Posted on 09/27/2004 2:02:11 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
EUGENE — The man who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War called for government insiders to provide similar classified documents about the war in Iraq.
Daniel Ellsberg, 73, said federal insiders owe a "higher allegiance'' to the Constitution, the public and U.S. soldiers in Iraq than to their government bosses. He acknowledges that whistle-blowers risk personal setbacks, such as losing their jobs, but urged them to act nonetheless.
"I'm asking them to ask themselves whether their highest duty to this country really consists in keeping secrets of an administration that has acted like this ... in protecting lies, untruths that are costing many lives; or whether they don't have a duty to those troops who are over there to frankly get them out of what many people in the government understand to be hopeless,'' Ellsberg said.
(Ellsberg is scheduled to speak in Corvallis tonight along with media critic Norman Solomon. Their talk will be at 7 p.m. at the LaSells Stewart Center, 875 S.W. 26th St. on the Oregon State University campus.)
Ellsberg provided a lukewarm endorsement of Senator John Kerry for president when he addressed an audience at Lane Community College on Saturday.
He urged a vote for Kerry despite any misgivings about Kerry's vote to support the invasion of Iraq.
Ellsberg said the Bush administration has had the worst foreign policy decision-making of any administration since Lyndon Johnson.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq has destabilized the Middle East and made Americans more vulnerable to terrorist attacks at home, Ellsberg said.
"The invasion of Iraq greatly strengthened al-Qaeda, which is in fact a significant threat to this country. It's increased their recruiting and I think that's true every week we continue our occupation,'' Ellsberg said.
But he said he was encouraged by Kerry's recent criticism of the Iraq war spurred by a CIA report that shows a stalemate as the best possible scenario and a protracted escalated war with more civilian and military casualties as the worst scenario.
Ellsberg was a special assistant to the assistant secretary of defense during the Vietnam War. He later served two years in Vietnam.
The document that came to be called the Pentagon Papers was a 7,000-page study of the U.S. decision-making in Vietnam that was classified top secret. They revealed the knowledge, early on, that the war would not likely be won and that continuing the war would lead to many more casualties than was admitted publicly. Further, the study showed a deep cynicism toward the public and a disregard for the loss of life and injury suffered by soldiers and civilians.
In 1969, as an employee of Rand Corporation, Ellsberg photocopied the classified study and released it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later 20 different newspapers. The New York Times began publishing them in 1971.
He was later indicted on espionage, theft, and conspiracy charges related to the release of the documents. Ellsberg's trial on 12 felony counts was dismissed in 1973 when John Dean, former counsel to President Nixon, told federal prosecutors and then Congress that White House staff had ordered a break-in at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist. The White House hoped to discredit Ellsberg with information from his psychiatrist's file, but once the break-in was revealed, Ellsberg's case was thrown out on grounds of government misconduct.
Sorry, just had to fix this one.
It needed fixing.
LOL
The Ellsberg POS should have been tried and executed, for treason, back in the 70s.
He should be voting for Nader.
ping
The U.S. invasion of Iraq has destabilized the Middle East and made Americans more vulnerable to terrorist attacks at home, Ellsberg said.
Danny boy is one of those who prefers the quasi-stability of dictators to the temporary difficulties along the road to democracy and true stability. In other words, he has no stomach for rigors of hard work. He prefers to tear down rather than build.
Tens of thousands, perhapses more, lay buried in Saddam's mass graves and Ellsberg the Rotten finds the problem to be "an administration that has acted like this ... that are costing many lives." As I said, the cretin is devoid of logic.
Imagine if our forefathers had been inclined to accept a dictator's stability over the long process of creating a viable republic...
I bet George Washington would have made a great King... for first 8 years, after which I think things would've gone down hill.
Hear ... Hear!
It is never too late to correct your mistakes. ;)
As if we didn't just discredited some Army memos....
Back to the Vietnam mentality.
Bump!
treason
He wants dirt not truth.
He wants Kerry not Bush.
But *thinking* people in those states are pulling for Bush where it's turning into a horse race.
Seattle: Kerry is doing well here, polls show (other polls disagree)
***...Laura Bush also will be in Oregon Sept. 28, where polls are tight. ...***Source
LOL
It pretty amazing, and telling, that Ellsberg and a few other anti-war backstabbers, who did everything they could to undermine support for the Vietnam war, have suddenly awoken from their long slumber, crawled out from under their various rocks and now support John Kerry.
Birds of a feather, flock together.
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