{"id":187318,"date":"2021-06-21T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T11:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=187318"},"modified":"2024-07-01T08:09:59","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T07:09:59","slug":"the-pentagon-papers-at-50-press-freedom-and-whistleblowers-still-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/06\/the-pentagon-papers-at-50-press-freedom-and-whistleblowers-still-at-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pentagon Papers at 50: Press Freedom and Whistleblowers Still at Risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

17 Jun 2021 –<\/em>Legendary whistleblower Dan Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers fifty years ago, a courageous act of truth-telling for which he later faced life in prison. He hasn\u2019t stopped since. Last May, just weeks after turning 90 years old, Ellsberg made yet another disclosure of classified national security information. He was speaking on a panel at the University of Massachusetts\u2019 \u201cTruth, Dissent, & the Legacy of Daniel Ellsberg\u201d conference with whistleblower Edward Snowden, which one of us [Amy] moderated.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cLet me tell a truth that I\u2019ve had for 50 years,\u201d Ellsberg said, before reading from a secret 1958 report describing the willingness of U.S. officials to launch a nuclear war. \u201cI copied that study. It was in my top-secret safe in 1969. And I\u2019ve had it ever since,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\n

Ellsberg was working at the RAND<\/span> Corporation and as a consultant to the Kennedy administration. He was also a U.S. Marine officer, and participated in combat missions in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

In 1969, inspired by the growing anti-war and draft resistance movements, Ellsberg photocopied the Pentagon Papers, a secret, 7,000-page history of U.S. decision-making during the Vietnam war. Unable to find a U.S. Senator willing to take the documents, he leaked them to the New York Times.<\/p>\n

The Times published its first Pentagon Papers piece on June 13th, 1971. Two days later, a federal court granted President Richard Nixon\u2019s request for an injunction, blocking further publication. After Ellsberg\u2019s identity as the leaker became public, he and his wife Patricia went underground, as he continued to distribute copies of the documents to other newspapers.<\/p>\n

Nixon\u2019s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, called Ellsberg \u201cthe most dangerous man in America.\u201d Nixon, in a recorded Oval Office conversation with his Attorney General, said, \u201cwe\u2019ve got to keep our eye on the main ball. The main ball is Ellsberg. We\u2019ve got to get this son of a bitch.\u201d<\/p>\n

On June 30th, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the New York Times, barring government censorship of the press and allowing continued publication of the Pentagon Papers.<\/p>\n

Nixon intensified his campaign targeting the whistleblower, afraid of what he might release next. As Ellsberg recounted on Democracy Now!, \u201cHe burglarized my former psychoanalyst\u2019s office, sent 12 Cuban assets of the Bay of Pigs up to incapacitate me totally on the steps of the Capitol. On May 3rd, he overheard me on illegal, warrantless wiretaps.\u201d When the Nixon administration\u2019s misconduct was revealed, the judge threw out the espionage case against him.<\/p>\n

Dan Ellsberg\u2019s example has encouraged other whistleblowers, among them Edward Snowden, who, while a contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA<\/span>), participated in the development of the government\u2019s secret, global, dragnet surveillance program. He leaked a massive trove of documents in 2013, and has lived in exile in Russia ever since.<\/p>\n

At the conference on May 1st, Snowden said of whistleblowers who inspired him, \u201cThey had stood up at great personal risk to tell the public an essential truth that was being intentionally denied to them for political purpose. Eventually, you believe that this is what looks more right than going back into the office and perpetuating a system of injustice quietly, day after day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Snowden continued, \u201cReality Winner and Daniel Hale and Chelsea Manning, Thomas Drake, Terry Albury and others who have come forward in the last decades have vindicated Daniel Ellsberg\u2019s approach\u2026because the abuse of power is not something that\u2019s going away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reality Winner was an NSA<\/span> contractor when she leaked information to the press describing alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Imprisoned for over four years, she was released on June 2nd to a half-way house for the remaining months of her sentence. Her family is demanding a pardon.<\/p>\n

Daniel Hale pled guilty to leaking documents about the U.S. drone program of targeted assassinations in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, which he participated in while in the Air Force. He will be sentenced in mid-July.<\/p>\n

Ellsberg\u2019s May 1st disclosure was about a 1958 conflict over several small islands, between mainland China and Taiwan. The U.S., Ellsberg revealed, drew up plans to launch nuclear weapons against China to support Taiwan. The report predicted that a U.S. first-strike on China would provoke a nuclear counter-strike by the Soviet Union, killing millions.<\/p>\n

At 90, Ellsberg is still tirelessly advocating for the rights of whistleblowers and a free press, calling on the Biden administration to drop its case against Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who published leaked information documenting war crimes, and its prosecution of Daniel Hale.<\/p>\n

He concluded his recent interview on Democracy Now!, \u201cI\u2019ve certainly been led, more than almost anyone, to appreciate the necessity of our First Amendment, the protection of the freedom of the press, the freedom of thought. You can\u2019t have democracy without it.\u201d<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Amy Goodman is the host of \u201c<\/em>Democracy Now!\u201d a daily international TV\/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of <\/em>Breaking the Sound Barrier, released in paperback and now a <\/em>New York Times best-seller.<\/em><\/p>\n

Denis Moynihan is the co-founder of <\/em>Democracy Now! Since 2002, he has participated in the organization\u2019s worldwide distribution, infrastructure development, and the coordination of complex live broadcasts from many continents. He lives in Denver where he is developing a new noncommercial community radio station.<\/em><\/p>\n

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 democracynow.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

17 Jun 2021 -Legendary whistleblower Dan Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers fifty years ago, a courageous act of truth-telling for which he later faced life in prison. He hasn\u2019t stopped since. Last May, just weeks after turning 90 years old, Ellsberg made yet another disclosure of classified national security information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":187320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[229,2375,910,1385,101,2299,1294,100,125,487,1678,378,651,234,2571,112,2289,99,911,572,292,70,1953,126,921],"class_list":["post-187318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance","tag-activism","tag-alternative-media","tag-big-brother","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-cultural-violence","tag-daniel-ellsberg","tag-deep-state","tag-direct-violence","tag-freedom-of-the-press","tag-human-rights","tag-investigative-journalism","tag-journalism","tag-justice","tag-media","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-pentagon","tag-pentagon-papers","tag-structural-violence","tag-surveillance","tag-torture","tag-un","tag-usa","tag-vietnam-war","tag-violence","tag-whistleblowing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265843,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187318\/revisions\/265843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}