No one bbc news, Stephen Sackur has hardtalk. No one bbc news, Stephen Sackur has hardtalk. Now on. Welcome to hardtalk. Im Stephen Sackur. What makes a whistleblower . What prompts someone to break rank, maybe break the law, in order to expose a secret, often at great cost to themselves . Well, my guest today is Katharine Gun. In 2003 she worked at the uks signals intelligence agency, gchq. She leaked potentially explosive information about americas covert effort to sway un diplomats to support the iraq war. She risked everything, including prison, in an act that changed her life. Now her story has been made into a movie. But 16 years on, has her perspective changed 7 Katharine Gun, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you very much. You are in the public eye today because of the release of a film which focuses on a fateful decision you took 16 years ago. And well talk about it in some detail. But i just want to know, at the beginning, is this gratifying for you to be back in the public eye or is it uncomfortable . Its not uncomfortable. I wouldnt say its gratifying either. But its certainly interesting. The whole reason, really, behind Going Forward with the film and, you know, my sort of great depth of gratitude to gavin hood and ged doherty, the directors and producers on the film, is that they stuck to the truth. Most of the time all the material facts are true in the film. And so for me it was a matter of getting the issues out, revisiting the issues, and hopefully allowing people to think back to the time and sort of what happened then and whats happening now. It certainly does take people back in time. The film is called official secrets. It stars Keira Knightley in the role as you, back in 2003. I think it is important to take you back, even before then, to figure out who you were and why you had decided to become a spy, which is what you were in 2003. Well, a civil servant. Yes, but doing covert work, having signed the official secrets act. Yeah. Why did you want to go into that work . When i graduated from university i was bilingual in mandarin chinese, i also had somejapanese, and i was looking for work, but not, i didnt really want to go into the business world, it didnt appeal to me, the financial world didnt appeal to me, and so after teaching english injapan for two years i came back to the uk looking for some sort of work to get into and then i saw an advert in the guardian for mandarin speakers at gchq. And there was no description of the work. It was just simply a matter of they needed linguists in mandarin, arabic, and russian, for example. And i thought, wow, that sounds interesting. Ill go and have an interview with them and ill apply. And when i got there i was sorta very pleasantly surprised by the atmosphere in cheltenham. It was nice. It was a beautiful countryside. And the people were very friendly. So i thought this would be a great place to work. But given what came soon after, im just wondering whether you always wondering that you might feel compromised by some of the work you were going to have to do. Actually, no, i wasnt terribly worried about the work that we were doing. I mean, what i was doing in my section had nothing really to do with the iraq war. And i was, yeah, you know, i felt that we were doing what we had to do in order to facilitate the British Government in doing itsjob, but all within legal means. You mention the iraq war. And of course were now talking the period in early 2003, the run up to war, where you were going into work every day, as you say it wasnt particularly the focus of your own operations, but nonetheless, were you a political person, had you developed your own feelings . Before this incident, which we will talk about at length, had you become somebody who could be defined as, lets say, anti the war, anti the iraq war . I suppose i did start to read up about the issues before it, you know, the iraq war began. When it was first mentioned in public, when iraq came up the a debate on the war on terror, i started thinking about it. And, you know, like many people, i was very curious at why iraq was being brought up again. You know, i mean, ithink i didnt question so much the afghanistan invasion, but at this point it seemed why bring iraq into this . So i did read up on the issues. I read around various different publishing houses and i bought a couple of books and i really tried to dig beneath the surface on what was going on and i did came to the conclusion that the war didnt seem justified, that it was, in fact, no that there was no justification for it at all. And so when i saw the e mail that was a red flag. Let us just, if i may interrupt for a second, remind people of the e mail. Because what you saw, what came across your desk and many of your colleagues desks, it was almost a circular, it was something that had been sent out to quite a number of people at gchq, it was an e mail from a senior figure at the Us National Security agency by the name of frank koza. It outlined a request for information from people working in allied intelligence services, such as gchq, information that could be used as leverage on key diplomats sitting on the un Security Council, who were about to vote, it was expected, on an iraq war Security Council resolution. And to quote what frank koza wanted, he said i want the whole gamut of information that could give us policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to us goals. You found that deeply disturbing. Idid. Because there was an agenda there. The agenda was to go to war and that agenda was to get un