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[I will limit my posts on this list regarding news reports so that I
can also make comment without cluttering the inboxes needlessly.
Ellsberg's views...remarkably democratic, global and humane... what
a guy... one could never be anti-American with guru's like this in
the US! A long read, but simply brilliant - my emphasis added... ]<br>
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<h1 class="txttitle">Daniel Ellsberg: Obama Would Have Sought a
Life Sentence in My Case</h1>
<p class="txtauthor">By Timothy B. Lee, The Washington Post</p>
<p class="date">08 June 13</p>
<p> </p>
<p><img src="cid:part1.06020902.04090405@gmail.com" border="0">n
1971, an American military analyst named Daniel Ellsberg gave a
New York Times reporter a copy of "United States - Vietnam
Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of
Defense," a multi-volume work that became known as the Pentagon
Papers. The massive, classified study painted a candid and
unflattering portrait of the military's conduct of the Vietnam
War. The Supreme Court <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/flash/july/pent71.htm"
target="_blank">rejected the government's request</a> for an
injunction against its publication later that year in a 6-3
ruling.</p>
<p class="indent">Ellsberg became the first person prosecuted
under the 1917 Espionage Act for releasing classified
information to the public. But the case was thrown out after the
judge learned that the government had engaged in the illegal
wiretapping of Ellsberg and other misconduct.</p>
<p class="indent">Today, Ellsberg is one of the most outspoken
critics of the Obama administration's prosecution of leakers.
Under President Obama's tenure, the government has prosecuted
six individuals for releasing classified information to media
organizations.</p>
<p class="indent">Ellsberg is particularly fierce in his support
of Bradley Manning, a young soldier who released a large amount
of classified information to WikiLeaks. Manning was arrested in
2010, and his military court-martial began this week. Ellsberg
considers Manning a hero, and he argues that there is little
difference between what Manning did in 2010 and what Ellsberg
did four decades earlier. We spoke by phone on Friday. The
transcript has been edited for length and clarity.</p>
<p class="indent"><strong>Timothy B. Lee: Why are you publicly
supporting Bradley Manning?</strong></p>
<p class="indent">Daniel Ellsberg: There are two reasons. One is
to educate the public on the wars that he was exposing and the
information that he put out. He has said his goal was to help
the public make informed decisions. We're grateful for that, and
we're trying to extend that word and bring that about.</p>
<p class="indent">Also, I and a lot of other people feel that we
need more whistleblowers, and that to allow the government
simply to stigmatize them without opposition does not encourage
that. I think we've got to convey to people appreciation for the
information that we do get, the idea that someone can make a
difference.</p>
<p class="indent">In a military trial there isn't a whole lot of
possible influence, but the general atmosphere in the public is
bound to make some influence on the judge. [We want the judge
to] stop and think that there were some benefits [to Manning's
actions].</p>
<p class="indent"><strong>TL: In a <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://reason.com/archives/2008/06/06/why-i-did-it-an-interview-with"
target="_blank">1973 interview</a>, you said that a
"secondary objective" of releasing the Pentagon Papers was
"the hope of changing the tolerance of Executive secrecy that
had grown up over the last quarter of a century both in
Congress and the courts and in the public at large." How has
that "tolerance of secrecy" changed over the last four
decades?</strong></p>
<p class="indent">DE: There was a period after the Vietnam war,
partly due to the Pentagon Papers, and largely due to Watergate,
that made people much less tolerant of being lied to, much more
aware of how often they were lied to and how the system operated
to make that lying possible without accountability. We got the
Freedom of Information Act. The FISA court was set up. The FBI
was reined in a great deal. The NSA was forbidden to do
overhearing of American citizens without a court warrant. That
lasted for some years.</p>
<p class="indent">But 40 years have passed, and after 9/11 in
particular, all of those lessons have been lost. There's been
very great tolerance that if the magic words "national
security," or the new words "homeland security" are invoked,
Congress has given the president virtually a free hand in
deciding what information they will know as well as the public.
