Official Secrets

This is a film story about the whistleblower Katherine Gun who leaked a memo she had seen while working at the British intelligence agency GCHQ which showed that the US and UK were trying to gather information on smaller UN states to pressure them into voting for the war in Iraq, an obviously illegal and corrupt thing to do.

Once an internal investigation into the leak started and she saw her colleagues being harassed she owned up to the leak, and was arrested, and eventually charged under the Official Secrets Act which prohibits employees under any circumstances to reveal information they have access to, even when it might have prevented an illegal and unjust war.

As it was the US and the UK, fearing they would never get the majority they needed in the UN, went ahead with the war anyway, with all the consequences we have seen over the past 20 years: destruction of lives and nations, the rise and consolidation of Islamic extremism, and a very unstable world order – all built on lies for which no one has ever been held accountable.

After months of being under pressure as she awaited the court case, and the near deportation of her Kurdish husband, she eventually saw her day in court where the case was quickly dismissed when the prosecution offerd no evidence. This was widely believed to have been because it would have been shown in court that the UK entered the war illegally.