Wow, what an interesting and inspiring story!

Daniel Ellsberg is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers. Ellsberg spoke in Sacramento on September 9, 2011 about secrets, lies and ethics from the Viet Nam era through today’s WikiLeaks publications.

Daniel Ellsberg was as he describes his own past, was subject to prosecution when he started working for the government. No one had told him that there was no case ever before him subjected to this secrecy law. This law was intended for espionage and not for domestic whistle blowers. Ellsberg’s prosecution was as unprecedented as the Supreme Court injunction. The trial didn’t go to the Supreme Court because (he wasn’t acquitted) because the charges were dismissed because the president had taken criminal actions against Ellsberg in the course of the trial. He was afraid of other secrets he’d tell about his administration.

Ellsberg ‘ leaked’ the Pentagon Papers which he did not create himself. The Papers which were mostly an initiative from Robert McNamara, show the US-Vietnam relations during 1945-1967 and that it was mostly a Democratic war and indicted the Democrats, so Nixon was eager to hear more of it to come out, but he was talked out of it which tanked his chances on the Watergate hearings.The quote “I see nothing ahead but catastrophe for my country”  is not in the P.P. because that and comparable quotes from influential government personnel were obscured by Nixon. President Nixon took on criminal actions against Daniel Ellsberg trying to prevent publication which led to the PP hearings. The prospect of someone telling the truth about the policies they were then enacting which were not revealed in the PP because those ended in 1968 Nixon had nothing to fear from the PP because Nixon just was inaugurated in 1969. At the time, between 1964-1970, Ellsberg was able to read most of the content of the Papers, but the most incendiary material was kept from virtually everybody. What was the best thing to do, to be a tell-tale or keep his mouth shut. He elaborates on his possibility preventing the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which was the kick-starter for the war in Vietnam. If Ellsberg had given the documents to senator Morse before the Tonkin Gulf resolution, who was a member of a foreign relations committee and voted against the Tonkin resolution, senator Morse said 7 years later (1971) that he’d have known for certain that the outcome of the foreign relations committee had to be perpendicular. And if it survived the committee, it’d have been defeated on the floor. Ellsberg hd the power of preventing the Vietnam war, but as he’s told the president would then have found another way around it. Later he came to realization that if he, after one month in office starting august 1 1964, had put out a 1,000 pages that the administration was indeed planning to go to war with Vietnam, there’d have been no Vietnam war. It’s until this day a question why president Johnson went along with sending troops to Vietnam against high-in-the-tree advice. Clark Clifford (later Secretary of Defense) advised strongly not to go to war said “I see nothing ahead but catastrophe for my country” and said “500,000 troops (at the time 70,000 were deployed) and 50,000 dead, that is not for us”. When Johnson left office the U.S. had 550,000 troops in Vietnam and 30,000 at the time dead of a total of 58,000. Quite an eerie prediction!

Then Ellsberg start to talk about 9/11 and how the people were lied to. The government said (Condoleezzaa Rice) that no one could have imagined that two aircraft were sent into WTC. That was a blatant lie according to FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. There was authoritative intelligence that had received in the spring of 2001 information that Osama Bin laden had planned to sent planes into high buildings in various places. Later Condoleezza Rice came back and said that ” no such word got to me”. People weren’t willing to talk.  In other words, there’s hardly any secret more closely and effectively guarded, then the secret that the boss has been warned about a possible disaster which he chose to ignore. And when the disaster comes up, he’ll say “who could have imagined”. This is a fractal. Also hurricane Katrina could have been emulated from the textbook. The levees would overflow and in detail scientific America had written about it long before the disaster occurred. The elites had chosen to ignore it.

In 1964 Ellsberg had insight to documents that proved that the US was planning to go to war with North Vietnam. At the time president Johnson conveyed during his 1964 election campaign “we seek no wider war”. Contrarian plans were behind the scenes active on a massive scale. Again, blatant lies. The Republican presidential candidate cBarry Goldwater wanted a war on a higher tier. The war plans were obscured because this would drive the electorate right into the hands of Goldwater.