authorisation for war by any means necessary. And that was including the bribing and blackmailing of un diplomats. You feared, i mean, he didnt ever, in his e mail, talk about bribing or indeed. No. But it is inferred. And, you know, it says domestic and Office Communications in the e mail. And it targets those six swing nations which were sitting on the un Security Council at the time. So here we get to this fateful decision thats at the centre of the movie, that has defined your life to a certain extent, you decided, after serious, agonising thought, to leak this e mail. You didnt deal with it internally, you didnt express grave concern to your superiors. No. You decided to leak it. Mm hmm. Why . Well, the war was imminent. By any stretch of the imagination it appeared to be, you know, within a month or so of being launched. And going internally really doesnt appear to work. I mean, we have lots of examples from both the us and the uk of officials taking things up internally and only to be told that they are under surveillance of themselves. Let me quote you the words of sir david pepper, former boss of gchq. Im not sure he was in charge at the time you were there. I think he was. And he said he found what you did profoundly shocking. He went on to say, the thought that somebody out of our family, and he said, i dont think i that word family lightly, but when you have thousands of people working together it is like family, and to break that trust was truly shocking. He felt that you should have kept it in family. Well, to a certain extent i can see his point of view. Because i did feel like i was letting down my colleagues. Especially when i was walked out of the building and i knew i was a mandarin linguist and they had precious few mandarin linguists. However, the question is not about the cosiness of your family situation. If you see something that is illegal, immoral, and it is, you know, about a war which is impending, it has not yet happened but it is about to happen and you see something that, potentially, can derail it or delay it. I think it is your duty to act. I think its your duty to expose that information to the public. You decided it was, in your words, immoral, unlawful. Not only in my words. But thats the point. You worked for the British Government. You had signed the 0fficial secrets act. You had, in a sense, given your professional life to the british state. Yes. And you felt you had the right to make a highly individual assessment and decision, based on some knowledge, but of course you couldnt know everything about. Look, is it legal or not to spy on un diplomats . According to the un charter, it is illegal. Is it legal or is it not to lie to the people in order to get un authorisation for war . These are key questions that need to be examined. They need to be answered properly. Was that or was that not an illegal operation . I believe it was because of the nature of what that e mail ex presses. Lets continue the narrative, as the film does, through what happens next. Within a month or so the observer newspaper splashed your leaked e mail on its front page. It was a big story. You hadnt given it direct to the newspaper, but through a friend of a friend it got to the newspaper. And, of course, when you opened that newspaper you got an enormous shock because he didnt know when it would be published. True. The hunt for the mole was on. Let us just look, to give a sense of what it felt like, lets look at the moment, in the film, when the hunt for the mole is launched. 0k. Someone in this building has betrayed their government and their country. Now, im sure it wasnt anyone in this division, but starting today internal security will be conducting interviews with each and every one of you. If you know anything or suspect anyone it is your sworn duty to speak up. If you do not, and you are found to have withheld information of any kind, you will be charged with a breach of the official secrets act. The close up there of Keira Knightley, playing you, Katharine Gun. When you watch it, and it is 16 years ago, but does it take you back, does it stir something in you . Well, yes and no. I mean, she has such an expressive face. So i sort of identify with her rather than with myself. To be honest, if i had to do this ten years ago i wouldnt have been able to do it. Theres been, you know, a degree of separation now, of time passed. And a degree of maturity, i think, because i am 45 now and i have a child. So i think all of those things have worked. It makes it easier to talk about and be objective about in a sense. Yes. Let me ask you about the hunt. Because in the film it is the moment when the gchq bosses bring in a hard core investigator, but also lie detector tests, thats when you make the decision that you have to confess. Partly because its clear that youre very troubled by the impact this is having on yourfriends and colleagues in the organisation. So was it partly fear that led to your confession . Its. I suppose there was a degree of fear. There was a degree of fear that i would be found out before i confessed. And, of course, that looks worse, right. But also i felt that i couldnt carry on denying my involvement. You know, i didnt feel i could keep going into work pretending that i had done nothing, that i was innocent, and carry on as usual. So i felt i had to own up to it and be accountable for my actions. Let us watch one more clip from the film. This, i think, is one of the most important moments because it gets to the heart of your motivation. Its you being interrogated by a detective who is determined to