Gun had, of course, been forced to abandon her career in the civil service and finally, struggling for work, left Britain altogether. 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. 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.” Ellsberg has called Katharine Gun’s action “the most important and courageous leak I have ever seen. Her performance reminds you of the sentiment of Daniel Ellsberg, the man who famously leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971, revealing the full truth of American involvement in Vietnam. She is played, with steely English resolve, by Keira Knightley. A film, Official Secrets, has been made of her story. Gun’s words will, in the coming weeks finally receive the much wider audience they deserve. Truth has a habit of finding a voice, however. Her whistleblowing was not enough to change the path of history, of course, and her last-gasp act of courage was all but forgotten in the brutal “shock and awe” of war. Sixteen years have passed since Katharine Gun said those words, but they still ring in the air. The Observer’s front page story on 2 March 2003.
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