“I feel lucky and grateful that I’ve had a wonderful life … about having a few months more to enjoy life with my wife and family, and in which to continue to pursue the urgent goal of working with others to avert nuclear war in Ukraine or Taiwan (or anywhere else),”
from thefreeonline on May 04, 2023 by Democracy Now
Slash the Pentagon Budget in Half & Abolish ICBMs: Dan Ellsberg on How to Avoid Nuclear Armageddon,
Daniel Warns that Nuclear War Is Closing in as Tension Mounts over Ukraine & Taiwan
Watch Full Show Part One After Terminal Cancer Diagnosis, Daniel Ellsberg Reflects on Leaking Pentagon Papers & His Legacy
As we continue our in-depth conversation with Daniel Ellsberg, the famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower talks about his lifelong antiwar activism and responds to the more recent leak of Pentagon documents about the war in Ukraine.
Ellsberg also reflects on the many people who inspired him and says others who look up to his example should know that the sacrifices for building a better world are worth it.
“It can work,” he says. Ellsberg, who was recently diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer and given just months to live, spoke to Democracy Now! last week from his home in Berkeley, California.
Transcript.. This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our conversation with Pentagon Papers whistleblower Dan Ellsberg, who recently announced he’s been diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer. This is another excerpt from the 2009 documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. The clip looks at how the Nixon White House responded to the Pentagon Papers leak. You’ll hear White House counsel John Dean; Egil Krogh, who went to prison for his part in Watergate; but first, President Nixon.
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Just because some guy is going to be a martyr, we can’t be in a position of allowing the fellow to get away with this kind of wholesale thievery, or otherwise it’s going to happen all over the government. I just say that we’ve got to keep our eye on the main ball. The main ball is Ellsberg. We’ve got to get this son of a bitch.
After Terminal Cancer Diagnosis, Daniel Ellsberg Reflects on Leaking Pentagon Papers & His Legacy
JOHN DEAN: The leak of the Pentagon Papers changed the Nixon White House. It really is what some of us have called the beginning of the dark period. I mean, it was rough and tumble before, but it got down and dirty. So it’s really a defining event for the Nixon presidency. And this is when Egil Krogh, Bud Krogh, was selected to head up the so-called Plumbers unit.
EGIL ”BUD” KROGH JR.: I was summoned to the Oval Office by the president. John Ehrlichman and I met with him. There was some suspicion that Dr. Ellsberg had access to the more recent war plans that had been developed by the Nixon administration, and would be able to release those documents. I came from that meeting feeling very strongly that I was dealing with a national security crisis, and I was to take any means necessary to respond to it.
AMY GOODMAN: Again, that’s a former Nixon official, Egil Krogh, an excerpt from The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Dan, I’m sure this is bringing you back, though you live it every day, them breaking into your psychiatrist’s office. Talk about what that meant to you, and if that was any worse than facing a hundred years in prison.
Daniel Ellsberg on Whistleblowers Julian Assange, Daniel Hale, Reality Winner, Ed Snowden & Others
DANIEL ELLSBERG: I think it’s been misunderstood. Again, another aspect of the Pentagon Papers, it’s been misunderstood this whole time. It’s almost always described as an attempt to smear my reputation or to stigmatize me in some way. Now, I was already an American citizen facing 12 felony counts, a possible 115 years in prison. So they weren’t working with a new surface here entirely. I had been stigmatized quite a bit by that time. But that wasn’t the aim, actually, at all of their sending it in.
As Krogh indicated — and people miss this — what they were worried about was what else I knew — namely, what else I knew and could document that went beyond the Johnson administration into the Nixon administration. The Pentagon Papers themselves ended in 1968, before Nixon came in, so they didn’t incriminate him, except for his role in the ’50s supporting the French — and proposing nuclear weapons at that time, by the way. But he wasn’t mainly involved.
And so, when they came out, in fact, he was very calm about it, and properly so. “This will show,” as Kissinger said, “that it’s really the Democrats’ war, after all.” And they realized it didn’t constitute a real threat for them.
And then they realized that they had these terrific secrets that had to be kept secret from the American public because they were so criminal and dangerous — namely, that they were threatening North Vietnam with nuclear weapons, the same way that the criminal threats that are being made against Ukraine right now by Vladimir Putin.
Nixon was making those threats through the Russian ambassador, Dobrynin, and then directly at that time. And that had to be kept secret from the American people at that time, because the American democracy would not have stood for that. So they had to shut me up.
And the problem then was to find out whether I had documents that could document, prove, what I was saying, because people were very reluctant to believe that a president could lie to that degree or could be so criminal to that degree and reckless, unless they had documents to prove it, which I didn’t have and really never did convince the public on this point.
So I failed, in a way, in my name — my major project, which was to convince the public that a lying campaign, an imperial campaign against Vietnam, that had been carried on by four previous presidents, was being carried on by a fifth. I said it, but no one believed it.
Continue reading “Facing imminent Death, Daniel Ellsberg Warns of Nuclear War – Democracy Now –”They didn’t want to believe that the president was lying to them, just as they had allowed themselves to be misled by Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Kennedy, Kennedy and Johnson. So, that part did not succeed; however, they had reason to feel, and to fear, that I might turn up with documents that would demonstrate — which did exist.
The Free 