{"id":186786,"date":"2021-06-14T12:02:12","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T11:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=186786"},"modified":"2021-06-12T04:30:34","modified_gmt":"2021-06-12T03:30:34","slug":"why-daniel-ellsberg-wants-the-u-s-to-prosecute-him-under-the-espionage-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/06\/why-daniel-ellsberg-wants-the-u-s-to-prosecute-him-under-the-espionage-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Daniel Ellsberg Wants the U.S. to Prosecute Him under the Espionage Act"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In an exclusive interview, Ellsberg explains why he hopes the courts take on the law used to crack down on whistleblowers.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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An aerial photograph of Hiroshima, Japan, shortly after the “Little Boy” atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945. Photo: Universal History Archive\/UIG via Getty images<\/p><\/div>\n

1 Jun 2021 – <\/em>\u201cThe whole idea is to kill the bastards,\u201d Gen. Thomas Power, commander of America\u2019s nuclear forces from 1957 to 1963, once said about the use of atomic weapons. \u201cAt the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The hold this nuclear lunacy had on the top of the U.S. government is terrifyingly illuminated in\u00a0a top-secret study<\/a> of U.S. war plans newly publicized\u00a0by famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. The document, produced by the RAND Corporation and\u00a0copied by Ellsberg at the same time he exfiltrated the Pentagon Papers from RAND, examines the U.S. response to the\u00a01958 Taiwan Strait Crisis. The study\u2019s contents were first reported on May 22\u00a0by the New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The crisis, now completely forgotten, began when China attempted to seize\u00a0several small islands off its coast from Taiwan. The study shows American generals enthusiastically planning for the use of nuclear weapons against China. It is not simply that the officials looked with equanimity on the possibility of killing millions; rather, many seemed frustrated that there were any delays forced upon them by\u00a0the rest of the government. If China had not changed course, civilization could have ended then and there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ellsberg is now\u00a0speaking out about\u00a0the study, he\u00a0said in a phone interview, for a straightforward reason: \u201cI got scared.\u201d\u00a0The issues that led to the 1958 crisis between the U.S. and China have never been resolved; both countries are now ramping up confrontational rhetoric; and most importantly, the strategic rationale that led the U.S. to consider nuclear war then remains exactly the same today. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t be confident that the current calculations are any less crazy,\u201d Ellsberg said.<\/p>\n

His\u00a0apprehension\u00a0about the potential use of nuclear weapons is intimately linked to another of his key concerns: the Justice Department\u2019s accelerating\u00a0use of the 1917 Espionage Act to prosecute\u00a0leakers. Its\u00a0chilling effect on potential\u00a0whistleblowers makes it less and less likely that Americans will even know\u00a0what their government is doing, much less be able to do anything about it. Ellsberg hopes his latest revelation will prompt\u00a0a cultural and perhaps legal reckoning\u00a0for the Act.<\/p>\n

Ellsberg has been profoundly worried about the danger of nuclear war since the 1950s and \u201960s, when he worked in various positions at the heart of America\u2019s atomic nomenclatura. In his 2017 book, \u201cThe Doomsday Machine,\u201d he describes arranging for a simple question to be sent to the Joint Chiefs of Staff over President John F. Kennedy\u2019s signature: How many people would die if the U.S. carried out its extensive plans for general nuclear war against the Soviet Union and China?The answer came back a week later: about 600 million, or, as Ellsberg puts it, \u201ca hundred Holocausts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Daniel Ellsberg and his wife walk from court after a federal judge has just dismissed the Pentagon Papers case against him on May 11, 1973.
Photo: Bettmann Archive\/ Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When Ellsberg was quietly extracting the Pentagon Papers from RAND, he also copied as much material \u2014 totaling at least 7,000 pages \u2014 about U.S. nuclear policies. Some of his activist friends even believed the nuclear documents were more important than the Vietnam history, and Ellsberg planned to leak them after the Pentagon Papers were published. He gave the nuclear archive to his brother for safekeeping, but his brother hid most of it in a town dump, and a hurricane shifted the dump\u2019s landscape so much that it was impossible to locate. The Taiwan study is one of the comparatively few nuclear papers that survived.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s imagination used to be captured by the danger of nuclear war<\/a>, with dozens of works of fiction portraying how it could happen and what it would mean: \u201cDr. Strangelove,\u201d \u201cWarGames,\u201d \u201cThe Day After.\u201d This in turn led to political pressure on leaders to reduce our nuclear stockpile and ameliorate tensions with our purported enemies.<\/p>\n

But this widespread terror of nuclear war evaporated with the end of the Cold War, even as many specialists have come to believe that the actual danger remains and, in fact, is growing. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set its Doomsday Clock at\u00a0100 seconds to midnight<\/a>, the closest it\u2019s been\u00a0since its creation<\/a> in 1947. Even former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense\u00a0William J. Perry, and former Sen.\u00a0Sam Nunn of Georgia \u2014 none known for being wild-eyed radicals \u2014 have together\u00a0repeatedly warned<\/a>\u00a0about the heightened risk of\u00a0nuclear war and\u00a0urged world leaders\u00a0to\u00a0abolish\u00a0the weapons.<\/p>\n

