Interesting Daniel Ellsberg interview on the
Radio Show #18.

History, DoD, Ellsberg, Obama, and Rand

Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is a former US 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 US government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers.

Biography

Ellsberg grew up in Detroit and attended Cranbrook School, then attended Harvard University, graduating with a Ph.D. in Economics in 1962 in which he described a paradox in decision theory now known as the Ellsberg paradox. He graduated first in a class of almost 1,100 lieutenants at the Marine Corps Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, and served as an officer in the Marine Corps for two years. During this time, he deployed to Vietnam as a company commander. After his discharge, he 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 State and Defense 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.

The Pentagon Papers

The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States–Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, were a top-secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. Commissioned by United States Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in 1967, the study was completed in 1968. The papers were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of the New York Times in 1971.

Leak

The study was classified as top secret and was not intended for publication. Contributor Daniel Ellsberg, however, turned over most of the Pentagon Papers to New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan, with Ellsberg's friend Anthony Russo assisting in their copying. The Times began publishing excerpts in a series of articles on June 13, 1971. Street protests, political controversy and lawsuits followed.

To ensure the possibility of public debate about the content of the papers, on June 29, US Senator Mike Gravel (then Democrat, Alaska) entered 4,100 pages of the Papers to the record of his Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds. These portions of the Papers were subsequently published by Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

Article I, Section 6 of the United States Constitution provides that

"for any Speech or Debate in either House, [a Senator or Representative] shall not be questioned in any other Place"
thus the Senator could not be prosecuted for anything said on the Senate floor, and, by extension, for anything entered to the Congressional Record, allowing the Papers to be publicly read without threat of a treason trial and conviction.

Later, Ellsberg said the documents "demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates". He added that he leaked the papers to end what he perceived to be "a wrongful war".

Impact

The most damaging revelation in the papers was that the U.S. had deliberately expanded its war with carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks — which had all gone previously unreported in the US. The revelations widened the credibility gap between the US government and the people, hurting President Richard Milhous Nixon's war effort.

The papers also revealed that four administrations, from Truman to Johnson, had misled the public regarding their intentions. For example, Johnson had decided to expand the war while promising "we seek no wider war" during his 1964 presidential campaign. In another example, a memo from the Johnson Defense Department listed the reasons for American persistence: "70 %-To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat...20 %-To keep [South Vietnam] (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands. 10 %-To permit the people of [South Vietnam] to enjoy a better, freer way of life.

ALSO-To emerge from the crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used. NOT-To 'help a friend' "

Another controversy was that President Johnson sent combat troops to Vietnam by July 17, 1965, before pretending to consult his advisors on July 21 –July 27, per the cable stating that "Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance informs McNamara that President had approved 34 Battalion Plan and will try to push through reserve call-up." In 1988, when that cable was declassified, it revealed "there was a continuing uncertainty as to [Johnson's] final decision, which would have to await Secretary McNamara's recommendation and the views of Congressional leaders, particularly the views of Senator [Richard] Russell."

Some aspects of the war that would later prove controversial, including the John F. Kennedy administration's involvement in Vietnam and his major role in sanctioning the overthrow of Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem, were not revealed in the papers.

Legal case

Prior to publication, the New York Times sought legal advice. The paper's regular outside counsel, Lord Day & Lord, advised against publication, but house counsel James Goodale prevailed with his argument that the press had a First Amendment right to publish information significant to the people's understanding of their government's policy.

After the publication, Nixon argued Ellsberg and Russo were guilty of felony treason under the Espionage Act of 1917, because they had no authority to publish classified documents. After failing to persuade the Times to voluntarily cease publication, Attorney General John N. Mitchell and Nixon obtained a federal court injunction forcing the Times to cease publication. Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger said:

"Newspapers, as our editorial said this morning, were really a part of history that should have been made available, considerably longer ago. I just didn't feel there was any breach of national security, in the sense that we were giving secrets to the enemy."
The newspaper appealed the injunction, and the case New York Times Co. v. United States (403 U.S. 713) quickly rose through the U.S. legal system to the Supreme Court.

