Daniel Ellsberg
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Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is a former American military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers.
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[edit] Biography
Ellsberg grew up in Detroit and attended Cranbrook Kingswood School, then attended Harvard University, graduating with a Ph.D. in Economics in 1959 in which he described a paradox in decision theory now known as the Ellsberg paradox. He served as a company commander in the Marine Corps for two years, and then became an analyst at the RAND Corporation.
A committed Cold Warrior, he served in the Pentagon in 1964 under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (and, in fact, was on duty on the evening of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, reporting the incident to McNamara). He then served for two years in Vietnam working for General Edward Lansdale as a civilian in the State Department, and became convinced that the Vietnam War was unwinnable. He further believed that nearly everyone in the Defense and State Departments felt, as he did, that the United States had no realistic chance of achieving victory in Vietnam, but that political considerations prevented them from saying so publicly. McNamara and others continued to state in press interviews that victory was "just around the corner." As the war continued to escalate, Ellsberg became deeply disillusioned.
[edit] The Pentagon Papers
After returning from Vietnam, Ellsberg went back to work at the Rand Corp. As a Vietnam expert, he was invited, in 1967, to contribute to a top-secret study of classified documents regarding the conduct of the Vietnam War that had been commissioned by Defense Secretary McNamara. These documents later became known collectively as the Pentagon Papers. Because he held an extremely high-level security clearance, Ellsberg was one of very few individuals who had access to the complete set of documents. They revealed that the government had knowledge, early on, that the war would not likely be won, and that continuing the war would lead to many times more casualties than was ever admitted publicly. Further, the papers showed that high-ranking officials had a deep cynicism toward the public as well as disregard for the loss of life and injury suffered by soldiers and civilians.
Ellsberg was appalled by the cynicism and hypocrisy reflected in these papers, and, after a period of soul-searching, became determined to make their contents public. He knew that releasing the papers violated the trust placed in him by his colleagues, would damage reputations and would most likely result in his conviction and a lengthy prison sentence. In late 1969, with the assistance of his former Rand Corp. colleague, Anthony Russo, he secretly made several sets of photocopies of the papers (which was, in itself, a difficult undertaking). Throughout 1970, Ellsberg covertly attempted to persuade a few sympathetic U.S. Senators — among them J. William Fulbright, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and George McGovern, a leading opponent of the war — to release the papers on the Senate floor, because a Senator could not be prosecuted for anything he said on-the-record before the Senate.
When these efforts came to naught, Ellsberg finally leaked the documents to New York Times correspondent Neil Sheehan. On Sunday, June 13, 1971, the Times published the first (of 9) installment of the 7,000 page document. For 15 days, the Times was prevented from publishing its articles by court order requested by the Nixon administration. However, on June, 30 the Supreme Court ordered publication to resume freely. Although the Times did not reveal Ellsberg as their source, he knew that the FBI would soon determine that he was the source of the leak. Ellsberg went underground for sixteen days, living secretly among like-minded people until deciding to turn himself in on June 28. He was not caught by the FBI, even though it was under enormous pressure from the Nixon Administration to find him.
On June 29, 1971, U.S. Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska entered 4,100 pages of the Papers into the record of his Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds. These portions of the Papers were subsequently published by Beacon Press.[1]
The Nixon administration also began a campaign to discredit Ellsberg. Nixon's plumbers broke into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, Lewis Fielding, in an attempt to find damaging information. When they failed to find Ellsberg's file, they made plans to break into Fielding's home.
[edit] Fallout
Nixon's Oval Office tape from June 14 shows H. R. Haldeman describing the situation to Nixon.
- To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can't trust the government; you can't believe what they say; and you can't rely on their judgment. And the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it's wrong, and the President can be wrong.
The release of these papers was politically embarrassing, not only to the incumbent Nixon Administration, but also to the previous Johnson and Kennedy Administrations. John Mitchell, Nixon's Attorney General, almost immediately issued a telegram to the Times ordering that it halt publication. The Times refused, and the government brought suit against it.
Although the Times eventually won the trial before the Supreme Court, an appellate court ordered that the Times temporarily halt further publication. This was not the first successful attempt by the federal government to restrain the publication of a newspaper as Lincoln illustrated during the Civil War. Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to other newspapers in rapid succession, making it clear to the government that they would have to obtain injunctions against every newspaper in the country to stop the story. The right of the press to publish the papers was upheld in New York Times Co. v. United States.
[edit] Trial and mistrial
On June 28, Ellsberg publicly surrendered to the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts in Boston. He was taken into custody believing he would spend the rest of his life in prison; he was charged with theft, conspiracy, and espionage.
In one of Nixon's actions against Ellsberg, G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, members of the White House Special Investigation Unit (also called the "White House Plumbers") broke into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, Lewis Fielding, in September 1971, hoping to find information they could use to discredit him. The revelation of the break-in became part of the Watergate scandal. Due to the gross governmental misconduct, and the defense by Leonard Boudin and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, all valid charges against Ellsberg were eventually dropped. White House counsel Charles Colson was later prosecuted and pled no contest for obstruction of justice in the burglary of Fielding's office.
