YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → After Terminal Cancer Diagnosis, Daniel Ellsberg Reflects on Leaking Pentagon Papers & His Legacy

After Terminal Cancer Diagnosis, Daniel Ellsberg Reflects on Leaking Pentagon Papers & His Legacy — Transcript

by Democracy Now! · 3,647 words · 511 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:00this is democracy Now democracynow.org
0:02The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman
0:06today we spend the hour with Pentagon
0:08Papers whistleblower Daniel ellsburg he
0:10recently announced he's been diagnosed
0:12with inoperable pancreatic cancer in a
0:15letter to Friends Dan urg wrote quote I
0:18feel lucky and grateful that I've had a
0:21wonderful life far beyond the proverbial
0:23three score years and 10 I feel the very
0:26same way about having a few months more
0:29to enjoy life with my wife and family
0:32and in which to continue to pursue the
0:34Urgent goal of working with others to
0:36avert nuclear war in Ukraine or Taiwan
0:39or anywhere else unquote Dan urg turned
0:4492 on April 7th he may be the world's
0:47most famous whistleblower in 1971 the
0:50New York Times began publishing excerpts
0:52of the Pentagon paper 7,000 pages of top
0:55secret documents outlining the secret
0:57history of the Vietnam War the times
1:01expose was based on documents secretly
1:03photocopied by Dan ellsburg and Anthony
1:05Russo while they worked as Pentagon
1:07Consultants at the ran Corporation
1:09ellsburg had been inspired to leak the
1:11documents by anti-war protesters in fact
1:14shortly before the times first reported
1:16in the Pentagon papers Dan ellberg took
1:18part in an anti-war protest in
1:20Washington DC 52 years ago today on
1:24Mayday 1971 as part of an affinity group
1:27with gome Chomsky and Howard in the
1:30Pentagon paper leak would end up helping
1:32take down President Nixon help end the
1:34war in Vietnam and lead to a major
1:37victory for press Freedom the Nixon
1:39Administration would go on to take
1:41Extraordinary Measures to silence and
1:43punish ellsburg including breaking into
1:45his psychiatrist office but the
1:47government's misconduct led to charges
1:50against him being dismissed over the
1:52past 50 years Daniel Ellsberg has
1:55remained a leading critic of us
1:57militarism and US nuclear weapons policy
2:00as well as a prominent advocate for
2:02other whistleblowers I spoke to him
2:04Thursday from his home in Berkeley
2:07California Dan it's wonderful to have
2:09you with us I'm so appreciative that
2:12you're letting us into your home to have
2:14this conversation
2:16today well it's so good for me to be
2:19back here Amy there is literally no one
2:22in American Media American life that I
2:25more appreciate having the chance to
2:27talk about the state of the world with
2:29and I love having me back on well I
2:32thank you so much for taking this time
2:34and I wanted to start off with this
2:36letter that you sent to friends about
2:38learning in February that you had
2:40inoperable pancreatic cancer can you
2:43talk about this can you talk about how
2:45you're feeling there's an expression
2:47that goes way back to Marcus Aurelius in
2:49fact that you should live each day as
2:52though it were your last day on life on
2:55Earth uh that's pretty hard to do you
2:58spend the day canceling a appointments
3:00not making any others but spending this
3:03month as though it were my last month on
3:05Earth is very realistic for me and it
3:08works very well for me I can recommend
3:10it to others so talk about what you've
3:12been doing since you've gotten this
3:14diagnosis and also your decision uh not
3:18to have
3:19chemotherapy well some time did go by
3:21exploring possible uh unusual forms of n
3:26of chemotherapy immunotherapy and others
3:28if I were a candidate for them and sort
3:31of a month went by there by well very
3:33well intended people who were
3:35encouraging me to seek a way out here
3:37but those didn't seem to apply after all
3:40and uh I just have to accept what uh
3:43most people with pancreatic cancer have
3:46to that there is no promising way out I
3:49did choose to uh use these days in a way
3:53of saying what I think is important to
3:55the world in my last chance to do it
3:57maybe my last chance on this poem on
4:00this uh program and maybe not uh and to
4:02be with my family and friends I've seen
