Pentagon Papers Revisited: Interview with Daniel Ellsberg

Dan Ellsberg Hi. I was asked to speak at Wilmington College and particularly on the anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King which was yesterday April 4th. What was the focus that you were part of that commemoration. Well I wanted to talk about how King had entered my life at a number of points really starting the very week that he was assassinated that week began with a conference in which there woman from India a Gandhian and spent a lot of time telling me how the doctrines of resistance to evil processes could be conducted nonviolently in ways that described by Gandhi and by Martin Luther King and by people that influenced both Gandhi and Martin Luther King people like the Roland Tolstoy. And just as I was becoming aware of such notions for the first time in my life really the news intruded that King had been assassinated. But the example and writings of such people don't end when they're dead it's a matter of fact I was reading just the other day

refreshing my memory of what Kenyon written in stride toward freedom a book that influenced me a lot. He had become aware of Gandhi's teaching in 1909 the year that Gandhi was assassinated. So the torch gets passed on these people in my case I did read both Gandhi and King and they were crucial to the attitudes that led me finally to release the Pentagon Papers. There's another anniversary coming up this month which is on April 25th the anniversary of the liberation of Vietnam. And I think it's a good time to be remembering what the importance of the Vietnam era was the disclosure of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 was a really key part of people's learning what the war was about. Can you recount your own story of what happened briefly. Well the Pentagon Papers was a long 7000 page history. Forty three volumes of U.S. decision making in Vietnam from one

thousand forty five to sixty eight. It ended in started in 45 because that's when our active involvement started really in supporting the French attempt to reconquer Vietnam their former colony which had declared its independence that very year. In those days I guess those people who knew about it must have seen it as an anomaly of some sort. They certainly didn't perceive the United States as having a general counter-revolutionary policy. On the contrary I would have been seen as an aberration and hold human himself appealed. The United States number of times. And in the Declaration of Independence in 45 I quoted the beginning of our own Declaration of Independence. None of his appeals were even answered by the United States and we're not likely to be by the United States of the post-World War 2 era which has been to this and remains to this day an active counter-revolutionary force in the world. I didn't see it that way of course when I was in the government and years of work in the government had brought

me to have access to this study which I found to be a record of 25 years then of lies and illegalities of deceptions of the public in Congress and violations. All of our international commitments against aggression and in favor self-determination which we have been opposing so long in Vietnam. So it seemed clear that Congress and the public should have this information. It had been wrongfully withheld from them. I gave it to the Congress the Senate and this fall of 1969 and then when they failed to hold hearings I gave it to the newspapers a year and a half later in 1971 for which I was indicted. Why do you think the reaction was so strong on the government's part. Why was it so controversial everyone knew about the war in 1971. What they didn't know was that presidents had lied to them as knowingly as conscious me as the documents revealed of the

fact that they were in fact deceiving the public. And that was a shocker. I would say that as of now in particular after Watergate but also after the Pentagon Papers to say that a president did lie is not likely even to lead to anyone rising to contradict you. If you were to suggest that the president currently whatever party he might be Jimmy Carter might be lying about this or that people might disagree but they certainly wouldn't regard it as and I'm reasonable let alone the scandalous suggestion and that's realistic. That's means we have come of age about that particular fact. I think that was due a great deal to the documentation in the Pentagon Papers people weren't ready to believe or to allow the. Suspicion to be uttered even that presidents might actually lie to us without the actual documentation that the Pentagon Papers provide and then later the Watergate tapes. The two were related because what was revealed on the tapes we've we've

received so far in contrast to the many thousands of hours we haven't yet gotten had to do with crimes by in the planning of crimes and the cover up of crimes in the White House having to do very largely with the anti-war movement. And in part the Pentagon Papers but the problem the Nixon faced I think was that at the moment this history of past lies and crimes was revealed in 1971 he had a lot of secrets himself. To conceal from the American public deceptions that he already practiced he'd been bombing Cambodia in secret for two years at that point it didn't come out for two more years. He was planning the mining of Haiphong and had been doing it since 69 although he didn't actually carry that out until 72. He had been wiretapping 17 newsman and government officials again since early 69 and again precisely to conceal from the public the bombing of