On June 18, 1971, the Washington Post began publishing its own series of articles based upon the Pentagon Papers; Ellsberg gave portions to editor Ben Bradlee. That day, Assistant U.S. Attorney General William Rehnquist asked the paper to cease publication. After it refused, Rehnquist unsuccessfully sought an injunction at a U.S. district court. The government appealed that decision and on June 26, the Supreme Court agreed to hear it jointly with the New York Times case.

On June 30, 1971, the Supreme Court decided, 6 –3, the injunctions were unconstitutional prior restraint and the government failed to meet the heavy burden of proof required for prior restraint injunction. The nine justices wrote nine opinions disagreeing on significant, substantive matters. The ruling is generally considered a victory for an extensive reading of the First Amendment.

Thomas Tedford and Dale Herbeck summarise the reaction of editors and journalists at the time:

As the press rooms of the Times and the Post began to hum to the lifting of the censorship order, the journalists of America pondered with grave concern the fact that for fifteen days the 'free press' of the nation had been prevented from publishing an important document and for their troubles had been given an inconclusive and uninspiring 'burden-of-proof' decision by a sharply divided Supreme Court. There was relief, but no great rejoicing, in the editorial offices of America's publishers and broadcasters. Tedford and Herbeck, pp. 225–226.
Ellsberg surrendered to authorities in Boston and admitted that he had given the papers to the press. He was later indicted on charges of stealing and holding secret documents by a grand jury in Los Angeles. Interestingly, Ellsberg had hidden the original documents with noted First Amendment attorney Martin Garbus. No criminal charges were ever brought against the attorney for this action.
I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision —Ellsberg on why he released the Pentagon Papers to the press.
In March 1972, political scientist Samuel L. Popkin, then assistant professor of Government, was jailed for a week, for his refusal to answer questions before a grand jury investigating the Pentagon Papers case, during a hearing before the Boston Federal District Court. The Faculty Council later passed a resolution condemning the government's interrogation of scholars on the grounds that "an unlimited right of grand juries to ask any question and to expose a witness to citations for contempt could easily threaten scholarly research."

Discoveries

The papers showed that President Lyndon Johnson had planned to bomb North Vietnam well before the 1964 Election. Johnson had been outspoken against doing so during the election and claimed that his opponent Barry Goldwater was the one that wanted to bomb North Vietnam.

After the release of the Pentagon Papers, Goldwater said:

"During the campaign, President Johnson kept reiterating that he would never send American boys to fight in Vietnam. As I say, he knew at the time that American boys were going to be sent. In fact, I knew about ten days before the Republican Convention. You see I was being called trigger-happy, warmonger, bomb happy, and all the time Johnson was saying, he would never send American boys, I knew damn well he would."

Movie

The Pentagon Papers (2003) is a historical film directed by Rod Holcomb about the Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg's involvement in their publication. The movie represents 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.

Bibliography

  • The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam. Boston: Beacon Press. 5 vols. "Senator Gravel Edition"; includes documents not included in government version. ISBN 0-8070-0526-6 & ISBN 0-8070-0522-3.
  • Neil Sheehan. The Pentagon Papers. New York: Bantam Books (1971). ISBN 0-552-64917-1.
  • Daniel Ellsberg. Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. New York: Viking (2002). ISBN 0-670-03030-9.
  • George C. Herring (ed.) The Pentagon Papers: Abridged Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill (1993). ISBN 0-07-028380-X.
  • George C. Herring (ed.) Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The Negotiating Volumes of the Pentagon Papers (1983).

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 to those involved in the Johnson and Kennedy administrations but also to the incumbent Nixon administration. 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 the first successful attempt by the federal government to restrain the publication of a major newspaper since the presidency of Abraham Lincoln during the US 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. As a response to the leaks, the Nixon administration began a campaign against further leaks and against Ellsberg personally. Aides Egil Krogh and David Young under John Ehrlichman's supervision created the "White House Plumbers," which would later lead to the Watergate burglaries.