4:05all my grandchildren now and my children
4:07spent a lot of time saying goodbye and
4:10getting in touch with their problems and
4:13uh being a family person which is not my
4:16fort actually I love my family but I've
4:20spent a lot of time being obsessed in
4:22other things over the years and uh I
4:24regret that but uh I have spent
4:27wonderful time just yesterday was my
4:28wife's birthday
4:30and we recall that it was on April 17th
4:341965 not everyone can remember their
4:37first date uh like that but that was the
4:40first SDS March against war and I was
4:43working in the Pentagon on the war
4:45pursuing the war she was going to
4:48interview people in a nationwide
4:49interview program she had and she
4:51induced me to carry her you were heavy
4:55uh phonograph around with her tape
4:57recorder to interview people and I
4:59marched up to the White House hoping
5:02carrying that recorder and hoping that I
5:03would not be in any picture of the
5:05Washington Post where my colleagues at
5:07the Pentagon would what he's protesting
5:10the war and my one day off from the war
5:12during this but the next day I induced
5:14her to go to the cherry blossoms that
5:16was our first date and we've been
5:18together ever since so that was 57 years
5:20ago she really was the one who exposed
5:25you is this right to um the anti-war
5:29move
5:30by forcing you to carry her tape
5:31recorder I mean you were protesting
5:33right outside where you worked you'd
5:35gone from Rand Corporation to the
5:39Pentagon actually uh it was outside the
5:42Lincoln Memorial where we heard the
5:43speeches and then we marched toward the
5:45White House and around the White House I
5:47went back that evening to the Pentagon
5:49where I was working having gotten her to
5:50promise to meet me the next day to go
5:52see the cherry blossoms but I was very
5:55much in sympathy with what I was hearing
5:57on that uh Stadium from from if Stone
6:01and others about the War uh I felt at
6:04that time as a cold warrior that we were
6:07picking the wrong place to plant the
6:09flag on this when this was a loser and I
6:12was not enthusiastic about our getting
6:14involved in it but that was my job and I
6:16did it all too well if I were asked what
6:19regrets I have today they would have to
6:22do with uh doing a job I was asked to do
6:25that I knew was wrong for the country
6:28and I did it to the best of my ability
6:30the war was carried on by people who
6:32acted like that so I want to talk about
6:35what you decided to do and how seminal
6:38how key the anti-war movement was um to
6:42your thinking not only meeting Patricia
6:45uh but also seeing those War resistors
6:49uh what we're called draft Dodgers the
6:51draft resistors who said they'd rather
6:53be in prison than uh on the front lines
6:57and the war in Vietnam
7:00well many many people when Pentagon
7:02papers came out a lot of people on the
7:03atti war movement said what's new about
7:06this is what we've been saying all along
7:08which was true which was we had taken up
7:10a French a French neocolonial role and
7:14Imperial role essentially against the
7:17self-government of Vietnam the
7:19sovereignty of Vietnam and were doomed
7:21to suffer the same fate as the French
7:23asally to keep killing people and losing
7:26people until we finally decided to go
7:28home and leave them ruling their own
7:30home well that was known inside the
7:33Insiders who were pursuing the war and
7:35dropping the bombs millions of tons of
7:38bombs it came to be even later than this
7:40uh knew the same thing and were doing it
7:43uh likewise the question was what to do
7:45about it all the people I was working
7:48with in the government by that time felt
7:50everyone I could think of uh felt the
7:53war was hopeless essentially it was
7:55hopelessly stalemated and there was no
7:57coming out the word hope stal was taboo
8:01on the year I came back from Vietnam
8:02with hepatitis in 1967 after 2 years
8:06here Lyon Johnson had said no official
8:09is to use the word or hint at the word
8:12stalemate and yet that's where it was so
8:16the war continued people did their jobs
8:19and it went on as though that judgment
8:21had not been made and eventually what I
8:25really noticed was that there were
8:26people who felt much as I did and who
8:29were doing an awful lot more about it
8:32than I was doing namely these were young