Cambodia that he was doing and led into other reasons for it. So he had a good deal of reason to fear that people might reveal his secrets in the way that the Pentagon papers reveal the lies of his predecessors put him into a serious situation. He thought like his predecessors that he could not continue the war as he was doing and meant to do. With the support of the public if they knew what he was doing he could only carry it on as a kind of covert operation pretending to get out while in fact threatening the other side with escalation which from time to time he actually carried out. Therefore he set out really to silence me in terms of what I was saying about his own administration sent the so-called plumbers into the psychiatrist's office looking for material that could blackmail me into silence and later sent the same people and others to beat me up on the steps of the Pentagon in 72 when I was talking about the imminent mining of Haiphong concealed all these facts from my trial which was a further obstruction of justice he concealed the fact that he had overheard me on

these illegal wiretaps which was obstruction of justice. So all of these things to protect his war. Got him deeper and deeper into criminal actions and had to be covered up in turn. I don't think he felt his risk was great his risk wasn't very great since he controlled the Justice Department and its closest associates were running the Justice Department but in fact despite a great deal of cooperation with the government by the press during the war these things did get out. And ultimately they brought him down. And in the in the process encourage Congress to put a spending limit on the bombing in the war which was crucial to the ending of the war. I think the war then wouldn't have ended without Watergate would still be going on and certainly would have gone on 376 and I would guess would still be going on. What a gate in turn would not have taken this turn. If it hadn't been for the anti-war movement which would challenge Nixon to take illegal measures to silence it. Then you had other hassles with the government since the last incident you mentioned really

was 72 and then 73. I've had two serious burglaries of my papers in one case 75 pounds of pretty selected papers were taken from my files in California. When was that just two years ago now and then six months or so later there was a burglary of my files in storage. I suspect pretty strongly that this was no ordinary burglar it was that interested in these particular files. People referred to like a post Watergate era. There's a sense that once the major characters of the Watergate era were eliminated and of course the Senate hearings revealed domestic surveillance on a much larger scale. There was a progression of of hearings and sort of opening things up a period of openness and yet a lot of information didn't come out. What is your analysis of the situation now in terms of government secrecy the so-called leaking the revelations the investigations the

Grand Jury Trial processes during Watergate. None of which by the way had occurred much during the war despite mass illegality then you know hearing did not occur. Well trials of people actually prosecuting a criminal war didn't occur. The Supreme Court never did except real cases on the war directly would challenge the legality of the war even though very many attempts were made to get this into the courts but the courts ducked it every time when it came over to domestic crime and particularly crimes involving centrist non marginal people in our society the Democratic Party former officials. Those crimes that get into court and that really threatened the cloak of secrecy that had been crucial to our whole post-war policy not only Vietnam as the assassination and the hearings the Church Committee a cessation of foreign leaders and the general CIA

hearing showed these policies had been going on very long. And had relied on secrecy throughout so I think there was bound to be a counterattack. Basically to protect and restore that secrecy which has been so essential one reason that it's been possible you could say for democracy to carry out such a counter-revolutionary policy such a brutal policy in many ways over the years has been ignorance and secrecy. Or to put it another way the reason that the powerful institutions in our society that have benefited from these policies the major corporations the great governmental agencies the rich people who manned both of those institutions or work for them. The reason they can sort of live with democracy is that it gives them so little trouble and it gives them so little trouble because they're so successful in the media and elsewhere and keeping the public from knowing what they're doing. That means then that when that secrecy erodes there's a good

deal of tension between the policies on the one hand the people who back them and democracy on the other. And the media and the other processes of resistance and exposure that lead to the information I think we're seeing that conflict right now and it is a conflict over the substance of democracy an informed public is a threat to the policies we've been following and it's a threat to the position in society of the men who have been our leaders governmentally and have carried out those policies. Those men are very powerful. On the other hand the power of the public and informed public has shown itself to almost for the first time in actually ending the war and getting rid of a criminal administration. In fact Nixon was right a good deal when he asserted that he was not as innovative as people imagined and that most of the things he was doing were following in the footsteps of Democratic and Republican predecessors. We're actually seeing a number of the people involved in those earlier

policies back in the government today. And I'm speaking not only of Vietnam outrageous as it is that. We should be represented again by officials who were the leaders of the managers of the war in Vietnam people like Fance and Harold Brown Persian Skee Caliph and others. It's astounding that the public should be told why not the best that Carter could find were as has been often pointed out the best and the brightest of the Kennedy and Johnson administration but something that has been much less noticed I find is that several of these people were actually involved in the beginnings of massive government surveillance. At home he was in Vietnam in what way. I've never known that. Well I don't have the details at my fingertips but I think I can say few things quite reliably. Vance said for example left the Defense Department by 67 but it was of course the president's representative to the uprisings in Detroit