Afghanistan is also addressed, the most stupidest war ever. Lieutenant-General Eikenberry in Kabul at the time was against requesting more troops that General McChrystal wanted, sent a scathing two cables back against McChrystal’s request for more troops. Eikenberry said it would work counter-productive, the troops  against an irredeemably corrupt administration (Hamid Karzai) was not an appropriate partner for counter insurgency, meaning not the guy to make it go down with the Afghans that they’re being occupied by somebody else. He said our own troops will create the Taliban and they will increase it. We send more troops, there’ll be more Taliban, that’s what has happened. Eikenberry is saying this to Obama before his decision along with Obama’s Chief of Staff and the commandant of the marine corps , Another general and Richard Holbrooke were all against another occupation of Afghanistan. Of course no one disclosed it, so the public and Congress didn’t know at the time. Through the Eikenberry cables which somebody had leaked and the Woodward book we know what was going on. Later Eikenberry when he was summoned for Congress he totally converted his stance and agreed with McChrystal. Did Congress called Eikenberry back because of his contrary opinion? No, he wasn’t asked to explain his testimony and was able to continue as normal. The same is applicable for Karzai, as long as Eikenberry kept his mouth shut, Karzai went along for the ride.

Ellsberg says that at the time it didn’t occur to him that as a ‘clerk’ in the Defense department his eyes had practically seen all the documents that were addressed to his boss. Ellsberg says he’d taken an oath which was not to keep secrets and not to obey the president of the United States. It was solely to defend the constitution of the Unites States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

When Richard Clarke wrote a book “Against All Enemies” he didn’t mean just foreign enemies. He mentions in the book that Dick Cheney (VP) and his assistant David Addington and a number of lawyers were domestic enemies of the constitution. Cheney thought that all the constraints on the president were all wrong and as an individual he’s allowed to say that under rule of free speech. But under the oath to uphold the constitution he didn’t have that right. Ellsberg says that they probrably were patriotic and loved their country but they wanted another constitution from the one we had. They didn’t believe of the three independent branches of government or rule of law, constraining a president. They thought that the president should have powers that the king of England did not have. Obama has even more power than George W. Bush. Obama can send a death squad for the killing of an American citizen far from any combat zone on his say so. No due process, no indictment, no adversarial hearings, no conviction. It violates the oath of the president and vice president to uphold the constitution.

Invading Iraq (Bush) under false evidence and invading Libya (Obama) was unconstitutional. So as Clarke knew on September 11 and 12, that Rumsfeld and Cheney and eventually Bush, intended to use this tragic event to attack this Muslim country that had not attacked the US, but had a lot of oil. “How did our oil get under their sand”? Iraq supposedly was going to strengthen the Al-Qaida forces. So Richard Clarke’s job was in charge of fighting this scary enemy which was a ‘ enormous hazard’ to the security of the US since allegedly they were on a major scale supplying recruits for killing Americans. Osama Bin Laden wanted nothing more than for the Americans to invade Iraq. His second wish was the US to invade Iran and the third was … Libya, all haters of Bin Laden. The public was being lied to and on wrong pretenses and was going to hurt our security. Nothing was more wrong from the government to start these wars (also Vietnam of course). That meant the law had to be changed since it was criminal. Obama’s decision not to investigate or prosecute that process of torture in effect he-criminalized torture. Although the law wasn’t changed, de-criminalizing it did the trick. Torture is now legal in the US. The water boarding as Ellsberg tells it, was not the success they let us believe. After water boarding “they sang like a bird”, not mentioning that the number of times could run up to 83 times or 183 times. Was is so effective then? No, but this form of torture was done to let the prisoner testify things he hadn’t done or had knowledge of. The US had to come up with the evidence that there were WMD.

Lyndon Johnson was just as smart as Obama. Obama didn’t want to have a strife with general McChrystal on Iraq while he was funding his health program as Johnson didn’t want the generals from resigning (no war) and fighting him in public. With a possible fight going on, he couldn’t get his great society at home. McNamara was academically just as smart but that didn’t do US citizens any good, just as the fact that they all knew better, but that didn’t do us any good either. The same goes for Iraq and Afghanistan, all the people were smart, were informed and knew better….Perhaps they tried to influence the presidents fans they lost and it didn’t occur to them that they had a responsibility to Congress, the constitution, the American people, or the troops that’d die or the people they’d kill. To tell the truth of what they saw, what they believed and to argue with the protagonists of war.