8:34people who you didn't have to be an
8:37expert you didn't have to have a PhD in
8:39international relations uh as somebody
8:41uh to to see the truth about the war in
8:44Vietnam as somebody said you don't have
8:46to be an e theologist to know when a
8:48fish stinks and these young people refus
8:51to go to be drafted uh to uh when they
8:56could have gone to Canada or Sweden or
9:00gotten deferment or joined the Air Force
9:02National Guard like George W H uh W bush
9:06somehow gotten out of the fighting but
9:07no they chose to give it as strong a
9:11resistance as they could non-violently
9:14in the footsteps of Rosa Parks in the
9:17South and Martin Luther King and others
9:20and to say no this is wrong you have to
9:23do this over our bodies we will not
9:26participate in this because it's wrong
9:29and I realized when I met young men like
9:31this like uh D Bob Eaton and Randy keer
9:36who were on their way to prison simply
9:38to make the strongest message they
9:40could which I believed as well that the
9:44war was wrong I realized I could think
9:47of doing what they did too instead of
9:49just talking to insiders who felt as I
9:52did but agreed there was just nothing
9:54you could do about it as long as the
9:56president wanted to carry on the war and
9:58his subordinates wanted to keep their
10:00jobs under the president uh that they
10:03could in fact simply uh dissociate
10:06themselves from it and denounce the war
10:08openly very recently we've seen uh very
10:12many comments that the what the Pentagon
10:14paper showed was that the war was not
10:18winnable actually that had and that's
10:20why I gave the Pentagon papers and that
10:22was the effect of them actually none of
10:24the people who went to prison to protest
10:27the war did so because they thought the
10:29war was not
10:31winnable they did it because they they
10:34thought the war was wrong and that's
10:36something I think that people have not
10:39succeeded have not been willing to
10:41recognize all these years not just that
10:44the war not just that the US had taken
10:46on some Noble measure that wasn't quite
10:49uh energetic enough to pursue or had
10:52other or was easily distracted from or
10:54something like that but that our country
10:57was like so many other countries capable
10:59of doing wrong and killing people
11:02without good reason and uh in effect an
11:06imperial kind of operation like that of
11:08the Japanese or the French after the
11:12Japanese or the Chinese before either of
11:14them and those are the footsteps we were
11:16walking in well I think to this day the
11:19very idea that the US is in some ways
11:21comparable to those Empires that it is
11:23an Empire is a taboo and a very
11:26unfortunate one because it makes it
11:28impossible to understand what's going on
11:31why are we doing this what's what's
11:34happening uh why in the world are we in
11:36this position I've ever time after time
11:39of fighting against the
11:41self-determination or the nationalism of
11:43other countries and uh taking on those
11:46uh murderous tasks as opposed to dealing
11:49with problems at home I think of our
11:52country as a covert Empire where covert
11:55is a term of Art in the Pentagon and the
11:58CIA in particular particular uh and I
12:00worked with CIA people in Vietnam my
12:02immediate boss there was a retired CIA
12:05General General Edward Lansdale and the
12:07word covert means plausibly
12:10deniable it means uh not just secret I'm
12:14doing something that I don't tell you
12:16about but that I plant evidence suggests
12:19that I'm doing something different and
12:21I'm not doing it somebody else is doing
12:23it and the person above me is somebody
12:26else layer after layer to prevent the
12:29pres from holding any accountability for
12:31what's happening I think we not only
12:34feel we need and do be able to plausibly
12:38deny that we are an Empire that we run
12:42other people's governments other
12:43people's police force that we decide who
12:45goes to jail and who gets shot in that
12:48country and second we deny the means we
12:51do to keep it a covert Empire
12:53assassinations paramilitary military
12:56buildups um and even overt Wars in some
13:00cases as in Vietnam or Iraq Dan I wanted
13:04to go uh to that decision you made after
13:07giving your 13-year-old son Robert a
13:10copy of Thor's essay on civil