get to the truth, but also to try to put upon you motivation for what youd done. You work for the British Government. No, not really. No . I work for the british people. I gather intelligence so the government can protect the british people. I do not gather intelligence so the government can lie to the british people. Extraordinary clarity there and obviously movies with scripts, they do bring out the clarity. But in the wake of what we have just seen, i want to quote to you the words of a commentator in the Times Newspaper who, after the movie was announced, i dont know if she has seen it yet but she said that Katharine Gun wanted to stop the war because she disagreed with it and thought it was based on lies. But an unelected official has no right to decide that herjudgement of the National Interest supersedes that of the national government. What do you make of that point . I dont think she had seen the film at that stage when she wrote the article. I find that kind of mentality very hard to understand because we all remember the nuremberg trials. And i think the trouble with that interpretation is that we have to take everything at face value and expect that at all times our elected representatives are acting in our public interest. In fact, i would argue that the invasion of iraq was not in the public interest. In fact, our own secret Service Released information before the war began that it would actually increase the risk of terrorism in this country. So i think that argument is something that i do not agree with, obviously, because of my actions but i would also argue that i only released one piece of information about that specific operation. I felt strongly about because it was an illegal operation in an illegal war. But i am struck by the sense that thinking back to how you were in 2003, you were in your 20s, a young professional woman at the beginning of her career. It must have been an immense weight, unimaginable pressure upon you to think of you saying to yourself i am seeing something here that is so unconscionable and unactionable that i am going to have to break my oath, i will have to arguably break the law and certainly bring all sorts of things crashing down upon my own head to do what i think is right. How much pressure was that . Finally and this may be hard for people to believe, but i didnt think about those issues. The only thing i could see was an impending war. It was like i had tunnel vision, a blinkered horse. I did not think about anything else and all i wanted was to release this information anonymously so i was hoping i wouldnt be discovered. Release it anonymously, try and put a stop to this horrendous war before it starts and then just go back into anonymity oi remain anonymous. That is what i hoped for. As the story unfolded and in the end you were charged under the official secrets act and it took months for the government to build a case and your lawyers had a counter argument because they felt they could challenge the notion that you didnt contravene the official secrets act if they could prove the war was illegal, and to do that they needed documents from the government including the controversial legal advice that they received in the run up to war. Which had yet to be leaked and was secret. So when it comes to trial, there you are in court expecting the trial to begin and the government suddenly declares it is not presenting evidence, in essence dropping the case against you. Was a little bit of you that, by that time, wanting the court fight, wanting to try and expose what you felt was the illegality behind it . More than a little bit i would say. Obviously i was hugely relieved. It would have been an awful invasion of privacy having a huge political trial in the old bailey. But on the other hand, i did feel that we had a real chance to tackle many issues and the legal team were fired up. There was a precedent that we could potentially set, we could put the iraq war on trial. That is what you wanted to do. Yes. And we wanted to demand the attorney generals legal advice. Elizabeth grantham has said herself that if she had to go to court on oath and swear on oath that there was a difference of opinion she would do so because viewers may remember she resigned before the invasion of iraq. She was a senior legal officer in the government and she resigned over her grave concerns. Principally because the attorney generals advice differed from hers when he went to the us and came back with a different opinion. Let me ask you, when you now look at the whole film today, do you, in any way, feel you should have done things differently . Are you absolutely convinced i6 years later that you got it right . All i might have done differently which is what the journalist hoped i would, the one who broke the story, that perhaps that i would have gone directly to them instead because they wasted a lot of time trying to verify the number and if i had come out earlier they maybe would have had time to champion the story and push it further into peoples consciousness. I ask the question because i wonder if you ever had an overwhelming sense of failure, as we have just discussed, your overwhelming feeling by the time it got to court was that you wanted to put the iraq war on trial but the iraq war proceeded and with your leaking you did not succeed in changing the dynamic. Bush and blair went to war without the resolution and we all know what happened since. So do you feel a sense of failure . I feel great sadness. I would not say failure. There may have been a point where i felt i had failed, especially on