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Tony Blair: [on TV] What we know, is that Saddam has this material.
Katharine Gun: You don't know that. I mean, he just keeps repeating the lie. Just because you're the Prime Minister, it doesn't mean you get to make up your own facts.
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GCHQ Woman: Someone in this building has betrayed their country. If you are found to have withheld information, you will be charged with a breach of the Official Secrets Act.
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Rear Admiral Nick Wilkinson: I have also always believed that censorship when called for should be based on security issues alone not on whether a news report might embarrass a government.
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Katharine Gun: Governments change. I work for the British people. I gather intelligence so that the government can protect the British people. I do not gather intelligence so that the government can lie to the British people.
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Ben Emmerson: Following orders is not a defense to a war crime.
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Ben Emmerson: Why did you keep her in a state of distress for a year before you brought charges?
Ken MacDonald: The services wanted to make an example of her. If we dropped the case any earlier, what kind of message would that have sent?
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TinTin: So, you work for the British government?
Katharine Gun: No. Not really.
TinTin: No?
Katharine Gun: Governments change. I work for the British people.
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[first lines]
Clerk of the Court: Katharine Teresa Gun, you are charged with an offence contrary to section 1, subsection 1, of the Official Secrets Act of 1989, in that you did knowingly and intentionally disclose top-secret intelligence information contrary to the said act. How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?
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Ed Vulliamy: This paper can't be seen to be supporting a war that we should be doing everything in our power to expose as a con. *A neocon giant fucking con!*
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Martin Bright: [on the 2003 anti-war demos] Well, it's everywhere. Every Country. Biggest demonstration in human history!
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[last lines]
Ben Emmerson: Why did you keep her in a state of distress for a year before you brought charges?
Ken Macdonald: The services wanted to make an example of her. If we'd dropped the case any earlier, what kind of messages would that have sent?
Ben Emmerson: Do me a favour, Ken. Go and fish somewhere else.
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Martin Bright: [On Teresa Gun's course of action] Ellsberg described it as... uh, "The most important and courageous leak I've ever seen. No one else has ever done what she did: Tell secret truths at personal risk before an imminent war, in time possibly to avert it."
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Yasar Gun: What do you know about war?
Katharine Gun: I work at GCHQ.
Yasar Gun: All you do is listen to people talking! You've never seen war, you've never smelled it! Never even come close to it!
Katharine Gun: Yas, I understand why you are angry. It is my fault and I'm sorry. I am so sorry. But I watched Blair with his smug smile and his sterile speeches that tell us nothing of what it must feel like to be a child in Iraq right now. I know I'm not sorry that I tried to stop him. I'm not. I'm only sorry that I failed.
Official Secrets Quotes
Extended Reading