13:13disobedience the Civil Disobedience you
13:16engaged in this is a clip from that 2009
13:20documentary the most dangerous man in
13:22America Dan ellsburg and the Pentagon
13:25papers it was the evening of October 1st
13:2819 19 69 when I first smuggled several
13:31hundred pages of top secret documents
13:34out of my safe at the RAM
13:38Corporation the study contained 47
13:41volumes 7,000
13:45Pages my plan was to Xerox the study and
13:48reveal the secret history of the Vietnam
13:50War to the American
13:53people the FBI was trying to find out
13:56who gave the New York Times a copy of a
13:58pentagon
13:59secret study po like a like a thunder
14:02clap you get the New York Times
14:04publishing the Pentagon papers and the
14:06country is
14:08panicking this is an attack on the whole
14:10Integrity of government if whole file
14:12cabinets can be stolen and then made
14:14available to the Press you can't have
14:16orderly government anymore a name has
14:19now come out as the possible source of
14:21the times Pentagon documents it is that
14:23of Daniel Ellsberg the top policy
14:26analyst for the defense and state
14:27department I think it is time in this
14:30country to quit making national heroes
14:33out of those who steal secrets and
14:36publish them in the
14:39newspaper in the first year of marriage
14:41we're talking about him going to prison
14:43for the rest of his
14:47life wouldn't you go to
14:51prison we felt so strongly that we were
14:53dealing with a national security crisis
14:56Henry Kissinger said that Dr Daniel
14:58ellberg was the most dangerous man in
15:00America and he had to be
15:02stopped so that a clip from the most
15:05dangerous man in America uh by Judith
15:08erlick and Rick Goldsmith I remember
15:11when we had you on Den so many different
15:13times beginning 27 years ago you were
15:16one of our first guests on democracy now
15:19but when this documentary came out you
15:22and Patricia your wife uh came on the
15:24show with the directors um this goes to
15:28that point where you understood the
15:30stakes of what you were going to do you
15:33brought your two little kids 13-year-old
15:35Robert 10-year-old Mary to help you not
15:38that they completely understood what you
15:40were doing Xerox the 7,000 pages of the
15:45secret history of
15:47Vietnam us involvement in
15:51Vietnam that's right I um hadn't really
15:54meant to bring my my daughter but on the
15:57second occasion at all she was only 10
15:59but um uh she' complained about being
16:02left in the car when I went up to do
16:03some last minute zxing with Robert and
16:08once she was up there she complained
16:09about being given nothing to do so we
16:12gave her the scissors and when by
16:14mistake the police came to the door for
16:16the second time during this project
16:19because the owner of the shop had not
16:22turned the key correctly and it set off
16:24an alarm in the police station so when
16:26the police arrived at the door they
16:28found
16:29uh my son who was 13 at that time Mike
16:33Robert was running the Xerox machine and
16:36I was uh collating on the floor various
16:40copies we were making and Mary who was
16:4210 was cutting top secret off the tops
16:45and bottoms of the pages with the
16:47scissors kind of a family project so
16:50they uh so how innocent it was and they
16:53they left but my objective with my son
16:56in particular was to let him see that
16:59there were times when the best thing you
17:02could do you really needed to say no to
17:04a government policy even at the risk of
17:08prison and I wanted him to see that I
17:10had not gone off my nut as I would be
17:13described uh shortly I was sure that I
17:17was not acting as a traitor or
17:19fanatically or hysterically I was just
17:21sing something in a businesslike way
17:23that I felt had to be done even though
17:26it had a risk I wanted to plant that
17:27idea in his life
17:29and it took hold as it did with my
17:31daughter my son is the editor-in chief
17:34of orbus books the Catholic Seminary um
17:38uh liberation theology uh publishing
17:41house and my daughter is head of
17:43violence against women project a
17:45worldwide project at American University
17:47both of them having been arrested at
17:49various times so and you wanted them to
17:52know this because you
17:54recognized that this could be among the