I wouldn't count on the current court with its current makeup
making the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/flash/july/pent71.htm"
target="_blank">same ruling</a> with the Pentagon Papers as
they did 40 years ago. I'm sure that President Obama would have
sought a life sentence in my case.</p>
<p class="indent">Various things that were counted as
unconstitutional then have been put in the president's hands
now. He's become an elected monarch. Nixon's slogan, "when the
president does it, it's not illegal," is pretty much endorsed
now. Meaning not only Obama but the people who come after him
will have powers that no previous president had. Abilities on
surveillance that no country in the history of the world has
ever had.</p>
<p class="indent">Interestingly, after the <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/14/in-ap-surveillance-case-the-real-scandal-is-whats-legal/"
target="_blank">AP revelations</a> and the [revelations about]
Fox News reporter [James Rosen], who was <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-20/local/39391158_1_justice-department-classified-information-crime"
target="_blank">actually charged</a> with aiding and abetting
a conspiracy with a source, every journalist has suddenly woken
up to the fact that they're under the gun. That may actually
have the effect of waking people up to the fact that, for
example, Attorney General Holder has been violating the
Constitution steadily, and that he should be fired. But fired
for what? For doing what had the approval of the president.</p>
<p class="indent">Holder should be fired for a whole series of
actions culminating in this subpoena for James Rosen's cellphone
records. I think that would be the first step of resistance in
the right direction, of rolling back Obama's campaign against
journalism, freedom of the press in national security.</p>
<p class="indent"><strong>TL: Is government surveillance of
journalists more alarming than prosecution of leakers?</strong></p>
<p class="indent">DE: Absolutely, but the two go together a little
more than might be obvious. First of all, there's no question
that President Obama is conducting an unprecedented campaign
against unauthorized disclosure. The government had used the
Espionage Act against leaks only three times before his
administration. He's <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/23/everything-you-need-to-know-about-obamas-war-on-leakers-in-one-faq/"
target="_blank">used it six times</a>. He's doing his best to
assure that sources in the government will have reason to fear
heavy prison sentences for informing the American public in ways
he doesn't want.</p>
<p class="indent">In other words, he's working very hard to make
it a government where he controls all the information. There
will be plenty of leaks of classified information, but it will
be by his officials in pursuit of his policies. We will not be
getting information that the government doesn't want out, that
[reveals government actions that are] embarrassing or criminal
or reckless, as we saw in Vietnam and Iraq.</p>
<p class="indent">I think the newspapers really need to address
the fact that they're going to be put in the position of
printing nothing more than government handouts. There will be in
effect a state press, as in so many other countries that lack
freedom of the press. I don't think they have really awakened to
that change. There would be a lot of newspaper people who would
be comfortable with that. But there are a lot who would not.</p>
<p class="indent"><strong>TL: Do you think Bradley Manning is in a
different category than the other people President Obama has
prosecuted?</strong></p>
<p class="indent">DE: Bradley Manning's case might seem to have no
relevance to some of these other civilian disclosures because
it's a military court-martial. But the charge they're using
against him, the specific one of aid and comfort to the enemy,
is one that puts virtually all dissent in this country for
government policies at risk. Not only leaks in general, like
WikiLeaks, or the New York Times for that matter, but people who
aren't in journalism at all.<b> He's charged with giving aid and
comfort to the enemy, a charge that has no element of
intention or motive, simply by putting out information that
the enemy might be happy to read.</b></p>
<p class="indent"><b>I think they're going to put into the trial