Fielding break-in

In August 1971, Krogh and Young met with G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt in a basement office in the Old Executive Office Building. Hunt and Liddy recommended a "covert operation" to get a "mother lode" of information about Ellsberg's mental state to discredit him. Krogh and Young sent a memo to Ehrlichman seeking his approval for a "covert operation [to] be undertaken to examine all of the medical files still held by Ellsberg ’s psychiatrist." Ehrlichman approved under the condition that it be "done under your assurance that it is not traceable."

On September 3, 1971, the burglary of Lewis Fielding's office, titled "Hunt/Liddy Special Project No.1" in Ehrlichman's notes, was carried out by Hunt, Liddy and CIA agents Eugenio Martinez, Felipe de Diego and Bernard Barker. The "Plumbers" failed to find Ellsberg's file. Hunt and Liddy subsequently planned to break into Fielding's home, but Ehrlichman did not approve the second burglary.

The break-in was not known to Ellsberg or to the public until it came to light during Ellsberg and Russo's trial in April, 1973.

Trial and mistrial

On June 28, 1971, 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 and Russo faced charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 and other charges including theft and conspiracy, carrying a total maximum sentence of 115 years. Their trial commenced in Los Angeles on January 3, 1973, presided over by U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr..

On April 26, the break-in of Fielding's office was revealed to the court in a memo to Judge Byrne, who then ordered it to be shared with the defense. On May 9, further evidence of illegal wiretapping against Ellsberg was revealed in court. The FBI had recorded numerous conversations between Morton Halperin and Ellsberg without a court order, and furthermore the prosecution had failed to share this evidence with the defense. During the trial, Byrne also revealed that he personally met twice with John Ehrlichman, who offered him directorship of the FBI. Byrne said he refused to consider the offer while the Ellsberg case was pending, though he was criticized for even agreeing to meet with Ehrlichman during the case.

Due to the gross governmental misconduct and illegal evidence gathering, and the defense by Leonard Boudin and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, Judge Byrne dismissed all charges against Ellsberg and Russo on May 11, 1973 after the government claimed it had "lost" records of wiretapping against Ellsberg. Byrne ruled: "The totality of the circumstances of this case which I have only briefly sketched offend a sense of justice. The bizarre events have incurably infected the prosecution of this case."

As a result of the revelation of the Fielding break-in during the trial, Ehrlichman, H. R. Haldeman, Richard Kleindienst and John Dean were forced out of office on April 30, and all would later be convicted of crimes related to the Watergate scandal. Egil Krogh later pled guilty to conspiracy, and White House counsel Charles Colson pled no contest for obstruction of justice in the burglary. In 1977, Halperin won a symbolic $5 civil judgment against Nixon for being illegally surveilled.

Ellsberg later claimed that after his trial ended Watergate prosecutor William H. Merrill informed him of an aborted plot by Liddy and the "plumbers" to have 12 Cuban-Americans who had previously worked for the CIA to "totally incapacitate" Ellsberg as he appeared at a public rally, though it is unclear whether that meant to assassinate Ellsberg or merely to hospitalize him.

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. He later provoked criticism from the Bush administration for supporting British GCHQ translator Katharine Gun and calling on others to leak any papers that reveal government deception about the invasion. Ellsberg also testified at the 2004 conscientious objector hearing of Camilo Mejia at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

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.

In September 2006, Ellsberg wrote in Harper's Magazine that he hoped someone would leak information about a potential US invasion of Iran before the invasion happened, to stop the war. Subsequently, information on the acceleration of US-sponsored anti- government activity in Iran was leaked to journalist Seymour Hersh.

Ellsberg is the recipient of the Inaugural Ron Ridenhour Courage Award, a prize established by The Nation Institute and The Fertel Foundation.