Again, Ellsberg emphasizes that he isn’t pointing any fingers, he did also nothing in 1964. Nixon wanted to keep Ellsberg from talking anymore, that’s why he was criminally charged. Nixon wanted information that Ellsberg didn’t want to get out. So Nixon sent people to incapacitate him totally, he listened to wire taps of him, things that were then criminal. And when he was threatened to be exposed he’d to pay people off to commit perjury in front of the grand jury like Howard Hunt. And finally after all the criminal things he faced impeachment. Everything Nixon did against Ellsberg faring impeachment because they were domestic crimes is now legal. ‘Thanks’ to the Patriot Act, FISA Act, the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Warrantless wire taps, going into a doctors office to get information to blackmail somebody with by the CIA against an American citizen. Even sending people to incapacitate an American citizen that he decides is a suspect.

So the country has changed. Barack Obama would do the same things to Ellsberg that Nixon did, and he wouldn’t have to fear impeachment or illegality, it’s al legal now. We’re not currently in a police state yet says Ellsberg, the US is not in the position of East Germany. One more 9/11 would make an entire police state Ellsberg believes, because the NSA and DHS and the whole security apparatus has surveillance capabilities beyond any possibilities the Stasi in East Germany could have dreamed off. Meaning their ability as they choose to turn it on as a result of a presidential directive, to blackmail a member of Congress, a member of the press, a source, anybody who is doing any kind of anti-war activity, will be subject to the no-information that didn’t even exist under the Stasi. Email, fax, FaceBook, Google, telephone, whatever, they have that right now. And the ability to use it to blackmail people and telling information of they knew of the secrets of the ‘bad’ chamber, or siblings, the secrets that aren’t written down, not electronic. He talks about the movie “The Life Of Others” by Von Donnersmarck how the Stasi used blackmail from surveillance to keep neighbors to keep telling that they knew, to get a lover to tell what he/she knew from the other. And to what effect by the way, to get rid of a dissident? No, the role point of the film is that the playwright who they are targeting on, who is stupidly totally loyal to the regime, unfortunately has a lover lusted as a head of the police. So to get to him …. Corruption, power corrupts, secrecy corrupts, it’s impossible that this kind of information will be collected as it is happening right now without oversight from the Congress.

Closing statement: There’s a lot of evil doing in the world. Ellsberg shares an idea he came to think of: there are things you shouldn’t be willing to do at the cost of your own life. Or your own imprisonment. It should be worth it the expose them or prevent them. It certainly should be worth your career. Clarke said on his hearing why he kept lying about his statements and he said because otherwise he’d lost his job. We as a society have to ask ourselves if we’d at least consider obeying their oath of office, telling the truth even if it leads to making sacrifices like losing their jobs, family or spouses. Are there secrets that deserve to be undisclosed from the public for some period of time? Yes. Everybody has a right to privacy and that also is true for the government.There are risks from releasing secrets publicly, people could get hurt. But keeping secrets does the worse. Secrets have condemned thousands of Americans to death and hundreds of thousands of others. Where there are lives at stake, or the constitution or democracy everyone should consider to save it at perhaps their own cost. There’s a whole industry in the US that supplies work for many people but is an evil industry: the tobacco industry. Seven ceo’s swore to Congress with their hands raised that they didn’t know that their product was carcinogenic and addictive and that they were selling it to adolescents. And two people revealed that that was flatly untrue. They knew perfectly well that their product was evil. How many thousands of people in the tobacco industry knew it and talked? Only 2! How many priests and nuns knew that lives were ruined by child rape by a small minority of other priests and that they were being moved around to other parishes to avoid their being exposed? How many spoke outside? How many whistle blowers? ZERO! Their loyalty to their jobs, their identity, their church went beyond their loyalty to the victims and that loyalty was effectively 0. These were ethical moral teachers. It’s a wide spread cancer that lives among all of us. The widest participation in wrong doing that approaches the level of evil doing is by people who know of it and keep their mouth shut. For every person who carries out the torture, who rapes the child, who sells the cigarette or drops the bomb. How many others know of that and know it’s wrong and don’t say anything about it. That’s the major wrong doing in human nature and no doubt it will always will be.

The actual Pentagon Papers on the next page!!