for example, indications that Osama bin Laden downloaded the
New York Times, as anyone in the world could do. No doubt
Osama was happy to have the world realize that his enemies
were committing atrocities that they weren't admitting and
that they weren't investigating. It was no intention of
WikiLeaks or Bradley Manning to give comfort to Osama bin
Laden. That was an inadvertent effect of informing the
American public of that, which definitely did need to know it.</b></p>
<p class="indent">Specifically, they're charging Bradley with the
video. [A <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike"
target="_blank">video of a 2007 helicopter strike in Baghdad</a>
released by WikiLeaks under the title "Collateral Murder."] That
was not in fact classified. But whether it was or not, it was
wrongly withheld from Reuters who twice made Freedom of
Information Act requests knowing it existed. David Finkel at The
Washington Post quoted from the video. Bradley Manning was aware
that Reuters had made that request and had been denied and that
The Washington Post had access to the video and he believed that
they had the video. I don't think it's ever been established
whether the Washington Post reporter had the video.</p>
<p class="indent">That video depicts a war crime, an unarmed,
injured civilian being deliberately killed. A squad was going to
be in the area in minutes. They also shot at people who were
trying to help the victims, including a father and two children.</p>
<p class="indent">Manning sees this, knows it's a crime, knows the
evidence has been refused to Reuters. He knows there's no way
for the American public to see that except to put it out. By any
standard that's what he should have done. For them to charge him
with that shows an outrageous sensibility. Going after the man
who exposes the war crime instead of any of the ones who
actually did it, none of whom were indicted or investigated.</p>
<p class="indent"><strong>TL: I think some people have the
impression that recent leaks have posed a greater threat to
national security, and that the government's prosecutions were
therefore more justified, than what you did in the early
1970s. Do you think that's true?</strong></p>
<p class="indent">DE: There's a very general impression that
Bradley Manning simply dumped out everything that he had access
to without any discrimination, and that's very misleading or
mistaken on several counts.<b> He was in a facility that dealt
mainly in information higher than top secret in
classification. He put out nothing that was higher than
secret. [Information he published] was available to hundreds
of thousands of people. He had access to material that was
much higher than top secret, much more sensitive. He chose not
to put any of that out. He explained that in his statement to
the court. He said what he put out was no more than
embarrassing to the government.</b></p>
<p class="indent"><b>There was more meat in the material [that
Manning released] than I as a Pentagon official would have
expected to find in material that was only [classified as]
secret. There was information about torture and deaths of
civilians. Apparently that is so routine in these current wars
that it wasn't regarded as sensitive.</b></p>
<p class="indent">So far the Pentagon has not been able to point
to a single example of information that led to harm to an
American. If they had, I think we'd have seen pictures of
victims on the cover of Time magazine.</p>
<p class="indent"><strong>TL: How do you feel about the way
Manning released the information?</strong></p>
<p class="indent">DE: Bradley Manning could have put this
information on the Web. Instead, he gave it to an organization
that he had reason to expect would give it to media who would
have editorial judgment, staff to work on it, and long
experience with such material. I would have criticized it if
he'd put material that he hadn't read himself directly on the
Web.</p>
<p class="indent">On the other hand, he had no ability to read it
all himself. It was just too much. He saw a lot of criminality,
a lot of harm. He made a judgment to give it to WikiLeaks. I
think that WikiLeaks did make a mistake in their release of the
Afghan war logs, which they put on the Web at the same time the
newspapers put their selected versions on the Web. I think that
was a mistake and could have had some risk associated with it.</p>
<p class="indent">WikiLeaks learned from the criticism of that.
