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RIP Daniel Ellsberg: "Most Dangerous Man in America" on Leaking Pentagon Papers, Exposing Gov't Lies — Transcript

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0:00this is democracy Now
0:02democracynow.org The War and Peace
0:04report I'm Amy Goodman today we spend
0:07the hour remembering the Life and Legacy
0:09of one of the world's most famous
0:10whistleblowers Pentagon Papers
0:13whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg he died
0:15Friday at the age of 92 just months
0:19after being diagnosed with pancreatic
0:21cancer his family said he died
0:23peacefully at his home in no pain and
0:26released a statement that quote Daniel
0:28was a seeker of Truth and a patriotic
0:31truth teller an anti-war activist a
0:34beloved husband father grandfather and
0:37great-grandfather a dear friend to many
0:39and an inspiration to countless more
0:42unquote his son Robert Ellsberg shared
0:46how his father once said he would want
0:48his gravestone to say he became a part
0:51of the anti-vietnam and anti-nuclear
0:54movement
0:55in 1971 Dan Ellsberg been a top military
1:00strategist working for the Rand
1:02Corporation risked life in prison by
1:05secretly copying and then leaking 7 000
1:08pages of top secret documents outlining
1:10the secret history of the U.S war in
1:13Vietnam the leak would end up helping to
1:16take down President Nixon helping to end
1:19the war in Vietnam and would lead to a
1:22major victory for press Freedom Henry
1:24Kissinger once called Ellsberg the most
1:27dangerous man in America
1:29in 2009 a documentary of the same name
1:32told his story which Dan Ellsberg
1:35narrated
1:36we are
1:44quit making national heroes out of those
1:47who steal secrets and publish them in
1:49the newspaper
1:55hundreds of thousands we were killing
1:57was unjustified homicide and I couldn't
2:00see the difference between that and
2:01murder murder had to be stopped
2:05this weekend portions of a highly
2:07classified Pentagon document came the
2:09light for all the world to see brought
2:11cries about rage from Washington we
2:13gotta get this son of a yes
2:15Kennedy did send and troops in violation
2:18of the Geneva Accord Johnson did start
2:21the build up before he said he was going
2:22to these guys were lying through their
2:24teeth when they were talking to us and
2:27here it is in black and white there's no
2:28way of denying it the Times building is
2:30encircled
2:32words we are printing tomorrow a top
2:36secret government document my name has
2:39now come out as the possible source of
2:41the times Pentagon documents it is out
2:43of Daniel Ellsberg the top policy
2:45analyst for the defense and state
2:46department and prepared to answer to all
2:49the consequences of these decisions
2:51Henry Kissinger said that Daniel
2:53Ellsberg was the most dangerous man in
2:55America and he had to be stopped the
2:58study was 47 volumes 7 000 pages
3:02[Music]
3:04we've dropped another 200 000 tons of
3:07bombs on end of China That's ten
3:09hiroshimas one Hiroshima a week what has
3:13remained significant about the release
3:15of the Pentagon papers is the decision
3:19by a public official to give priority to
3:24conscience as compared to Career Daniel
3:27Ellsberg whatever his intentions gave
3:30Aid and comfort to the enemy
3:39the start carried out by four presidents
3:42and now a fifth president was doing the
3:44same I'm not going to be part of this
3:47system of lying anymore
3:54importantly we were on the wrong side
3:59we were the wrong side
4:04that's the trailer for the most
4:06dangerous man in America Daniel Ellsberg
4:09and the Pentagon papers
4:11the Nixon Administration went to
4:13extraordinary lengths to silence and
4:15punish Ellsberg including breaking into
4:18his psychiatrist's office he was charged
4:20with violating the Espionage Act and
4:22faced over a hundred years in prison but
4:25the government's misconduct led to
4:27charges against him and Anthony Russo
4:29being dismissed Dan Ellsberg said he'd
4:32been inspired to leak the documents by
4:34anti-war protesters in fact shortly
4:36before the times first reported on the
4:38Pentagon papers Ellsberg took part in an
4:40anti-war protest in Washington D.C on
4:42May Day 1971 as part of an affinity
4:45group with Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn
4:47over the past five decades Dan Ellsberg
4:50remained a leading critic of U.S
4:52militarism and U.S nuclear weapons
4:54policy as well as a prominent advocate
4:57for other whistleblowers he wrote A
4:59Memoir Secrets A Memoir of Vietnam and
5:01the Pentagon papers as well as the 2017
5:04book the Doomsday Machine Confessions of
5:07a nuclear war planner today we'll
5:09feature our interviews with Dan as over
5:12the years about Vietnam as well as
5:14Ukraine China and the threat of nuclear
5:16war we begin with our most recent
5:18interview which was April 27th when Dan
5:22joined us from his home in Kensington
5:25California he had just been recently
5:27diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic
5:30cancer Dan talked about he went from
5:33being a military analyst to a
5:35whistleblower and why he risked going to
5:37jail in an effort to end the Vietnam War
5:40just yesterday was my wife's birthday
5:42and
5:44we recalled that it was on April 17
5:471965 not everyone can remember their
5:51first date like that but that was the
5:53first SDS March against war and I was
5:57working in the Pentagon on the war
5:58pursuing the war she was going to
6:01interview people in a nationwide
6:03interview program she had and she
6:04induced me to carry her you were heavy
6:08phonograph around with her tape recorder
6:10to interview people and I marched up to
6:13the White House hoping carrying that
6:15recorder and hoping that I would not be
6:17in any picture of the Washington Post
6:19where my colleagues at the Pentagon
6:21would say what he's protesting the war
6:24on my one day off from the war during
6:26this but the next day I induced her to
6:28go to the cherry blossoms and that was
6:30our first date and we've been together
6:31ever since so that was 57 years ago she
6:35really was the one who exposed you is
6:38this right to
6:41um The anti-war Movement by forcing you
6:44to carry her tape recorder I mean you
6:45were protesting right outside where you
6:48worked you'd gone from Rand Corporation
6:50to the Pentagon
6:53actually it was around southern Lincoln
6:55Memorial where we heard the speeches and
6:57then we marched toward the White House
6:58and around the White House I went back
7:00that evening to the Pentagon where I was
7:03working having gotten her to promise to
7:04meet me the next day to go see the
7:06cherry blossoms but I was very much in
7:08sympathy with what I was hearing on that
7:11uh Stadium from if Stone and others
7:15about the war I felt at that time as a
7:18cold warrior that we were picking the
7:20wrong place to plant the flag on this
7:23one this was a loser and I was not
7:25enthusiastic about our getting involved
7:28in it but that was my job and I did it
7:30all too well if I were asked what
7:33regrets I have today they would have to
7:35do with doing a job I was asked to do
7:38that I knew was wrong for the country
7:41and I did it to the best of my ability
7:43the war was carried on by people who
7:45acted like that so I want to talk about
7:48what you decided to do and how seminal
7:51how key the anti-war movement was to
7:55your thinking not only meeting Patricia
7:58but also seeing those War resistors uh
8:02what were called draft Dodgers the
8:04drafter sisters who said they'd rather
8:06be in prison than uh on the front lines
8:10in the war in Vietnam
8:13well many many people when Pentagon
8:15papers came out a lot of people on the
8:17Eddie War movement said what's new about
8:19this is what we've been saying all along
8:21which was true which was we had taken up
8:24of a French a French neocolonial role an
8:27imperial role essentially against the
8:30self-government of Vietnam the
8:32sovereignty of Vietnam and we're doomed
8:34to suffer the same fate as the French
8:36essentially to keep killing people and
8:38losing people until we finally decided
8:40to go home and leave them ruling their
8:43own home well that was known inside the
8:47Insiders who were pursuing the war and
8:48dropping the bomb with millions of tons
8:51of bombs it came to be even later than
8:53this knew the same thing and we're doing
8:56it uh likewise the question was what to
8:58do about it
9:00all the people I was working with in the
9:02government by that time felt everyone I
9:04could think of felt the war was hopeless
9:07essentially it was hopelessly stalemated
9:09and there was no coming out the words
9:11hope stalemate was taboo on the year I
9:14came back from Vietnam with hepatitis in
9:171967 after two years here Lyndon Johnson
9:20had said no official is to use the word
9:23or hunted the word stalemate and yet
9:26that's what it was so the war continued
9:30people did their jobs and it went on as
9:33though that judgment had not been made
9:35and eventually what I really noticed was
9:39that there were people who felt much as
9:40I did
9:42and who were doing an awful lot more
9:44about it than I was doing namely these
9:47were young people who you shouldn't have
9:50to be an expert you didn't have to have
9:51a PhD in international relations uh as
9:54somebody uh to to see the truth about
9:56the war in Vietnam and somebody said you
9:58don't have to be an ichthyologist to
10:00know when a fish stinks and these young
10:03people refused to go
10:05to be drafted uh
10:07to uh when they could have gone to
10:11Canada or Sweden or gotten a deferment
10:14or joined the Air Force National Guard
10:16like George W H W bush somehow gotten
10:20under the fighting but no they chose to
10:22give it a strong a resistance as they
10:26could non-violently in the footsteps of
10:29Rosa Parks in the South and Martin
10:31Luther King and others and to say no
10:34this is wrong you have to do this over
10:37our bodies we will not participate in
10:40this because it's wrong and I realized
10:43when I met young men like this like Bob
