New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | October 7, 2004

Michael Young leaks the secret that the world has left Daniel Ellsberg behind.

Comments

|10.7.04 @ 3:42PM|#

I don't find it difficult to understand why Ellsberg had trouble working up the nerve to leak the documents. I also don't have any trouble understanding why John Kerry would join up to fight in a war that he didn't think was a good idea.

These were two young men who grew up in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Patriotism was high, deference to authority was the norm, and joining/backing up the military was considered the duty of every American.

It's important that we don't fall into the habit of assuming that historical figures looked at the world through the modern, jaded eyes of contemporary society. Why is it so hard to believe that a patriotic, pro-military young man would feel torn about betraying his oath of secrecy, and not be sure about what the right thing to do was?

|10.7.04 @ 5:13PM|#

I think facing off against the US President and going to jail for it takes a little more guts than Tim gives him credit for. Likewise, our current leakers are now either unemployed or sitting with their nose in a corner, their careers trashed. Tim's brush-off of Ellsberg's "moral courage" and belittling anyone following his lead is puzzling. I looked around for an account of what he did and came up with this.

"Ellsberg photocopied what were to become known as the Pentagon papers, and then tried to persuade politicians to release them and alert the country. When that failed, he gave them to the New York Times. To ensure that the papers would all be distributed, he went on the run, prompting what was described as "the largest FBI manhunt since the Lindbergh kidnapping". When the FBI finally caught up with him in June 1971, he was charged with 12 felonies and faced 115 years in jail.

He might well still be in prison were it not for the almost psychopathic desire of President Nixon and his team to extract revenge: a burglary of Ellsberg's psychoanalyst's office was authorised in the hope of finding information that might discredit him or, when publicised, drive him to suicide. The Watergate burglars, Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt, carried it out. A team of heavies was recruited to break Ellsberg's legs. His phone was tapped. It also emerged, during his trial in 1973, that the judge had earlier been offered the post of director of the FBI, a job he coveted.

Once these plots became known, the judge had to abandon the trial and acquit Ellsberg. The Pentagon papers also helped to so discredit the war that they became one of the key factors in the US's final withdrawal and Nixon's humiliating resignation. Ellsberg became a counter-cultural hero."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,857099,00.html

|10.7.04 @ 8:40PM|#

Well, I'm a Joe that supports a different party and candidate than you, but allow me this observation, Ellsberg, like so many that generation are full of bunk. A RAND kind of guy...not my favourite sort, truth to tell. Ole Dan had no problems with "Limited War" at RAND. Just some how the reality of Limited War soured him on it. Fairly typical of his sort, a nice PhD, a proud acolyte of the Quantitative Revolution, but unable to comprehend the reality, in the 1950's, of his beliefs. To me he's akin to a minor prietst of the Inquisition who suddenly discovers that Auto de Fe's KILL PEOPLE and being burned alive smarts, a lot. Well NO DUH Dan!
If he'd said, what you said, and revealed his feet of clay, OK. Instead, we're supposed to see DANIEL ELLSBERG, Man of ACTION! Well the Man of Action was a big pussy.
Like so many of that generation they want us to look back on them as exemplars when they weren't! Not a hero, nor a martyr, just a guy.

|10.8.04 @ 7:59AM|#

And a former Marine commander.

|10.8.04 @ 1:34PM|#

Joe L. the Sophist,

Yawn. Got any more psycho-babble for us?