The true story of a British whistleblower who leaked information to the press about an illegal NSA spy operation designed to push the UN Security Council into sanctioning the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
A morality tale for the 21st century, Official Secrets tells the true story of British Intelligence whistle-blower Katharine Gun who, during the immediate run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, leaked a top secret NSA memo exposing a joint US-UK illegal spying operation against members of the UN Security Council. The memo proposed blackmailing smaller, undecided member states into voting for war. At great personal and professional risk, journalist Martin Bright published the leaked document in The Observer newspaper in London, and the story made headlines around the world. Members of the Security Council were outraged and any chance of a UN resolution in favour of war collapsed. But within days, Bush declared he no longer needed UN backing and invaded anyway. As Iraq descended into chaos, Katharine was arrested and charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act. Martin faced potential charges too. Their legal battles exposed the highest levels of government in both London and Washington with having manipulated intelligence in order to sell an illegal war.
The true story of GCHQ (Govt Communications HQ or British Signals Intelligence Agency) employee Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley), who leaked a secret memo in 2004 exposing an illegal spying operation by the United States of America, looking for information with which to gauge sentiment of and potentially blackmail United Nations diplomats tasked to vote on a resolution regarding the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Before the UN resolution on Iraq on 31st Jan 2003, Katharine firmly believes that Tony Balir is lying when he says that Iraq has WMDs. On that day she receives an internal memo on how GCHQ is spying on members of UNSC like Cameroon, Angola, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea on how they are going to vote on the Iraq resolution. Andy Dumfries (Jack Farthing) is her co-worker at GCHQ. Andy and Katharine discuss the memo with their boss Fiona Bygate (Monica Dolan) who confirms that US and UK are working together to deliver the 2nd UNSC vote on Iraq in their favor.
Katharine meets her friend Jasmine (MyAnna Buring) who organizes protests against the war and begs her to release the memo to the press. Jasmine reminds Katharine that this is treason as listed in the official secrets act. on 3rd Feb 2003, Katharine copies the contents of the memo to her floppy disk. She takes a printout on the office printer and mails the memo to Jasmine.
Meanwhile Ed Vulliamy (Rhys Ifans) is a front-line journo investigating the Iraq war and is angry with his boss Roger Alton (Conleth Hill), who is not supportive to print his investigations that prove that the war is being forced on the British people. 2 weeks later on Feb 15th Yvonne Ridley (Hattie Morahan) reaches out to Ed's colleague Martin Bright (Matt Smith) and shares the memo.
Yvonne is an anti-war protester and wants Martin's help to investigate. Martin calls the NSA press office and asks for Frank Koza (the author of the memo), but he gets nowhere. He engages his colleague Peter Beaumont (Matthew Goode) and wants to verify the memo from his connect at the MI-6. Paul and Martin run the memo by Paul Beaver (internal security consultant at the newspaper) who confirms that the language of the memo includes military terms and suggests origins from within the NSA.
Peter and Martin also call Ed and ask him to continue his investigations and unearth more evidence. Peter meets his MI-6 source who confirms that the US & UK story on Iraqi possession of WMD is based on flimsy evidence collected from a dissident of Saddam Hussein. She alleges that Bush wants this war simply as revenge on Saddam for trying to kill Bush Sr in the first Gulf war. Peter asks about her about the NSA memo and she neither confirms nor denies it.
Ed his retired CIA contact who confirms that the intelligence behind the US & UK govt policy towards Iraq actually suggests that there are no WMDs in Iraq. But he can't confirm the existence of Frank Koza. Martin meets Admiral Nick Wilkinson (Clive Francis) who is the head of the Defense, Press and Broadcasting Advisory committee. Clive can stop Martin from publishing the memo but agrees for Martin to go ahead since Powell just made a strong case for the war at the UN and the public needs to know.
Meanhile Ed manages to get a phone call through to Frank Koza and asks him if he sent the memo to GCHQ. Frank cuts the call. Roger, Peter, Martin and Kamal Ahmed (Ray Panthaki) get together to decide whether to print the memo now that Ed has confirmed that Frank Koza exists. Martin says that Beaver confirms the language, MI-6 agent doesn't deny its existence, but the source is Yvonne, who is an anti-war protester with dubious credentials. Rogers decides to print.
The story goes live on 2nd March 2003. Katharine panics and tells her husband Yasar (Adam Bakri) about what she did. Meanwhile the printed memo in the newspaper has spelling deviations from the original that Martin received. Roger and his team scour to figure out what happened, and it turns out that an intern at the newspaper Nicole Mowbray (Hanako Footman), ran the draft through spellcheck (the British version) before sending it to print. The entire memo is discredited in the press.Kathrin's boss Fiona assigns security expert John (Shaun Dooley) to figure out who leaked the memo to the press. Katharine is worried since the US is proving the memo to be a fake. She decides to admit leaking the memo as it would prove it was real. She admits the truth to John but is locked up instead. Katharine is released on bail pending charges, but it is suggested that she leaked a memo to stop the war as her hubby is an Iraqi and perhaps a Saddam sympathizer. But Katharine counters that Yasar is a Kurd, who as a group has been hunted to extinction by Saddam and hence has no sympathy for him.
US loses the UN vote on Iraq but decides to go to war anyways. 3 days later on March 20th 2003, US and UK invade Iraq. Katharine hires a team of human rights lawyers to defend her. James Welch (John Heffernan), Shami Chakrabarti (Indira Varma) and Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes). The trio argue that in the Falklands war a whistle blower exposed Thatcher lying about the sinking of a British ship to get Great Britain to attack Argentina.The whistle blower was acquitted by the court and that's when Thatcher amended the Official secrets act to deem that "public safety" is what the Govt defines it is. Furthermore, the officer investigating Katharine's case informs her that according to the act Katherine cannot discuss anything related to her work at GCHQ even with her lawyers as that is a further violation of the Official Secrets Act.
Ken Macdonald (Jeremy Northam) is the Director of Public Prosecutions and Ben's friend. He tries to talk Ben out of defending Katharine, but he refuses. 6 months later Katharine is charged with treason. Alongside, immigration services detain Yasar for deportation. Katharine has to get her local MP Nigel H. Jones (Chris Larkin) to speak the immigration office and accuse them of state bullying to get them to release Yasar.
Ben tells Katharine that their defense would be say that the war itself was illegal and hence what Katharine did cannot be construed as treason. Their key witness is deputy Attorney Gen Elizabeth Wilmshurst (Tamsin Greig) who resigned when her boss and the AG of Britain Goldsmith declared the war to be legal. Ben meets Elizabeth who tells him that initially Goldsmith held the view that the war was illegal and had written a detailed advisory on it. But then the memo was printed, and he was called to Washington. Upon his return, Goldsmith changed his position and agreed to use the 1991 UN resolution authorizing attack on Iraq and re-activating it for the current war.
Ben asks Martin to investigate was happened when Goldsmith went to Washington. Ed figures out that Goldsmith met Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell. But when Rumsfeld didn't get the intelligence from CIA, he created his own team called OSP (Office of Special Projects), who delivered raw, unconfirmed intel to Bush and Powell, who led US and UK into war.
But to prove this Ben would have to subpoena official documents. Which means Katharine can either plead guilty and hope for a reduced sentence or risk it all in a trial. Katharin decides to risk it. On the day of the trial the prosecution withdraws the case against Katharine, and Ben thinks it is because the documents they asked for will prove that the entire country was lied to into a war and that would be far more damaging to the Govt, than letting Katharine go.
In 2010, those documents were made public that exposed Goldsmith's position before going to the US. Over a million Iraqi's died. 4600 US and British troops died and 37,700 wounded.
