There is an unintentionally fantastic interview between Daniel Ellsberg, the person who leaked the 'Pentagon Papers' (documents which explicitly detailed the ways in which four American presidents had misled the public to expand a war the public didn't want) and Robin Young. I say unintentionally because Young seems to be surprised that Ellsberg wants to use the interview to talk about current events, not promote his Oscar nominated movie, The Most Dangerous Man in America.
Audio - as provided by WBUR in Boston. 12 commercial-free minutes.
Transcript - as provided by The Boston Globe, machine generated. Poor quality.
Highpoints of the interview. Emphasis mine, all quotes Ellsberg, unless noted:
I very much regret that I didn't give to the Senate the documents that I had in my safe which later turned up in the 'Pentagon Papers' in 1964 when I first had them when they were responding to the supposed attack on our ships in the Tonkin gulf on August 4 which in fact did not happen, when Lyndon Johnson was lying to the Senate and the House to get a declaration of war and undated blank check for war actually like the one that got us into Iraq.
Nixon feared I had documents that went beyond the 'Pentagon Papers' that would reveal his nuclear threats and the fact that he was making threats that were likely to expand the war, as it did, and he had to shut me up from doing that. The crimes that he took - actions that were then criminal though many of them are now legal - warrantless wiretaps - that I was overheard on - now legal. Brought him to the edge of impeachment and he had to resign, and that in turn made the war endable.
We had eight years of George W. Bush and Cheney who, I believe felt that all of these things were not and should not be crimes despite the Constitution despite our laws, because their attitude was that the president as commander in chief during the time of war had no limit on his power whatever. In effect, they were the kind of domestic enemies of the Constitution that I swore as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps and every Congress person every official in government, every officer is sworn to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. The trouble is that President Obama - not to my surprise I'm sorry to say - as their successor has not eschewed any of those powers. And in effect an executive coup that took place under the Bush Administration was later ratified by Congress by both Democrats and Republicans and is being continued by President Obama.
I think the 'Pentagon Papers' of Afghanistan or Iraq when and if they are leaked by someone and I hope they will be sooner rather than later - can't be too soon - and when they come out I think they'll read exactly like the 'Pentagon Papers' of Vietnam. In fact put them on a computer and hit 'search and replace' and replace Kabul for Saigon and whatnot and you'll have the Pentagon papers that I released.
I believe that when President Obama - like all presidents before him in such situations - when he says to Congress in his State of the Union address, 'I am ending the war in Iraq. I will have all combat troops out of there in a matter of months or years or so'... I believe he is consciously lying - as did President Johnson - for the purpose of misleading the public about where we're heading and what his policy projects. I don't think there's a chance in the world that we will have American troops out by 2011. Or 2015.
I look at the Op Ed page of the New York Times Wednesday 24 with a headline "Extending Our Stay in Iraq" where Thomas Ricks - who covered the war for the Washington Post - is saying, to his own unhappiness and perhaps surprise he finds himself recommending that we extend our stay. He is then saying 'I think this situation is such that the president will come to have to reconsider his promise sometime late this Summer.' I'm fed up with that kind of journalism. It seems to me that somebody should be saying that it's far more likely that a year ago and through this year and at this moment, the president is perfectly well aware that he has no intention of removing those bases - no plan for it exists - and 30 to 40,000 troops will be here, 50,000 troops will be there, as long as he's in office - four to eight years - and probably much longer.
He could say what Nixon could have said in '69 - and that was my first hope in beginning to copy the 'Pentagon Papers' - 'this was a noble cause, I believed in it, it was a right war' all the things that Obama has said about Afghanistan - 'but my predecessors in the last 8 to 10 years have mucked it up irretrievably, etc, and therefore on a deadline perhaps twelve months we will be out.' By the way, something very close to what Obama said about Iraq - I think untruthfully - that he'll get out of Iraq. But in Afghanistan he could have said it was a noble cause - in Afghanistan - it was the right war, it was a good war, all this - but we've had eight years. There's nothing untrue about that, it's totally realistic.
Young: Daniel Ellsberg it's clear that you're not here just to chat up your Oscar nominated documentary you're very concerned about the present.
Ellsberg: Well what concerns me certainly is not the past, it is the present. The last lion of The Great Gatsby comes back to me, "so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Well to look at today is to relive the past for me and - there's almost - very little distinction between them and I wish that weren't true.