and I think elsewhere. And in that capacity I was reading recently he was one of those who recommended strongly the great increase in government surveillance of the civil rights movement of ghettos in general black movements and incidentally of the anti-war movement which intersected with all of those to forecast and deal with future uprisings such as those that occurred after the death of Martin Luther King in 1968. That brought the army into the surveillance question on a massive scale and of course when you start using the army that way there's essentially no limit to the manpower that they're able to provide and they did provide very very widespread manpower at wiretapping bugging following surveilling and General Joe California who had been Vance's assistant earlier in the Army and later worked for Secretary of Defense was I think also involved in this program of surveillance that might be unfair to California but I don't think it is. BRZEZINSKI it so happens I was in that very period in at least in

68 I know strongly urging publicly and no doubt privately as well and greatly increased repressive programs essentially to deal harshly with the student resistance such as the sit ins in Colombia and so forth. But I didn't mean to point to him so much as as in fact events so I think did have a very significant role. Dave Gifford who was in these offices secretary of the army. I believe that he was assistant secretary of the army at that point or very very close to that. It was definitely a strongly involved bureaucratically in the process of this increase of Army surveillance and has just been given a high post in the in this administration. His involvement came out when the New York Times and the Ervin Committee revealed the Army surveillance that had been taking place in 67 and 68 as a program that was on a much wider scale used against domestic activities. Then Nixon actually was caught

doing in his own period. Which isn't to say the Army had really stopped doing it but we heard less about it during the Watergate period. So there's no question that these are people who prove themselves ready to respond to a presidential desire for turning the whole national security apparatus against domestic politics on a scale that was comparable or even dwarfed by the sort of things that Nixon did and was and was exactly in line with Nixon's Houston plan which supposedly was aborted. In fact we now know that it was never officially really rescinded. But then in any case it really merely ratified in writing practices that these various agencies had been doing for years. Q Do you think what the Houston plan is the Houston plan was a plan proposed by an assistant named Houston. Nixon in the White House for the total integration of all our intelligence agencies including foreign intelligence agencies like vi and CIA in the process of domestic intelligence.

Supposedly the plan was rescinded after a few days on the objection of chair and Hoover. Actually it turned out later they simply took the copies back they didn't want pieces of paper lying around to convict them later. But die even more significantly it turned out that Houston himself apparently was unaware that the policies he was proposing for example letter opening and a widespread bugging had actually been been going on for years he apparently was manipulating himself in this process into simply getting an official presidential approval in writing for things that the CIA and the NSA had been doing in fact for generations. You described what we usually think of as an era of domestic surveillance. And yet there are people who like Vance like Brzezinski who carry over from that era to the current administration. What do you think that means for. Domestic surveillance going on now.

I have no doubt that the enormous amounts of it are going on now as the Socialist Workers Party suit is revealing. Kelly of course kept claiming that various practices had gone on which he was unaware of which were a lie he was lied to about from which it all of which he will say had ended in 67 or 70 or 72. And yet the suit keeps turning up practices that go right into this very period by the use of FBI and farmers burglaries together documents as recently as 74 and 75. So I think there's no reason at all to assume that these practices have continued. They may or may not be going on at the scale at that they have gone on at their height after all domestic resistance of any kind even the most peaceful kind is not at the height that it was a while ago. But it doesn't take much to worry them and their worries translated into action pretty fast. Jimmy Carter came into the presidency with a platform of openness in

one of his first press conferences. However he came out saying there is the need for more government secrecy so that payoffs to two foreign leaders by the CIA don't come to light the need is to block the leaks. And again what was your reaction when you heard that. It wasn't surprise but. It's of course always startling to find people reversing their campaign promises quite so blatantly and quite so soon. Sort of the reaction that people had Bay of Pigs after the promise of the new frontier. Early in 61 and I recall that that shock at that time. We've had a surprise like that after surprise. After all we had a demonstration in 72 that campaigned at the very last minute on peace is at hand and then a month later sent to be fifty two years before they were even inaugurated and second set for the second time sent B-52s for the first time over Hanoi.