And the Iraq war logs and the State Department cables, they put
up only what the newspapers had chosen with a few exceptions. I
think that was the right way to do it.</p>
<p class="indent"><b>The Afghan war logs were not Bradley
Manning's fault. The State cables came out as a result of
screwups involving Guardian and other people. Assange and
others made mistakes. Bradley Manning had nothing to do with
that.</b></p>
<p class="indent"><strong>TL: If you were in Bradley Manning's
situation, would you have released as much information as he
did?</strong></p>
<p class="indent">DE: I probably would not put out materials that
I hadn't read. But now we have three years of experience with
essentially no harm, and a great deal of good. [Former Tunisian
president] Ben Ali, I think, would still be in Tunisia. I don't
think you could have counted on the New York Times having put
out the Tunisian material that Le Monde chose to put out. That
was critical in bringing down Ben Ali. That led to bringing down
[former Egyptian president Hosni] Mubarak. Looking at that
altogether, with that experience, I think his decision to put
out a great raft of secret material was justified and I would
probably do it myself now if I had the chance.</p>
<p class="indent"><strong>TL: Are there other examples of good
results from Manning's actions?</strong></p>
<p class="indent">DE: Here is something that could not have been
seen from just one document or a handful of documents. Contrary
to Pentagon statements that they "don't do body counts," they
were counting civilian bodies. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.iraqbodycount.org/" target="_blank">The
public Iraq Body Count Web site</a> had compiled some 80,000
civilian deaths from newspaper accounts. But when the Iraq
cables came out, they discovered that the army had recorded
20,000 additional deaths. That was one thing where you had to
have the whole body of war logs.</p>
<p class="indent"><b>There were innumerable - hundreds, possibly
more than 1,000 - cases where American military had reported
instances or knowledge of torture by the Iraqi authorities to
whom we were turning over prisoners. In every one of those
cases the cables showed that they were given the instruction
not to investigate further. That was an illegal order. Turning
over prisoners knowing they would be tortured is itself
illegal under international law. It's just as illegal as if we
were doing the torture ourselves. International conventions
require us to investigate and prosecute if appropriate.</b></p>
<p class="indent">That pattern of illegality goes right up to the
commander in chief. I think that has something to do with
Obama's strong pursuit of this case. Unlike the Pentagon Papers
which did not reveal criminality. They revealed recklessness,
lies, but the Pentagon Papers didn't show field-level crimes.
What Bradley Manning revealed was a large number of clear-cut
war crimes.</p>
<p class="indent"><b>I believe there's strong reason to believe
that without Bradley Manning's revelations, some 20,000 to
30,000 troops would be in Iraq right now. That had been
Obama's plan. He was negotiating to that end. But the
disclosure by Bradley Manning of a cable that disclosed that
the State Department was aware of an atrocity that we had
officially denied, and was neither investigating it further
nor prosecuting it, made it politically impossible for the
prime minister in Iraq to allow Americans to stay in Iraq with
immunity from Iraqi courts.</b></p>
<p class="indent">In the face of that revelation, [pressure from]
the political opposition and his own party in Iraq meant that
[Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki] could not allow the
troops to remain, because he couldn't grant immunity as
President Obama was seeking.</p>
<p class="indent">A lot more Americans would have died in Iraq if
troops had remained there as Obama would have preferred. Bradley
Manning saved the lives of many troops. I think that's good.
Other people may feel they should have stayed. I certainly would
be happy to have caused the end of that commitment to what was
after all an aggressive war.</p>
<p class="indent"><strong>TL: Why do you think Bradley Manning's
leaks have received less public support than your release of
the Pentagon Papers four decades ago?</strong></p>
<p class="indent">DE: First of all, the war was incomparably
unpopular by that time because there were more than 40,000
deaths, a number that would reach 58,000 by the end of the war.
That made the war unpopular in a way that was not true of Iraq.</p>
<p class="indent"><b>We've killed an enormous number of Iraqi
civilians, but the public has not shown curiosity about what
the number is, whether it's 40,000, 400,000, or 1.5 million.