[edit] Later life
Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has continued his political activism, giving lecture tours and speaking out about current events. During the runup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq he warned of a possible "Tonkin Gulf scenario" that could be used to justify going to war, and called on government "insiders" to go public with information to counter the Bush administration's pro-war propaganda campaign, praising Scott Ritter for his efforts in that regard.[citation needed] He later provoked criticism from the Bush administration[citation needed] for supporting British GCHQ translator Katharine Gun and calling on others to leak any papers that reveal government deception about the invasion.[citation needed] Ellsberg also testified at the 2004 conscientious objector hearing of Camilo Mejia at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.[citation needed]
Ellsberg was arrested, in November 2005, for violating a county ordinance for trespassing while protesting against George W. Bush's conduct of the Iraq War. [1]
In September 2006, Ellsberg wrote in Harper's Magazine that he hoped someone would leak information about a U.S. invasion of Iran before the invasion happened, to stop the war. [2] He reiterated this in a September 21, 2006 interview on The Colbert Report.
Ellsberg is the recipient of the Inaugural Ron Ridenhour Courage Award; a prize established by The Nation Institute and The Fertel Foundation.[citation needed] On September 28, 2006 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award.[citation needed]
In November of 2007, Daniel Ellsberg was interviewed by Brad Friedman on his Bradblog in regards to former FBI translator turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. "I'd say what she has is far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers," Ellsberg told Friedman. [3]
In a speech[citation needed] March 30, 2008 in San Francisco's UU church, Ellsberg observed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn't really have the power to declare that "Impeachment is off the table". Congress' oath of office requires them to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic". He also observes that under the US Constitution, Treaties, including the United Nations Charter, become the supreme law of the land that neither the States, the President, nor the Congress have the power to break. For example, if Congress votes to authorize an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, that wouldn't make it legal. Such a President could stand trial at the International Criminal Court for war crimes, and it is Congress' duty to impeach them regardless what agreements they may have made in the past.
[edit] Books
- Daniel Ellsberg. 2002. Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-03030-9
- Daniel Ellsberg. 2001. Risk, Ambiguity and Decision Routledge. ISBN 0-8153-4022-2 (Ellsberg's 1962 PhD was released as a book)
- The Pentagon Papers (As published in The New York Times) New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-552-64917-1.
- The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam. "Senator Gravel Edition", with documents not included in government version. Boston: Beacon Press. 5 volumes. ISBN 0-8070-0526-6 & ISBN 0-8070-0522-3.
- Online version of Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers Complete text, with supporting documents, maps, and photos
[edit] Movie
- The Pentagon Papers (2003) is a historical film directed by Rod Holcomb about the Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg involvment in their publication. Movie documented Ellsberg's life starting with his work for RAND Corp and ending with the day on which the judge declared his espionage trial a mistrial.
[edit] See also
• Official name of the Pentagon Papers: "History of United States Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy, 1945-1967".
• The New York Times version of Pentagon Papers: June 13, 14, 15 and July 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, 1971. Late in this year this edited version was published in the book "The Pentagon Papers as published by N.Y. Times", Bantam Books, Toronto - New York - London, 1971.
• "United States-Vietnam Relations 1945-67, Department of Defense Study", 12 vols., Government Printing Office, Washington, 1971. This is the official and complete edition of the Pentagon Papers, published by the Government after the release by the press.
• UNGAR, Sanford, "The Papers and the Papers. An account of the legal and political battle over the Pentagon Papers", E.P. Dutton & Co, New York, 1972.
[edit] References
- ^ The Pentagon Papers, Senator Mike Gravel, Beacon Press. Retrieved on December 5, 2005.
[edit] External links
- Official website for "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers"
- The Truth-Telling Project - Project formed by Ellsberg for whistleblowers
- "Top Secret: Battle for the Pentagon Papers" a resource site that supports a currently-playing docu-drama about the Pentagon Papers. The site provides historical context, time lines, bibliographical resources, information on discussions with current journalists, and helpful links.
- Democracy Now! Special: "How the Pentagon Papers Came to Be Published by the Beacon Press: Mike Gravel and Daniel Ellsberg (audio/video and transcript)
- Interview starts at 9:30
- 2006 Right Livelihood Award Recipient Daniel Ellsberg
- Ron Ridenhour Courage Award
- Notes on Iraq War and Further Escalation
- Bush as Col. Kurtz- Comparison of Vietnam and Iraq viz Apocalypse Now
- Ellsberg at Roskilde Universitets Center
- - Interview at Petaluma Progressive Festival 2005 - Elaine Lucia interviews Daniel Ellsberg and Matt Gonzales re: voter reform and other topics - audio only
- Daniel Ellsberg /Bill Kristol debate Iraq war in 2003 on cspan
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ellsberg, Daniel |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | military analyst and anti-war activist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 7, 1931 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Detroit, Michigan, United States |
| DATE OF DEATH | living |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