10:47Eaton and Randy Keeler were on their way
10:50to prison simply to make the strongest
10:52message they could
10:54which I believed as well that the war
10:57was wrong
10:58I realized I could think of doing what
11:01they did too instead of just talking to
11:03insiders who felt as I did but agreed
11:07there was just nothing you could do
11:08about it as long as the president wanted
11:10to carry on the war and his subordinates
11:12wanted to keep their jobs under their
11:14president uh that they could in fact
11:18dissociate themselves Road and denounce
11:20the war openly very recently we've seen
11:24uh very many comments that the what the
11:27Pentagon paper showed was that the war
11:30was not winnable actually that had and
11:33that's why I gave the Pentagon papers
11:35and that was the effect of them actually
11:37none of the people who went to prison to
11:40protest the war did so because they
11:42thought the war was not winnable
11:45they did it because they thought they
11:47thought the war was wrong and that's
11:49something I think that people have not
11:52succeeded have not been willing to
11:54recognize all these years not just to
11:57the war not just that the US had taken
11:59on some Noble measure that wasn't quite
12:02energetic enough to pursue or had others
12:05or was easily distracted from or
12:07something like that but then our country
12:10was like so many other countries capable
12:12of doing wrong and killing people
12:15without good reason and uh in effect an
12:20imperial kind of operation like that of
12:22the Japanese
12:23or they're French after the Japanese or
12:26the Chinese before either of them and
12:28those are the footsteps we were walking
12:29in well I think to this day the very
12:32idea that the U.S is in some ways
12:34comparable to those Empires that it is
12:37an Empire is it to move and a very
12:40unfortunate one because it makes it
12:42impossible to understand what's going on
12:44why are we doing this what's what's
12:47happening uh why in the world are we in
12:49this position of every time after time
12:52of fighting against the
12:54self-determination or the nationalism of
12:56other countries and taking on those uh
13:00murderous tasks as opposed to dealing
13:02with problems at home I think of our
13:05country as a covert Empire where covert
13:09is a term of Art in the Pentagon and the
13:11CIA in particular and I worked with CI
13:14people in Vietnam my immediate boss
13:16there was a retired CIA General Edward
13:19Lansdale and the word covert means
13:22plausibly deniable
13:24it means not just secret I'm doing
13:28something that I don't tell you about
13:29but that I plant evidence suggests that
13:32I'm doing something different and I'm
13:35not doing it somebody else is doing it
13:36and the person above me is somebody else
13:39layer after layer to prevent the
13:42president from holding any
13:43accountability for what's happening I
13:46think we not only
13:47feel we need and do
13:50be able to plausibly deny that we are an
13:53Empire that we run other people's
13:56governments other people's police Fords
13:57that we decide who goes to jail and who
14:00gets shot in that country and second we
14:03deny the means we do to keep it a covert
14:05Empire assassination is paramilitary
14:08military buildups
14:10and even overt Wars in some cases as in
14:14Vietnam or Iraq Dan I wanted to go to
14:19that decision you made after giving your
14:2113 year old son Robert a copy of throws
14:25essay on civil disobedience the Civil
14:28Disobedience you engaged in this is a
14:31clip from that 2009 documentary the most
14:34dangerous man in America Dan Ellsberg
14:37and the Pentagon papers
14:40the evening of October 1st 1969 when I
14:44first smuggled several hundred pages of
14:46top secret documents out of my safe at
14:48the Rand Corporation
14:50[Music]
14:52the study contained 47 vitamins seven
14:55thousand pagers
14:59plan was to Xerox the study and reveal
15:02the secret history of the Vietnam War to
15:04the American people
15:07the I was trying to find out who gave
15:09the New York Times a copy of a
15:11pentagon's secret study how like a like
15:15a Thunderclap you get the New York Times
15:16publishing the Pentagon papers and the
15:19country is panicking
15:22an attack on the whole Integrity of
15:24government and his whole file cabinets
15:26can be stolen and then made available to
15:28the
15:30government anymore
15:31a name has now come out as the possible
15:34source of the times Pentagon documents
15:36it is that of Daniel Ellsberg the top
15:38policy analyst for the defense and state
15:40department I think it is time in this
15:43country to quit making national heroes
15:46out of those who steal secrets and
15:49publish them in the newspaper
15:52and the first year of marriage we're
15:55talking about him going to prison for
15:56the rest of his life
16:00[Music]
16:05we felt so strongly that we were dealing
16:07with a national security crisis Henry
16:09Kissinger said that Dr Daniel Ellsberg
16:12was the most dangerous man in America
16:13and he had to be stopped
