Daniel Ellsberg - Dissident Leaker of Pentagon Papers
10 Dissidents Who Changed the World: #8
What if you’re convinced your country is in a war that’s unwinnable? What if everyone in the Defense and State Departments believe there’s no realistic chance of achieving any sort of victory?
And what if, even though they know better, they continue to lie in public and state that conditions are improving and that victory is just around the corner?
If you’re a dissident of Daniel Ellsberg’s stature, you risk life in prison to halt the unnecessary bloodbath.
Cold War Marine Commander
Daniel Ellsberg grew up in Detroit, then graduated from Harvard with a Ph.D. in Economics in 1959. He was a committed cold warrior.
Having served as a company commander in the Marine Corps, he became an analyst at the armed forces world policy think tank known as the RAND Corporation. Then, he moved on to the Pentagon, working under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
At the Pentagon, Ellsberg saw a nonexistent Gulf of Tonkin attack used by President Johnson to launch a war against North Vietnam. Ellsberg wanted to understand the war better, so he went to Vietnam in 1965 as a civilian working for the State Department.
In Vietnam, Ellsberg visited 38 of the 43 provinces evaluating pacification. He used his marine training to work with the troops — sometimes in significant combat.
After a few months, he was convinced that “nothing lay ahead for us but frustration and stalemate and killing and dying.”
Ellsberg came back to the U.S. where McNamara asked him to contribute to a Top Secret historical project titled “United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense.”
The study — a 47 volume Top Secret Department of Defense history of the United States’ political and military involvement in the Vietnam War — would later become famously known as the Pentagon Papers.
The Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers revealed that the Vietnam War couldn’t be won, and, if fighting continued, the conflict would cost many more lives than estimated in public.
In addition, the papers displayed the government’s deep cynicism towards U.S. citizens, and its total disregard for the loss and suffering of U.S. troops.
Because Ellsberg knew releasing the classified Pentagon Papers might land him in prison for the rest of his life, he spent 1970 trying to convince a few Senators to release the papers. It didn’t work. So, with the assistance of Anthony Russo, he leaked copies of the papers to Neil Sheehan at The New York Times.
Pissed-Off President Nixon
On June 13, 1971, President Nixon picked up his Sunday New York Times and saw the wedding picture of his daughter Tricia on the left-hand side of the front page. On the right side, the headline read: �Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of Growing U.S. Involvement.�
The next day, an Oval Office tape recorded White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman describing the situation to Nixon:
What it says is — Rumsfeld was making this point this morning — what — what it says is — to the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their judgment. And the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the President can be wrong.
President Nixon requested a federal court injunction to stop the Times from publishing excerpts of the report. The Times appealed the injunction, but had to wait for the case to work its way through the court system.
FBI Manhunt
While The New York Times was enjoined from publishing more of the papers, Ellsberg and his wife went underground. Although he was the subject of the biggest manhunt since the Lindbergh kidnapping, Ellsberg distributed more copies of the papers to other newspapers. Nixon filed more injunctions, but couldn’t keep up.
Two weeks later, when he’d run out of copies, Ellsberg surrendered to arrest. Charged with theft, conspiracy, and espionage, he faced twelve felony charges and a possible 115 years in prison.
During the period of the trial, Nixon directed members of the White House Special Investigation Unit (the infamous White House Plumbers) to break into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, where Nixon hoped to find information to discredit Ellsberg. The exposure of the government’s gross misconduct against Ellsberg led to the dismissal of all charges against him.
And, on June 30, the Supreme Court ruled that Nixon’s injunctions were unconstitutional, allowing the presses to roll.
A Dissident Ride into the Sunset
Daniel Ellsberg continued his life as a political activist, lecturer, and writer. In 2004, he formed the Truth Telling Project, which called for insiders to leak documents that reveal deception regarding Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In 2004, Ellsberg was one of 100 prominent Americans and 40 members of 9/11 victims’ families that signed the 9/11 Truth Statement. The statement is an explicit call to examine evidence that suggests high-level government officials purposely allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur.
“The public is lied to every day by the president, by his spokespeople, by his officers. If you can’t handle the thought that the president lies to the public for all kinds of reasons, you couldn’t stay at that government at that level, where you’re made aware of it, a week.” ~Daniel Ellsberg.