In 1978 he accepted the Gandhi Peace Award from Promoting Enduring Peace.

In November 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.

In a speech on March 30, 2008 in San Francisco's Unitarian Universalist church, Ellsberg observed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn't really have the authority to declare impeachment "off the table". The oath of office taken by members of congress requires them to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic". He also argued 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 the Congress votes to authorize an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, that authorization wouldn't make the attack legal. A president citing the authorization as just cause could be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court for war crimes, and it is the duty of congress to impeach the offending president regardless of any agreements that may have been made.

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)
  • Daniel Ellsberg. 1972. Papers on the War Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-21185-4 (Collection of essays and testimony)

Movies

  • The Pentagon Papers (2003) is a historical film directed by Rod Holcomb about the Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg's involvement in their publication. The movie documents 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.
  • The Most Dangerous Man in America (2009) documentary by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith.

References

  • Wikipedia.com "Daniel Ellsberg"
  • The Pentagon Papers: 1971 Year in Review, UPI.com
  • "INTRODUCTION TO THE COURT OPINION ON THE NEW YORK TIMES CO. V. UNITED STATES CASE" . Retrieved 2005-12-05.
  • "The Pentagon Papers, Senator Mike Gravel edition, Beacon Press".
  • democracynow.org
  • Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. New York, New York: Basic Books. p. 43. ISBN 0465041957.
  • Book: "Nixonland" by Rick Perlstein, 2008
  • Mtholyoke.
  • John Burke and Fred Greenstein, How Presidents Test Reality: Decisions on Vietnam, 1954 and 1965 (1989) p. 215 n. 30.
  • Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. New York, New York: Basic Books. pp. 40 –41. ISBN 0465041957.
  • "The Pentagon Papers Case". Retrieved 2005-12-05.
  • "New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971)". Retrieved 2005-12-05.
  • "Tedford & Herbeck, Freedom of Speech in the United States, 5 ed.". Retrieved 2005-12-05.
  • Richard J. Meislin, Popkin Faces Jail Sentence In Contempt of Court Case, The Harvard Crimson, March 22, 1972.
  • Thomas, Marlo; et al. (2002), The Right Words at the Right Time, New York: Atria books, pp. 100 –103
  • Thomas, et al. (2002) p. 102
  • Sanford J. Ungar, The Papers & The Papers, An Account of the Legal and Political Battle Over the Pentagon Papers, 1972, E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., NY. p. 127
  • H. Bruce Franklin (July 9, 2001), "Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" , The Nation
  • NNDB: Daniel Ellsberg, retrieved 2008-07-15
  • The Pentagon Papers, Senator Mike Gravel, Beacon Press, retrieved December 5, 2005
  • Thomas, et al. (2002) p. 103
  • Krogh, Egil (June 30, 2007), "The Break-In That History Forgot", New York Times
  • "Practicing on Ellsberg", TIME, May 7, 1973
  • "Judge William Byrne; Ended Trial Over Pentagon Papers", Washington Post: C09, January 15, 2006
  • Correll, John T. (February 2007), "The Pentagon Papers", Air Force Magazine 90 (2)
  • "Nixon White House Counsel John Dean and Pentagon Papers Leaker Daniel Ellsberg on Watergate and the Abuse of Presidential Power from Nixon to Bush" , Democracy Now!, April 27, 2006
  • "COLD WAR Chat: Daniel Ellsberg, Anti-war activist", Cold War, January 10, 1999
  • “Presidential Decisions and Public Dissent”, Conversations with History, July 29, 1998
  • http://logosonline.home.igc.org/ ellsberg.pdf
  • http:// www.expertwitnessradio.org/archives/ ellsberg.html
  • Antiwar Protesters Arrested Near Bush Ranch
  • The next war Harper's Magazine
  • http://www.mostdangerousman.org/ The Documentary Film about Daniel Ellsberg, from Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith - Most Dangerous Man