She confesses her crime, and for the next year, her life is hell as she awaits trial under the Official Secrets Act. Highly principled and anti-war, Katharine passes on the email to a friend with journalist connections and within weeks it is on the front pages. In early 2003, she sees an email from an American intelligence agency seeking British support to illegally pressure six UN Security Council swing-states for war with Iraq (falsely claiming it possessed weapons of mass destruction). Based on real events, Katharine Gun (Keira Knightly) is a surveillance employee in Britain's Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ). With impeccable timing, the film shows how such dirt-gathering can potentially impact the course of history. The release of Official Secrets (2019) coincides with the current US President telling the world he gladly accepts intelligence dirt on political opponents irrespective of source. This movie has lots of tension as a thriller and loads of insight into war creating. The book's title "The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War" would be vastly better. The movie needs to lay out his situation from the beginning so that the audience can appreciate his point of view. Without any insights into his character, he can come off as a callous clueless buffoon. One thing that frustrated me early on is the attitude of the husband. It helps that I remember a little of the story but not its outcome for Katharine. I am surprised at the tension of this movie. Journalist Martin Bright (Matt Smith) breaks with his paper's endorsement of the war to publish the article as the power of the state bears down upon Katharine and her refugee husband. Despite the powerful Official Secrets Act, she risks everything to leak the damaging memo to the public. Everybody gets an email ordering them to work with the Americans to dig up dirt on other UN Security Council states and push them to pass a war vote. They secretly listen in on communications around the world. Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) is a British intelligence translator in GCHQ. It's 2003 and America is making the case to go to war with Iraq. But the effect on most will be excruciating cognitive dissonance between the world we think we live in and the actual power structures that manipulate us into handing our tax money over to kill poor people overseas for geostrategic reasons that benefit no one except the very rich and powerful. It's a great yarn well told, Knightly is perfect as Katharine Gun, and it has a lot of very interesting old footage from the time which will have you shouting at the screen in frustration. The butchery-for-Raytheon profits continue with no end in sight. We continue to be deliberately and criminally deceived about these so-called humanitarian wars by a media that continues their fawning sycophantic support of the war-loving establishment. Intelligence agencies continue to illicitly gather compromising material to use as blackmail and extortion on people who might stand in the way of this war-for-profit gravy train. Bush and Blair continue to be celebrated in high society. Perhaps the most emotionally distressing aspect is the underlying knowledge that absolutely nothing has changed on any level of power, in any way, since this extraordinary deception. If you want to become freshly enraged about the massive war crime we call the Iraq war, go see this film.
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