the actual day when the bombing began and i watched it on television. But i think. What i can console myself with is that they never got justification for the war. They never got un authorisation. As soon as that leak became public knowledge, especially in places like chile, they absolutely flat out refused to co operate with any further un authorisations. So that sort of deprives them of the legal cover that they were so desperate to get. Let me ask you about whistleblowing before we end. In a sense you have joined a long tradition of whistleblowing, people inside systems, usually governments, sometimes secret intelligence services, who have seen things they regard as beyond the pale and go public with it or reported. People like Daniel Ellsberg and the pentagon papers. He expressed his great admiration for you. And in recent times you have seen people from Chelsea Manning to Edward Snowden to the cia whistleblower who reported the recent donald trump phone call with ukrainian president. Do you feel an affinity with these different forms of whistleblowing . Obviously i feel they have gone through a lot and many have suffered more than i did. The real question should be is this system working properly . I mean, we have many honourable men and women. I have since come to realise and have been contacted by people who have said that they have worked in institutions where they signed the secrets act and they have seen things they wish they had brought to the public notice. However, they always chose family and career before releasing information. Why . The reason they dont want to bring forward information is perfectly understandable because they fear the official secrets act. It is draconian, there is no defence in that basically means anyone who has signed cannot, should not ever speak anything about anything they see and that is an absurd situation in a liberal democracy. A pleasure having you on hardtalk. Thank you very much. Hello, good morning. Wednesday started on a dull and damp note for many parts of the country. Once that rain cleared away, though, we did see some sunshine. A chance to dry off, though. Although a lot of the ground is still saturated, and there are a couple of flood warnings still out there. But following the sunshine, the clearer skies have meant its turned quite chilly, particularly for the eastern side of the uk. Where we had that cloud earlier on, weve now got clearer skies, but looking out to the west, you can see that swirl of cloud there. Its producing showers and longer spells of rain. It marks the position of what is, at the moment, quite a deep area of low pressure, thats drifting towards the uk, already arriving in western areas. Further east, though, with those clearer skies, temperatures may be low enough in eastern scotland to give us a touch of frost. Further west, it will be mild. We have already got a few showers, the breeze is picking up. And we will see more and more showers arriving across the western side of the uk, blown in by some strong and blustery winds, which will also push the showers through the English Channel and then move them inland, into the south east of england and the midlands. But i think, for north east england and north east scotland, it should be largely dry. Should be some decent sunshine. A much better day in north east scotland than it was on wednesday. 13 15 degrees thats near normal for this time of the year. So through thursday, increasing numbers of showers. Those showers will continue through thursday evening and thursday night, some of them heavy, accompanied by some rather blustery winds, which will keep the temperatures a bit higher. It should be a milder night, typically 6 8 degrees. We may stay in double figures across more southern parts of england. More sunshine and showers to come on friday. A good deal of them around coastal areas to begin with. But well see them developing inland, and some fairly frequent showers getting blown in on the strongest of the winds in the south west of england and wales. 12 15 degrees, so those numbers at the moment not really changing a great deal. Lets head into the weekend, and remember, at the moment, low pressure is about here. But, as we move into the weekend, the low pressure is moving right across into the uk. Its not as deep an area of low pressure, but it will continue to bring sunshine and showers or longer spells of rain. Longer spells of rain certainly blown in across scotland. The bulk of the showers further south, around coastal areas, developing inland. And, with the low pressure right over england and wales, some slow moving heavy and thundery downpours possible. Quite windy and feeling cooler, i think, for northern scotland and for northern ireland. The highest temperatures in the south east of england. So a lot of showers to come on saturday. Through sunday, the showers become fewer. But, with that northerly breeze, it will turn cooler. For many of us, though, the start of next week should be dry with some sunshine. This is newsday, im Lewis Vaughan jones in london. The headlines the frantic search for a last minute brexit deal negotiators are still hard at work on the eve of the brussels summit. Democrats and republicans in the us house of representatives vote overwhelmingly to condemn president trumps decision to pull American Forces out of northern syria. Hello, im rico hizon in singapore. Also in the programme hours after chaotic scenes in the hong kong parliament, the leader of a Pro Democracy Group is in hospital after being attacked. From pornography to politicians and even the general public