Don’t turn this whistleblower into a saint

A new heroine of the people has burst into celluloid existence as a fresh focus for cosily predictable outrage. Katharine Gun was a GCHQ translator who, in 2003, leaked classified information about the build-up to the Iraq war which was published by The Observer. At the weekend Official Secrets, a film about this episode, opened in the US. Already, Gun is being canonised in American media circles which ignored the story when it was published. A writer in Esquire gushes that she is “one of the most important political whistleblowers that most…

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