A whistleblowing hero who became dedicated to peace-making has died.
From The Guardian:
Daniel Ellsberg, a US government analyst who became one of the most famous whistleblowers in world politics when he leaked the Pentagon Papers, has died. He was 92. His death was confirmed by his family on Friday.
Daniel Ellsberg (center, in cowboy hat) at a 1980 protest blocking the railroad tracks carrying plutonium triggers from the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant northwest of Denver to the Pantex bomb assembly plant in Amarillio, Texas.
In March, Ellsberg announced that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. Saying he had been given three to six months to live, he said he had chosen not to undergo chemotherapy and had been assured of hospice care. [...]
In recent years, he publicly supported Chelsea Manning, the US soldier who leaked records of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Edward Snowden, who leaked records concerning surveillance by the National Security Agency. [...]
“I would not have thought of doing what I did,” he said, “which I knew would risk prison for life, without the public example of young Americans going to prison to make a strong statement that the Vietnam war was wrong and they would not participate, even at the cost of their own freedom.
“Without them, there would have been no Pentagon Papers. Courage is contagious.”
Three years later, in an interview to mark 50 years since the publication of the Pentagon Papers, he said he “never regretted for a moment” his decision to leak. [...]
In March, I wrote:
A one-time hawk whose 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers confirmed what many critics had been saying about the Vietnam War for years and inspired generations of whistleblowers and activists since then, Daniel Ellsberg has announced that he has pancreatic cancer and a short time to live. He has said he is not in physical pain and will not undergo chemotherapy, but he cautions that he’s not dead yet. "As I just told my son Robert: He's long known (as my editor) that I work better under a deadline. It turns out that I live better under a deadline." He is 91.
As a 1996 New York Times article on the 25th anniversary of the release of the Pentagon Papers noted, the Lyndon Johnson administration had "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress" about the war. After the Times in 1971 published the first excerpts from the papers in an article by reporter Neil Sheehan, the Nixon administration worked diligently to keep the Times and The Washington Post from publishing more of the documents, a fight that eventually wound up in the Supreme Court, which ruled 6-3 that prior restraint in the matter was out of bounds.
Ellsberg was brought up on charges and might have spent a lot longer in prison than he did for passing the documents along to media after failing in his attempts to interest Sens. William Fulbright and George McGovern in them. He was charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property. These charges were dropped after it was learned that the Richard Nixon administration had engaged in illegal searches and other unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg.
In 2006, Susan Gardner, who was then Daily Kos Managing Editor, conducted a lengthy interview with Ellsberg. Here are links to all six parts:
The Pentagon Papers and the Overlooked 1968 Leaks: Covers Ellsberg feeling that the Pentagon Papers ultimately proved ineffective in what he was trying to accomplish, but that leaks he did prior to them in 1968 were much more effective.
Judith Miller, the New York Times and Government-Controlled Press: Ellsberg speculates that Miller was "on the team" for the CIA - something he witnessed of several reporters during Vietnam - and that to a greater or lesser extent than the public realizes, we are dealing with a controlled press in this country.
The Cult of Secrecy in Government and Its Undermining of Democracy: Ellsberg discusses the undermining effects of government secrecy on the working of a practicing democracy, overclassification and the problems of signing oaths of secrecy to get clearances, which routinely leads to lying to Congress and courts during the course of investigations.
Whistleblowing and Effective Activism: Ellsberg talks about the hows and whys of whistleblowing - and importantly, when it's NOT worth the personal price - as well as what average American citizens can do to effectively put pressure on the government for change.
Iraq/Vietnam Parallels and Other Foreign Policy Fiascos: Ellsberg analyzes the obvious parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, as well as the two major differences - oil and strategic geographical importance - which he believes will keep us in Iraq for as long as 50 years.
Bush, the Next 9/11 and the Approaching Police State: Ellsberg discusses ... well, the title says it all.