For his part, Ellsberg points out that we now know the Pentagon\u2019s calculation of\u00a0600 million dead in nuclear war was likely a grave underestimate. The smoke from hundreds of burning cities would block out the sun for years, causing famine that would kill almost every human on Earth.<\/p>\n

The 1958 Taiwan<\/u> Strait Crisis was rooted in China\u2019s civil war over the preceding decades. After the Chinese Communists won and founded the People\u2019s Republic of China in 1949, the Nationalists fled to Taiwan. The People\u2019s Republic did not accept that Taiwan was a legitimate, separate country and certainly did not accept that it owned the small island of Quemoy and the Matsu archipelago. This had an understandable logic, given that Quemoy and Matsu are right on the coast of mainland China, about 100 miles from Taiwan.<\/p>\n

The People\u2019s Republic shelled Quemoy and Matsu in August 1958, declaring that it was \u201cdetermined to liberate\u201d them. The Ellsberg document examines in detail the enthusiastic planning for nuclear war this set off at the top levels of the U.S. government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Two Taiwanese children, orphaned when the Chinese Communist army bombed their home in the Nationalist stronghold of the Kinmen Islands, also known as Quemoy, photographed in 1959.
Photo: Keystone Features\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,\u00a0Gen. Nathan F. Twining, \u201cmade it clear that [to stop the Chinese attack] the United States would have to use nuclear weapons against Chinese air bases,\u201d beginning with, according to the study, \u201clow-yield ten to fifteen kiloton nuclear weapons.\u201d This \u201clow-yield\u201d characterization is in the eye of the beholder; Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was\u00a015 kilotons.<\/p>\n

The study also reports that Twining said if the People\u2019s Republic did not retreat, the U.S. \u201cwould have to conduct nuclear strikes deep into China.\u201d This would \u201calmost certainly involve nuclear retaliation against Taiwan and possibly against Okinawa, but he stressed that if national policy is to defend the Offshore Island then the consequences had to be accepted.\u201d (The U.S. assumption was that this retaliation would come from the Soviets, given that China had not yet developed its own nuclear weapons.)<\/p>\n

Adm. Arleigh Burke, chief of naval operations, tried to quell the disappointment of Adm. Harry Felt, the commander in chief of Pacific Command, that President Dwight Eisenhower might not give them the go-ahead to go nuclear immediately. But \u201che assured Felt that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would continue to press for the use of atomic weapons on Chinese Communist local air fields from the outset of hostilities.\u201d Burke was especially worried that the administration would not allow them to use nukes unless Taiwan itself was attacked, something that \u201cBurke evaluated as not sound but nevertheless persuasive to top officials.\u201d Burke also believed that while foreigners might complain about America using nuclear weapons, \u201cleaders of other countries would soon realize that it was in their interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gen. Lawrence S. Kuter, the top Air Force officer for the Pacific Command, felt the same. \u201cU.S. air action,\u201d he said, according to the RAND document, \u201chad no chance unless atomic weapons were used from the outlet.\u201d To defend Quemoy and Matsu \u201cwithout discretionary use of nuclear weapons would be costly and probably ineffective. Less forceful alternatives in the long run would prove disastrous.\u201d (Kuter did express the perspective that perhaps the U.S. simply should not go to war over the islands.)<\/p>\n

Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, the Army chief of staff, was the most dovish of this crew, holding the belief that the U.S. and Taiwan might be able to beat back China\u2019s military with conventional weapons. Nevertheless, he believed, \u201cit would be necessary to use nuclear weapons\u201d if he were wrong.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A panoramic photograph of the destruction following an atomic bomb exploding in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.
Photo: Universal History Archive\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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What possible reason<\/u> would the U.S. have to start a nuclear war in defense of this collection of tiny islands almost 7,000 miles away from the U.S. west coast?<\/p>\n

The answer is perhaps the most\u00a0significant aspect of the leaked study. John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower\u2019s secretary of state, is paraphrased explaining it as clearly as possible.<\/p>\n

At one meeting with the military, \u201cDulles repeated the point he had made at a previous meeting that if we shrank from using nuclear weapons when military circumstances required, we would have to reconsider our whole defense posture.\u201d<\/p>\n

The great majority of the officers agreed. The U.S. had made commitments to allies around the world that it would defend them. But, Twining said, America \u201ccould not afford the sort of forces\u201d necessary to do this with conventional arms. Dulles chimed in that the U.S. could never be a \u201cmatch for the manpower and conventional power of the Communist enemies on the Eurasian land mass.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, we could only defend our valiant allies if we were constantly willing to use nuclear weapons. Of course, one person\u2019s valiant allies across the globe are another\u2019s network of vassal states constituting a planetary empire. Either way, if our allies saw that we weren\u2019t willing to use nuclear weapons to let Taiwan keep worthless islands that shouldn\u2019t belong to them anyway, they\u2019d all wander off on their own, making independent decisions about their interests.<\/p>\n

