Why I Did It!: An Interview with Daniel Ellsberg

An interview with Daniel Ellsberg concerning government security, government hypocrisy, and the pentagon papers

Manuel Klausner & Henry Hohenstein from the June 1973 issue

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REASON: Certain constitutional lawyers feel that your acts may well cause greater Federal control and greater attempts at secrecy. Do you think your action may result in allowing the Federal Government to have greater control over information, further restricting First Amendment rights?

ELLSBERG: I don't think so, though I had some fear that that was possible when I set out on this course. As I say, I had two goals-enlightening the people about the Vietnam War in hopes that they would act to end it, and alerting them to the danger of the secrecy system. What you're saying is that in the eyes of some people I could have set back the second goal as I was pursuing the first. In actual fact, I don't think that it's working that way. The instinct of the Executive Branch is of course to keep its secrets and to protect its secrets, but it has always had that instinct, and of course it was to be expected that in the light of my challenge and the challenge of other people who have released information that they would move to prosecute me and to deter other people. But the reaction of Congress has not been to support that Executive program. On the contrary, one of the useful effects of the revelations of the Pentagon Papers has been the series of hearings conducted by Congressman Moorehead's subcommittee on government information. The eight volumes of the Moorehead hearings are serious reading that I recommend greatly. I've read all of them and learned a great deal from them. Not only do they present a great deal of information about the way the classification system really works, but there's a good deal of discussion of possible legislation that would have the effect of cutting back the Executive's ability to keep secrets from Congressmen. I think that that is the direction that Congressional action is likely to take, and I think there will be Congressional action. So I think the net effect in that direction will be a good one-a very good one.

REASON: Do you believe that the classification process tends not to particularly benefit the Government, because foreign powers tend to have knowledge of what we're doing very rapidly, and the only thing it really protects is the people in power from their own people.

ELLSBERG: Well, I'm not saying that there should be no secrets or that there's no information an enemy could use to harm the United States. I am saying that the way the secrecy system operates now, the risks and dangers and costs that it imposes enormously overweigh the benefits of the secrecy; so much so, in fact, that I would be willing to say that a system that is the negation of what we have now-that is, the demolition of the current system of safeguards would be better than what we have right now. That isn't to say that some secrets could not be justified. It just seems to me that the proper kind of system must be controlled to a large extent outside the Executive Branch; at least it cannot be controlled exclusively by the Executive Branch as it is today. A system that allows some secrets has to be a limited one, because relatively few secrets can be kept from the American people if we are to remain a democracy; and it must have safeguards built in against the abuse of it.

What we have now is an essentially unlimited system with no safeguards whatever against abuse, and we do have almost unlimited abuse. What I mean by safeguards would be criteria to begin with that would constrain the kind of information that can be kept secret, and a system for monitoring the actual practices. The monitoring would have to be done in part outside-or even entirely outside-the Executive Branch. I emphasize that because the essence of a system that is tolerable in a democracy would be a system that does not allow the Executive to be the sole judge of what the public is allowed to know about how officials are doing their job. That means that Congress has to set forth the constraints and criteria-and to set up a body that would do a large part of the monitoring. There should also be appeal to the courts. Essentially, there is none now. The courts have really refused to take up the question of whether classification in a given instance has been proper, and that is an abdication of their responsibility.

So it should provide explicitly for appeal to courts, for appeal to Congress, on decisions as to whether a given secret is to be kept. Additionally, there must be more review within the Executive Branch itself-but that alone isn't enough. You come down to the principle that no one man, even the President, should be allowed to decide without review that certain kinds of information cannot be known to American citizens. The situation we have now is that not only can one man do that, but closer to 100,000 men, as individuals, can decide, each without practical review.

REASON: Much of the material that was released in the Pentagon Papers had been released on a gradual basis in certain public statements by certain individuals and certain memoirs. Do you think that the Government came down so hard on you because you made a specific challenge to their authority to classify and release?