I think that this democracy in this country was not meant to rely and could never realistically rely on the democratic instincts and the good intentions of the man in the executive branch. That was the wisdom and the genius involved in making provision formally for an overlapping power not merely a separation of power but a mutual monitoring of the different branches of government and the power in effect of appeal to one branch against the excesses and the usurpation by another and for allowing for such processes as impeachment impeachment had not protected us from much in this country and in fact it's a fact as Nixon hinted that his predecessors could and should have been impeached for the same elect oddities of which he was accused. It is also a fact

that that impeachment process at least once saved us from the continuation of war and that's was no small achievement. It wouldn't be there at all if it didn't contemplate the possibility of lawbreaking by an executive. And what we've learned from that is not that the lawbreaking was an occasional thing but that it ran on the country it's the impeachment its occasional law breaking is almost continuous in the very spirit then that distrust of men in power. Has proven in the last generation to been more than justified. Now as in 200 years ago when the power is much greater and the man holding that power had not become more immune to it. So I think we've we should have learned in the last 10 years as I've learned I think the value of what was invented and fought for two hundred years ago. I think the value has never been so

apparent as in the last few years when it did serve to end the war. That didn't mean that it has yet served to and many other abuses of injustice in our society and things that we do elsewhere in the world. But it does show a promise and a challenge to us to use those same democratic mechanisms to change those policies. When the anti-war movement was strong it was clear that it was able to level pressure to bring about changes in policy and also to force the illegal involvement in Vietnam to come to an end. There isn't that kind of of a mass movement now to do that what do you think that people should be doing to maintain that kind of vigilance on the leadership in the house. I was just reading yesterday a little known book put out by the Council on Foreign Relations called the legacy of Vietnam I wouldn't propose to advertise that very much because not only because of the source it is not a very good book but it has

a chapter in it by Sam Brown who was one of the major organizers the most well-known organized for the moratorium in 69. Now from what we now know of Nixon's actual policies what I know it hasn't gotten out very much. But from people who left Kissinger who worked for me at the time of Nixon's actual proposals and 69 it is knowable that the moratorium by its size in 69 prevented Nixon from carrying out massive programs of escalation as early as the fall of 69. Forced them to postpone them to a later period when they didn't last very long and were rather quickly brought to an end. An enormous achievement. Brown's chapter is titled The failure of the anti-war movement. And there isn't a hint in it that the anti-war movement accomplished anything whatever. Granted he was writing that chapter. At a time when the war was still going on.

It came out in 75 and there it was reasonable to be discouraged some degree although wrongly so. But it is at the same time the fact that he was discouraged as were many other people and could that be in some way related to his willingness to enter this administration and their willingness to have him. I don't say that in a really cynical light. I simply say that a lot of people were discouraged and. That discouragement in itself man that they were no longer the kind of threat that they had once been when they were more helpful to the establishment so that they were could be. Except And let's say into the ranks of officials and also that they would cease such a job as more promising than they would have seen it earlier compared to their alternatives. But the fact is that the anti-war movement including Sam Brown's Well it was of enormous effect and nothing is more important to the current administration and its

successors then to conceal that fact from us. The greatest secret of all from their point of view the most crucial secret is their own awareness. That the public's values would not permit them to support the kind of police states that we continue to put into power and continue to support having put them in power 10 or 15 or 20 years ago not to support sending American draftees or anyone to kill foreigners in the cause of counter-revolution of opposing self-determination. If the American public should know what's really being done. So it's the secret then is it much of our action has to be kept secret partly because of our perceived values and partly because of our power. Once we were in position to act on those values and I simply point out that as of the time of this writing

that had been kept a secret even from Sam Brown and from most other people. I would hope that maybe I'll have to write a sound heard call him or something and enlighten him a little bit as to what he and his friends accomplished and 69. Be interesting to see how he reacts to that. But there's a lot left to do essentially everything is left to do now that the war is over all the things that were true before the war even began are still with us and the willingness for example to involve ourselves militarily with equipment and money in the conflict in Zaire and other conflicts in South Africa show that show really not that our leadership has not learned. But that they haven't changed. They are the same people they represent the same interests. They may well have learned how to do it next time how to avoid the resistance that foiled

these things and I ask them if it seems astounding that any president should have presented us with a man who actually managed the war in Vietnam Mike Brown and Vance. We have to recall that we were offered. In this last election by the people who finance and nominate candidates to people both of whom had supported the war more or less till the end. Ford somewhat longer than Carter but Carter had supported these men not only at the time but really quite late. The American public as a whole had some had a voice in who to choose but that voice was so much influenced by a situation in which dollars buy time on television and by exposure by sponsorship. And. So that you know very a process that's very much biased by the distribution of wealth in this country and that distribution is