Or as Dulles put it, \u201cNothing seems worth a world war until you looked at the effect of not standing up to each challenge posed.\u201d What was this effect? According to Burke, the U.S. \u201cmust be prepared to use nuclear weapons. Otherwise we would lose the whole world within three years.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of this is completely logical, if you start from the premise that America must run everything. It is also, as Ellsberg puts it, \u201ccriminal and insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellsberg\u2019s concern today is that we are headed toward a similar confrontation, with the same underlying calculations, as in 1958. For 70 years, the China-Taiwan split has been papered over with kludgey ambiguity. China had declared that there is only one China \u2014 the People\u2019s Republic \u2014 and Taiwan still belongs to it. Most of the rest of the world is willing to go along and pretend Taiwan is not an independent country. This includes the U.S., which declared in 1979 that the People\u2019s Republic is \u201cthe sole legal Government of China\u201d and has maintained that policy ever since.<\/p>\n

But now Taiwan\u2019s government may, with encouragement from the U.S. right and little pushback from President Joe Biden, do what it never has before: formally declare independence. According to China\u2019s ministry of defense, \u201cTaiwan independence means war<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one knows how far either China or the U.S. would go over this issue. But what was said in the study of the 1958 crisis remains true today: \u201c[N]uclear weapons would be necessary if the United States had to defend Taiwan.\u201d And many in the U.S. foreign policy establishment will still argue that if we\u2019re not willing to go that far, we would lose the whole world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg poses before a press conference after being presented with the Right Livelihood Award in Stockholm, Sweden, on Dec. 6, 2006.
Photo: Jonas Ekstromer\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Meanwhile, Ellsberg has<\/u> more on his agenda. The RAND report was originally classified \u201ctop secret.\u201d An unclassified version, with large swaths removed, was released in 1975<\/a>. Ellsberg copied the top-secret version, and it\u2019s the sections redacted 46 years ago that he is drawing attention to today.<\/p>\n

A historian at George Washington University filed a Freedom of Information Act decades ago in an attempt to get these parts of the report declassified. But the Pentagon responded that they couldn\u2019t find the original study. Thus, Ellsberg is leaking material that may\u00a0remain top secret, and the New York Times has published it.<\/p>\n

Now Ellsberg, who recently turned 90, is calling on the U.S. government to prosecute him under the 1917 Espionage Act.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019ve done is the same as what [drone whistleblower] Daniel Hale<\/a>\u00a0[was prosecuted] for,\u201d says Ellsberg. \u201cDaniel Hale\u2019s stuff was not higher than Top Secret.\u201d Hale pleaded guilty to one count under the Espionage Act after, according to the Justice Department<\/a>, leaking\u00a011 documents \u201cmarked as Top Secret or Secret.\u201d He is currently awaiting sentencing.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Ellsberg points out, \u201cJulian Assange has been indicted\u201d for conspiracy to obtain and disclose material that \u201cChelsea Manning gave him and that was nothing higher than Secret. \u2026 I want to say as clearly as I can to them, this is what you\u2019ve been indicting people for.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government, Ellsberg plausibly believes, \u201cis not anxious\u201d to prosecute him. But he hopes to force the issue, in an attempt to bring the case to the Supreme Court and have the Espionage Act declared unconstitutional \u2014 a long-held goal of First Amendment advocates. The Act is \u201ctruly draconian,\u201d says Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, \u201cand it denies those charged under it any opportunity to defend themselves in front of a jury. The fact that Ellsberg is willing to put himself on the line to protest this unjust and overbroad statute is nothing short of heroic.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is indeed an unusual endeavor for someone entering his tenth decade. But it is characteristic of Ellsberg. In \u201cThe Doomsday Machine,\u201d he writes about holding in his hand one of the government estimates of hundreds of millions dying in a nuclear inferno. \u201cI thought, This piece of paper should not exist. \u2026 It depicted evil beyond any human project ever. There should be nothing on earth, nothing real, that it referred to.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it is real. Gen. Thomas Power, the nuclear czar, had a different reaction when he was presented with a similar estimate of mass death if the U.S. followed its plan to bomb the Soviet Union and China. What if the war didn\u2019t actually involve China? Could the military change things up?<\/p>\n

Power responded unhappily: \u201cWe can, but I hope nobody thinks of it, because it would really screw up the plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellsberg\u2019s leak\u00a0of the Pentagon Papers helped end the Vietnam War. Since then, he\u2019s devoted decades\u00a0of activism to raising awareness of the danger of nuclear weapons,\u00a0helping us understand people like Power, the systems in which they thrive, and how humans are absolutely capable of deluding ourselves into extinction. The 1958 study and his attempt to face down the Espionage Act are significant additions to his work, and everyone who\u2019d like human civilization to continue should pay attention.<\/p>\n

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Daniel Ellsberg is a former US military analyst who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers, which revealed how the US public had been misled about the Vietnam War.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Jon Schwarz<\/em><\/a> – jon.schwarz@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Go to Original – theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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