Go to the next article in this series:
Martin Luther King, Jr. - Dissident Preacher with a Dream.
Go to the previous article in this series:
Andrei Sakharov - Dissident Father of the Hydrogen Bomb.
Go to the series index:
10 Dissidents Who Changed the World.
Read More: Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers, dissident, Vietnam, Gulf of Tonkin, Robert McNamara, Richard Nixon
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April 4th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Now THAT’S a hero. Thanks for the post.
April 4th, 2007 at 11:13 am
“…it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the President can be wrong.”
I knew Rummy knew — also, are ANY of these high level republicans capable of properly speaking the language?
I had never heard of Ellsberg. What a great story! I especially like how he turned himself in once he finished distributing copies of the PP. Thanks.
April 4th, 2007 at 11:23 am
I hadn’t heard much about Ellsberg before posting this, either. I thought the Watergate break in was a one time job for Nixon’s thugs, but it appears it was just an average night for them — they were breaking in to everybody’s house! I especially enjoyed how they went after Ellsberg’s psychiatrist records, then didn’t find anything interesting. Imagine that…a pretty stable sane guy in D.C. I’ll bet that threw them for a loop ;-)
April 4th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Thanks for running this series. I am learning more and more about people and the problems they go through because they decide to buck the system. Keep up the good work.
April 4th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Thanks Brent! I’m learning too…
April 5th, 2007 at 11:34 am
It only takes a brave few to take down the corrupt all-powerful government. What a great American. Thanks for this post.
April 7th, 2007 at 12:15 am
I was going to Chico State and picked up a paperback version of the Pentagon Papers at a 7/11. I stood there reading at the rack, flipping pages randomly and it seemed almost every page had Nixon on it plotting against, cussing or bad mouthing someone. I bought it and tried to read passages to my republican family. They wouldn’t believe it was real and didn’t want to hear it.
Odd as it seems (at odds with their republicanism), my folks had sent me to mexico city and edmonton to check out the universities years earlier. They never mentioned it was to get my out of the country, safe from the draft.
Stupid me, I answered the draft shrugged off the hands/arms of a beautiful girl volunteering outside the oakland induction center that was trying to keep me from going. She tried to get me on buses that were parked on the street that were taking guys to mexico or canada. A home and jobs were waiting at either end. But like the brain dead robot I was, I brushed her off, took the pledge and stepped forward.
The difference then vs now?
It seems like there were leaders of more principle back then. Yeah, characters, yeah crooks, but many also did care about our country. It seems the government has less than that now.
April 7th, 2007 at 7:01 am
Yeah, at least Nixon, however crooked, really did seem to think he was fighting the spread of Communism. Since the neocons emerged out of the Republican administrations of the 1970s, it seems like all they want is to make a buck…seems like they are looting the country and just don’t care about the rest of us.
April 7th, 2007 at 7:17 am
Xman: P.S. What happened after you signed up? Did you go to Southeast Asia? Everything turn out OK? You’ve got the microphone…fill us in (if you want to…)
April 8th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Well, I made the mistake of raising my hand when asked who could type.
I ended up going back to my original basic training company and becoming the company clerk.
Sorry, no war stories. I would do CQ (charge of quarters guard) duty on thursdays nights, get friday off, girlrfriends waiting in the parking lot and have a 3 day weekend.
My DI’s were surfers who kept their hair up under their hats and had a suspicious odor about them.
I did their paperwork, covered for them and they gave me a lot of flexibility.
The mess hall (dining hall, please) was a beautiful, new glass and steel structure on a hill that would cook whatever breakfast for you that you wanted. Eggs any style. Any kind of meat. All the juices, etc. Same with dinners. “How do you want your steak”.
When we went on exercises, the food wagons pulled into a semi-circle in the sand and the first time I rolled up the door of the first wagon, there were breaded oysters.
The barracks had 2 beer machines. 50 cents each. No limit as long as you showed up in the am for work.
In spite of all this bounty, we still had suicide attempts, a drug dealer was tossed from the 3rd floor, etc.
yeah, I know. I have been called a liar on this. all I can say is it was california.
April 8th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
Wow. Thanks for the background, Xman. Sounds like Robert Altman (if he were still here…) could make a movie base on your experiences!
Glad you DIDN’T see any action, and you’re still here to talk about it. Thanks again for sharing!