obviously enormously. Skewed enormously unequal as it's always been and no one represents that better than Jimmy Carter's direct personal sponsor David Rockefeller. You referred to David Rockefeller. Jimmy Carter's direct sponsor. What does that mean. Simply that the reason that we know of Jimmy Carter now and like so many other governors of smallish States. I didn't know his name a few years ago. Is that his name came to the attention of David Rockefeller and who was setting up the Trilateral Commission and that he was one of the one of the original. Members of that commission as was Persian Skee was executive director Mondale. And really advance and many other members of this administration. I think there's rarely rarely that one could point to a cabinet so dominated

by members of a single nongovernmental Association earlier quite a small association. What does the Trilateral Commission do. I have no expert on a day its avowed purpose is to coordinate the policies of businessmen in particular. Perhaps governments also in a collaborative way in Western Europe in the United States and Japan. That's the trilateral aspect of it. Matters of mutual interest but when one looks at the people who are represented it's very clear that we're looking at the major multilateral multinational corporations in the world and what amounts to you know coordinating their economic corporate policies and probably the foreign policies that they have favored. And I say again not necessarily a sinister project at least relatively overt. It is simply announces I think that these men have the confidence of David Rockefeller who originally funded this and set it up and others that

they will see world interests in the way that David Rockefeller sees and the way that David Rockefeller sees them is they say I think the way that the major multinational Sihem you know some years ago. Charles Wilson being in his confirmation hearings for the secretary of defense coming from being head of General Motors was ridiculed for his statement. What's good for GM is good for the country. It's seen as a perfectly sincere statement on his part and but very parochial. After all there's also Ford Chrysler and I T T. And IBM and she and the five oil majors and they have essentially the top 10 in the Fortune 500 the top 10 multinational corporations in this country. I think that our policy can be well described in the last generation and before

as what's good for all of those corporations in their rivalry. As well as in their commonality in other words what's what serves the common interests of these major multinational corporations is perceived by their These representatives in government as what's good for the country. They then carry out what's good for the country. You know all patriotic sincerity. But from a very narrow point of view not so narrow it would be hard to find 10 other organizations as a large as those together. Nevertheless it's not the whole country or by any means. And the policies that are followed from that have been policies that lead to 2 million dead in Vietnam and that may kill us all to change that situation means changing a power structure which is the most concentrated the most rich strong and sophisticated. Probably that

the world has ever seen in terms of the resources they can call on. And that's a miracle. But as I say unless we somehow find a way to challenge that and they were challenged successfully in the Vietnam War only one of the many evils in the world and only one of the evils that this country participates in and yet a very important one one that they were by no means relaxed about ending. And the fact that that was changed is the challenge to us to carry that momentum further and that incite further into changing the world as a whole and saving us all. Even David Rockefeller and his associates in government. What kind of activities are you involved in. The latest work that I've been. Doing politically in addition to the lecturing that pays my expenses

and the writing that I'm doing for a longer run period is a reconsolidation of the former anti-war movement quite recently in meetings on the subject of nuclear war nuclear weapons and the arms race in general. Consider the spectrum of anti-war the nonviolent anti-war movement was represented at two meetings recently in New York aiming toward a larger open meeting in April in Philadelphia. It will 23rd. To put together a national conference a still larger planning meeting. Looking toward a year and a half or so for the immediate future of activities aimed at the arms race and dishonest and I'm personally very glad that this focus has been chosen not that it's the only important issue in the world human survival. And there are other dimensions even to human

survival than the nuclear war issue in terms of pollution and population famine. So the the point isn't that this is the only issue it happens to be one that I'm very concerned about. Personally it's my major concern but it is certainly a crucial issue that has gotten very little attention when especially in the last decade when all attention essentially went properly to the bombs that were actually falling and keeping nuclear bombs from falling from Vietnam and Vietnam. There's going to be I think teach ins in the fall. Quite a program of those mass demonstrations on the subject mass. If the people respond and I hope they will. So this is a hopeful regathering I think of the forces that were crucial in ending the Vietnam War and there taking on a much longer range project now and in the end in the large and even more significant project and that is saving us from the weapons that have already been built in the world already in

place that could wipe us out right now. If buttons were pushed a friend of mine. Describe what were involved and in this case as helping to participate in a miracle she said it'll be a miracle. The United States disarms itself with nuclear weapons and it'll be a miracle if other people join us. But which is what we're working for. On the other hand it's not more of a miracle than the fact that humans exist at all. And if we don't bring about this these new miracles if we don't help in them and we can't no group of people can do it by themselves. If we don't do that the human experiment won't last much longer.