17:57last time you were spending I would see
18:00them yes I thought they'd otherwise just
18:02see me through heavy glass in a uh in a
18:07prison and would have the way that
18:10Julian Assange has had to grow up with
18:12his young sons in his Total Security
18:15Prison in belmarsh for having
18:18facilitated truth taking of the same
18:21kind that I've done as a matter of fact
18:23his is the first prosecution of a
18:26journalist for putting information out
18:28will not be the last if he successfully
18:31extradited over here so he has a couple
18:34children whove seen him literally only
18:36in prison and uh better than not seeing
18:39them at all that's certainly the case
18:41but um uh what did he uh I reveal this
18:45year that I had the information uh from
18:49Julian nange essentially that Chelsea
18:51Manning had given a Sange and which was
18:54later put out in the papers I had that
18:56before the papers before the new
18:58newspapers had them meaning that I was
19:00as indictable right now as I'm talking
19:03to you uh as any of the people who've
19:05been indicted by this justice department
19:08because they're working with a law whose
19:10plain language is on the one hand
19:13unconstitutional from the point of view
19:15of the First Amendment but red properly
19:18just says that Anyone who reads or
19:21handles or stores a piece of paper that
19:24has been marked to be protected uh
19:26marked classified by the government is
19:29subject to imprisonment that implies
19:31even to readers of the New York Times
19:33and very definitely to journalists like
19:36Charlie savage or the Publishers or
19:38Julian himself in other words in that
19:41respect we've gone backwards since that
19:44day that was after all mine was the
19:46first prosecution of anyone for telling
19:49the truth to the American people and
19:51there have been several dozen since and
19:53the first one uh of a journalist
19:56actually is I think just proceeding the
19:58first one of a reader before we get
20:00there so this this law the ESPN act very
20:04much needs to be repealed or rescinded
20:06in such a way that it does not serve
20:08like a British official Secrets act
20:11which was a perfect law for an Empire
20:14Dan um even before the Pentagon papers
20:18were published in the times but after
20:20you had given the secret the top secret
20:24report to the times uh you were trying
20:26to end this war Any Which Way we're
20:29broadcasting this show on Mayday on May
20:321st and it was May 1st
20:351971 that you led a small affinity group
20:39that included what Howard Zen the his
20:42late great historian and gome Chomsky to
20:45Washington to protest the War I think
20:48Howard would get arrested later that day
20:50but can you talk about um that moment
20:54that protest with Howard gnome and
20:57others well the idea was that if they
21:00won't stop it was reny Davis's idea that
21:02if they won't stop the war we'll stop
21:04the government and so they had they had
21:07about 25,000 people which was not enough
21:11actually to do it but we were into
21:13Affinity groups and uh as you say I was
21:16in a very uh privileged one privileged
21:18for me with Howard Zen and nsky and
21:21Marilyn young U Fred a number of others
21:25Mitch Goodman Mar PX
21:29and we did in fact get beaten over the
21:31head on the streets several times and
21:33got the advantage of testing field
21:36testing their uh pepper sprays directly
21:39into the face which is uh very effective
21:41I can I'll give a little uh blur for it
21:44here uh it is very disorienting indeed
21:47and then and then we again we thought it
21:50was pretty much over when they
21:52began uh just clearing the streets of
21:55Georgetown by arresting everybody there
21:57including to their fault a number of
22:00congressman's children who were shopping
22:02in Georgetown 13,000 were people were
22:06arrested and put in RFK Stadium without
22:09any warrants without any paperwork as to
22:11why they had been arrested what they
22:13were there so in the end they were paid
22:14a small uh Indemnity for having done
22:18that

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of After Terminal Cancer Diagnosis, Daniel Ellsberg Reflects on Leaking Pentagon Papers & His Legacy by Democracy Now!, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 3,647 words across 511 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.