guy was. AMY GOODMAN: Works for the attorney general. 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. 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 . 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. 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. Shes pregnant. In its absence, Tony Blair won another election in 2005. This was a huge story, crushed by a bigger story. And that if the perpetrators in these situations get away scot-free, that has a knock-on effect. Katharine Gun outside the Old Bailey after charges had been dropped against her, 2004. And they attempt to deport your husband, who is a? Our Daily Digest brings Democracy Now! You know, I felt totally at ease in her company. In Turkey, close to her husbands family, Gun and her partner, Yasar, could raise their child in peace. How did she go about rebuilding her life? (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.) AMY GOODMAN: And this is a critical moment, when you say October, because thats when the U.S. Senate voted to authorize war. If you are a journalist, check and double-check your sources. I mean, obviously, at that point, then felt very sorry that someone had been arrested, but it was a huge relief at the time. At the time, as I well remember, the paper was split in response to the talk of war. (modern). Get Democracy Now! Read More: Is Official Secrets a True Story? I think. Of course I did, yes. Im going to start with you, Gavin. Keira Knightley as Katharine Gun in the film Official Secrets. But you areis this part of the film true, where you have the authorities come in and say, Were questioning everyone, because someone here did this.. I am currently reading a book about how to blow the whistle. Following the incident, Gun struggled to find work that she loved, and her husband had grown disillusioned with Britain. AMY GOODMAN: And Alton went from The Observer and ultimately made his way, ED VULLIAMY: Via variousvia Rupert Murdochs Times, yes. AMY GOODMAN: The people Martin was fighting to get this story out. The little-told story of British intelligence whistleblower Katharine Gun leaves a trail of unanswered questions worth probing, even 16 years later, . 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. I was calling Nigel Jones, my MP. Zooey Zephyr, Montanas First Trans Lawmaker, Speaks Out After Being Banned & Silenced by Republicans, Rising Tide of Fascism: Tennessee Rep. Justin Jones Warns of GOPs Growing Embrace of Authoritarianism, Courage Is Contagious: Zooey Zephyr & Justin Jones on the GOPs Silencing of State Lawmakers, Provocative & Dangerous: Biden to Send Nuclear-Armed Subs to South Korea as Activists Demand Peace, Oklahoma Parole Board Denies Clemency for Richard Glossip, Rejecting Plea from State Attorney General. My childhood friend, for example, I remember hearing her father was on a blacklist because he had been agitating for the opposition. 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 . It is loud, clear, confident, creative, interesting. So, was that Frank Koza? AMY GOODMAN: And a story that could have saved so many lives, except. All rights reserved. AMY GOODMAN: How rarely a woman actress, an actor, gets to play, you know, the protagonist, the solid, strong hero, Gavin. Woman who tried to stop a war. Therefore, it is not surprising that Gun chose to move away from the center point of all the chaos once it died down. So, no, I mean, I didnt want to say I was guilty when I didnt feel guilty. 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.
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