Talking of governments lying to the people, I just watched “Official Secrets” again as it’s free on Prime. I saw it at the cinema when it first came out and second time around it’s even more powerful. If you don’t know the story, it’s about Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) an analyst at GCHQ, who in the lead up to the Iraq War in 2003 discovers a memo from the US NSA asking for detailed surveillance of UN Security Council delegates in order to dig up dirt to blackmail them into supporting a resolution backing the invasion. Gun decides to leak the memo to an anti-war friend who gives it, eventually, to a journalist at the Observer. They manage to verify the authenticity of the memo and publish it. Investigations take place at GCHQ and Gun confesses, and is, after nearly a year, charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act. She enlists Liberty to defend her, and as the trial approaches they discover that at the time of the memo, James Goldsmith, Blair’s Attorney General, was on record as believing the war would be illegal, but later changed his mind after being persuaded by George W Bush’s legal team. When the trial begins the Crown reveal that they cannot present any evidence against Gun, which means that the charges are dropped. Gun’s QC, Ben Emmerson, points out that the evidence would prove that the Iraq War was illegal all along, which was later found to be the case, especially as of course no weapons of mass destruction, the only conceivable justification for the war, were ever found.
If you can, please watch it.