ELLSBERG: Not entirely. That was part of it. This is a point that I think is being misunderstood by people who are following the trial. Whether certain kinds of information about Government policies were "available" as information depends on the credibility of the channel, the source by which that information became available to a particular hearer. A great deal of the information-even some of the most important information in the Pentagon Papers was available to someone who was skeptical of the credibility of our highest officials. If you were prepared to discount the assertions being made by our Presidents and their spokesmen and to weigh heavily the contradictory assertions that were coming from the critics of our policy, or skeptics, or foreign sources-then you could pick up and learn and act on most of the most important information in the Pentagon Papers. If, on the other hand, you put a great deal of weight on what Presidents said, then the Pentagon Papers have a great deal to tell you. Because the Pentagon Papers are documentary evidence that the Presidents were lying. To whom then did these documents convey a great deal of information? To whom are they valuable? Not to foreigners on the whole, or foreign adversaries. Ho Chi Minh did not need a document to know the President misrepresented the very things being said to Ho Chi Minh in negotiations, or the actions the U.S. was taking against North Vietnam. So they had little to learn from the Pentagon Papers. The same is true of domestic critics who were sufficiently skeptical of releases from the White House; but to credulous Congressmen and many American voters who wanted very much to give the benefit of the doubt to the President, then the existence of documentary evidence made a great deal of difference. In particular, it makes the difference to an American between passivity and a willingness to act in opposition to the President. For such an American, he has to be almost sure the President is wrong before he will really change his party or speak out openly, risk his job, or risk his career, let alone go to prison. And I think for a lot of Americans these documents made a significant difference.

REASON: A lot of REASON'S readers are by nature skeptical of announcements from government officials-we look for example at President Nixon's statements or "commitments" that he would not impose wage price controls or that he would not devalue the dollar. What do you view as the major lies that the Pentagon Papers have disclosed in terms of American Presidents' announcements about the war and our involvement in Indochina.

ELLSBERG: Well, various categories arise. Some had to do with the impression available to the Presidents themselves as to the situation in Vietnam, the origins of the war and the legalities of the situation. Others had to do with their intentions at a given time-of the plans that they foresaw having to put into effect and the likely scale of the war that lay ahead. On the first count I would say a major deception that runs right through five Administrations is the clear deceit that we were significantly, let alone essentially, concerned with freedom from foreign intervention for the Vietnamese people. I would say that to look at these papers you can only conclude that five Administrations were very clear in their mind that they believed foreign intervention-by ourselves-was both essential and legitimate and was the cornerstone of our policy.

REASON: To characterize our intervention the executive branch would use the word "just"? .

ELLSBERG: Well, there is no great difference; if any difference, between what is now known as the Nixon doctrine and the Brezhnev doctrine of the Russian right to intervene in the affairs of Czechoslovakia. In fact, I think that if the Kremlin Papers relating to interventions like Czechoslovakia and Hungary were to be revealed you'd see very little difference in attitude from the Pentagon Papers. Our interests, world order in general, the need to prevent dominoes from falling, damage to our prestige, or if we should be humiliated-all of this as rationale for intervention, would have its counterpart in the Kremlin.

REASON: Wasn't the domino theory discredited even by the CIA? Didn‘t the Pentagon Papers show us that?

ELLSBERG: Well yes, in the form that the Presidents usually said it, it was discredited. Namely, the notion that the other countries of Southeast Asia would quickly, and almost surely, come under Communist domination. CIA has not really endorsed that idea since the mid ‘50s. On the other hand, I think our Presidents did believe that a clear-cut failure in Vietnam would have repercussions that our leaders wanted to avoid. For one thing, I think each administration has felt very clearly ever since the so-called fall of China to the Communists in 1949 that the important domino that would fall would be the White House; it would be their own control of power, if they should be in office when Communist successes took place that they had failed to avert.

REASON: Do you think that Communist containment was the overriding objective of these five Administrations?