There wasn't pressure on Congress even to find out. The media
didn't show great interest in that. American casualties have
been around 4,000, not 40,000.</b></p>
<p class="indent">So when the Pentagon Papers revealed that we
were lied into in Vietnam, it had a much bigger effect on public
opinion. It showed that these men had been wasted in a wrongful
unnecessary war by the U.S. We were lied into Iraq to the same
degree, in the same way. But it didn't lead to as bloody a war.</p>
<p class="indent">Second, we had a much more independent Congress
than we've had now for more than a decade. Since 9/11 neither
party has been willing to challenge the president lest they
individually or together be charged with being weak on
terrorism. Both Democrats and Republicans have let the president
get away with unconstitutional actions as a result. The Congress
in those days was much less willing to do that.</p>
<p class="indent">Third, I was able to speak from the beginning,
in terms of what the papers represented and presented my motives
in a way that made a lot of sense to the public. A lot of the
rest of the public regarded me as a traitor. I heard it as much
as Bradley Manning did. The president and vice president both
used those words. But I was out on bond and was able to explain
what I had done and why I had done it. That definitely had its
effect on the trial.</p>
<p class="indent"><b>In Bradley Manning's case, he's been held
essentially incommunicado. </b>For three years, no journalist
has [talked to] Bradley Manning by phone or in person. He's a
figure you've heard nothing from. They haven't allowed anybody
to see him. In fact, [former congressman Dennis] Kucinich
[D-Ohio] tried formally to get in to see him. He was refused, or
put off indefinitely.</p>
<p class="indent"><b>The U.N. rapporteur for torture tried
officially to see him, privately, which is the only way he's
allowed to operate, without the alleged torturers present.
Manning was held for 10 months in conditions that the
rapporteur claimed [were] at the very least cruel and inhumane
conditions. I would say that by itself is grounds for
dismissal of the trial. He should have been released for
reasons of government misconduct, just like my case.</b></p>
<p class="indent"><b>All the public has heard are unfavorable
accounts with an emphasis on Manning's gender identity. It's
clear from his statements to his </b><b><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Lamo"
target="_blank">informant</a></b><b> that [Manning's sexual
orientation] had nothing to do with [the motives for] his
revelations. Those were entirely conscientious and political.
It had nothing to do with his [personal] difficulties. The
idea that he did this because he was "troubled" is defamatory.</b></p>
<p class="indent"><strong>TL: What do you think is the correct
legal framework for handling classified information? Some
information needs to be kept secret, right?</strong></p>
<p class="indent">DE: <b>William Florence, who drafted most of
the regulations [on classified information] in the Pentagon in
the 1950s, said at my trial that in his estimation, some 5
percent of what is classified is properly classified at the
time. After a few years, about 0.5 percent remains worthy of
classification.</b></p>
<p class="indent">Anybody who knows the system knows that Florence
is not wrong. Very little meets the requirements of
classification within two to three years. So as I say, something
between 95 and 99 percent should not be classified at all. Yet
it stays classified essentially forever.</p>
<p class="indent"><b>So much is classified because it might turn
out to be embarrassing. You can't tell at the moment what
prediction or recommendation will be a great embarrassment. So
classify everything. Some of it is criminal at the time. A lot
of it is lying and deception of the public. Some of it is
breaking of treaties.</b></p>
<p class="indent">So you need a much stronger Freedom of
Information Act. You need more people to declassify information.
Money spent on more people declassifying is money very well
spent for our democracy.</p>
<p class="indent"><b>There should not be a secrets act which
criminalizes all release of all classified information.
President Obama is using the Espionage Act [as a de facto
secrets act] which should have been regarded as
unconstitutional.</b></p>
<p class="indent"><strong>TL: But there needs to be some penalty
for disclosing secret information, right?</strong></p>
<p class="indent">DE: It shouldn't be criminalized. The
administrative sanctions against putting out information that
your boss doesn't want out, such as taking away clearance,
removing access, firing, lost careers, those have kept far too
many secrets over the last 50 years. We don't need to have
criminal sanctions at all.</p>
<p class="indent">There are already sanctions for putting out a
narrow class of information: intelligence information, nuclear
weapons data, identity of covert operations. Putting sanctions
there doesn't offend me, though there are some exceptions where
that information should come out.</p>
<p class="indent">In the military, violating any order can put you
in prison. But for civilian life, you do not want criminal
sanctions for putting out information to the American public.</p>
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