16:16so that a clip from the most dangerous
16:19man in America by Judith Ehrlich and
16:22Rick Goldsmith I remember when we had
16:24you on Dan so many different times
16:27beginning 27 years ago you were one of
16:30our first guests on democracy now but
16:32when this documentary came out you and
16:35Patricia your wife came on the show with
16:38the directors
16:39this goes to that point where you
16:43understood the stakes of what you were
16:45going to do you brought your two little
16:47kids 13 year old Robert 10 year old
16:50married to help you not that they
16:52completely understood what you were
16:54doing
16:55Xerox the 7 000 pages of the secret
16:58history of Vietnam
17:01U.S involvement in Vietnam
17:04that's right I
17:07hadn't really meant to bring my my
17:09daughter but on the second occasion at
17:11all she was only 10 but she had
17:14complained about being left in the car
17:16when I went up to do some last minute
17:18xeroxing with Robert and once she was up
17:21there she complained about being given
17:23nothing to do so we gave her scissors
17:26and win by mistake the police came to
17:29the door for the second time during this
17:31project because the owner of a shop had
17:34not turned the key correctly and it set
17:37off an alarm in the police station so
17:39when the police arrived at the door they
17:41found my son who was 13 at that time
17:45Mike Robert was running the Xerox
17:48machine and I was collating on the floor
17:52or various copies we were making and
17:55Mary who was 10 was cutting top secret
17:57off the tops and bottoms of the pages
18:00with the scissors
18:01kind of a family project so they uh
18:05innocent it was and they they left but
18:08my objective with my son in particular
18:10was to let him see that there were times
18:13when the best thing you could do you
18:16really needed to say no to a government
18:18policy even at the risk of prison and I
18:22wanted him to see that I had not gone
18:24off my nut as I would be described uh
18:28shortly I was sure that I was not acting
18:31as a traitor or fanatically or
18:33hysterically I was just assuming
18:34something in a business-like way that I
18:37felt had to be done even though it had a
18:39risk I wanted to plant that idea in his
18:41life and it took hold as it did with my
18:45daughter
18:46son is the editor-in-chief of orbus
18:48books the Catholic Seminary
18:51Liberation theology publishing house and
18:55my daughter is head of violence against
18:57women project a worldwide project at
18:59American University both of them having
19:01been arrested at various times
19:03we wanted them to know this because you
19:06reckon recognized
19:09be among the last
19:11last were spending
19:14yes I thought they'd otherwise just see
19:16me through heavy glass you know in a
19:20prison and would have the the way that
19:23Julian Assange has had to grow up with
19:25his young sons in his Total Security
19:28Prison in belmarsh for having
19:31facilitated truth-taking of the same
19:34kind that I've done as a matter of fact
19:36his is the first prosecution of a
19:39journalist for putting information out
19:41and it will not be the last if he
19:44successfully extradited over here so he
19:46has a couple children who've seen him
19:48literally only in prison and better than
19:52not seeing him at all that's certainly
19:53the case but
19:56what he uh I reveal this year that I had
20:00the information
20:01from Julian Assange essentially that
20:04Chelsea Manning had given Assange and
20:07which was later put out in the papers I
20:09had that before the papers before the
20:12newspapers had the meaning that I was as
20:13in right now as I'm talking to you as
20:18any of the people who've been indicted
20:19by this justice department because
20:21they're working with a law whose plain
20:23language
20:24is on the one hand
20:27unconstitutional from the point of view
20:28of the First Amendment but red properly
20:31just says that Anyone who reads or
20:34handles or stores a piece of paper that
20:37has been marked to be protected are
20:40classified by the government is subject
20:42to imprisonment that implies even to
20:44readers of the New York Times and very
20:47definitely to journalists like Charlie
20:49savage or the Publishers or Julian
20:52himself in other words in that respect
20:54we've gone backwards since that day that
20:58was after all mine was the first
21:00prosecution of anyone foretelling the
21:03truth to the American people and there
21:05have been several dozen since and the
21:07first one of a journalist actually is I
21:10think just preceding the first one of a
21:13reader before we get there so this this
21:15law the Espionage Act very much needs to
21:18be repealed or rescinded in such a way
21:20that it does not serve like a British
21:22official Secrets act which was a perfect
21:25law foreign Empire
21:28Daniel Ellsberg Pentagon Papers
21:30whistleblower speaking in April he died
21:33Friday at the age of 92 just months
21:35after being diagnosed with pancreatic
21:37cancer

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