Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, spoke to Rolling Stone in 1973 about his experiences in the secret decision-making processes inside the Defense Department, conclusions about the motives/methods of the inner government, and more.
There is a natural tendency to be suspicious. To some degree, we have all been affected by the notion that no matter how necessary and important Daniel Ellsberg’s act was, to risk a life in prison, vilification as a traitor, and personal slander, there “must have been something else behind it.”
of him going into a meeting of the National Security Council with it under his arm. This was the limited nuclear war book, strongly influenced by Edward Teller, General Gavin, a few other Air Force exponents of this limited war concept, and a major source was Bernard Brodie, a Rand colleague; another was Bill Kaufman.
One can guess – and I’m neither a psychiatrist nor a producer of official psychological profiles – that Nixon and Kissinger are people who have very strong desires not only to threaten, but toviolence. Kissinger can’t be a rebel, he couldn’t conceive of taking part in violence directed against “authority”; but by all evidence he wants very much to be a party to violence. There’s no question that he likes to issue threats.
He came to Vietnam in 1966 as a consultant to Henry Cabot Lodge. I was very impressed that he took my advice – which I gave to nearly every visitor but which few of them took – to avoid official briefings and talking to anyone in the presence of his boss or agency head; instead, seek out people who had been around, who were known to know a lot about Vietnam, talk to them privately and separately, and get from them the names of other people and talk to those other people separately.
I suggested that he put a bunch of questions to the various parts of the bureaucracy and ask for parallel, rather than coordinated, answers so that he could compare the discrepancies and get a sense of what the uncertainties and conflicts were – the contradictions. I worked on these questions for him. I wanted him to see how much argument there was.He tends to be fairly ingratiating, and has a habit of being quite flattering to a person in the presence of associates.
“I’ve had these myself, as you know, and I’ve known people who’ve acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these clearances are on a person who didn’t previously know they even“First, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written and talked about these subjects – for having criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents – for years without having known of the existence of all this inside information.
I said to Henry that I thought of this secret information as something like the potion Circe gave to the wanderers who happened on her island that turned men into swine.As a staff person or consultant, you always feel you’ve gotten your reward if a person has listened to what you had to say and seemed to pay attention – that’s as much as you hope for, and that it will some day have some effect.National Security Memorandum One went through one more draft.
When I left the White House, I made a number of recommendations for new studies. One of them had to do with a study of what the word “accommodations” might mean as used by different agencies, and why that would be bad for the United States. Another one was to conduct an urgent and intensive study of the impact of our artillery and bombing operations on the Vietnamese people with an eye to the possibility of greatly reducing these operations or cutting them out entirely.
But in June or July, the Russians recognized the Provisional Revolutionary Government, making it clear they would not cooperate with the U.S. in bringing pressure on the North to negotiate a mutual withdrawal. It was then that Kissinger began his secret talks with Hanoi, more or less having given up with the Russians.
I went to some people at Rand who had been for unilateral withdrawal all along, and said, “I’m with you now; what shall we do about it?” They proposed a letter tocalling for unilateral withdrawal which, by the way, no one in mainstream politics had publicly proposed at that point. He was as bad as I’d ever imagined he was. My earlier feelings were based on his attitude toward a fairly hypothetical situation toward nuclear war. But now we were confronting a man who was managing the actual destruction of Cambodia.
We went in through a gateway and a voice came out of nowhere like the voice of God from a loudspeaker on top of the guardhouse, telling us where to park. I may be confusing this with parking lots when I would visit friends in prison, but maybe they just borrowed the technology for the White House. It’s my memory that this unseen eye was controlling your movements.
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, dies at 92Daniel Ellsberg dies at 92. He leaked the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Vietnam War history, in 1971. The former Defense Department official hoped giving newspapers the 7,000-page document would end the conflict.
Read more »
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, dies at 92BREAKING: Daniel Ellsberg, who copied and leaked documents that revealed secret details of U.S. strategy in the Vietnam War and became known as the Pentagon Papers, has died. He was 92.
Read more »
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked Pentagon Papers exposing Vietnam War secrets, dies at 92Daniel Ellsberg, the government analyst and whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, has died at 92. The leak of the 7,000 page Defense Department study revealed that officials had doubts about U.S. strategy in Vietnam, fueling the debate on U.S. involvement in southeast Asia. President Richard Nixon became so angry about the leaked material that he approved illegal actions which helped lead to his resignation in 1974. Ellsberg later was a prominent free speech and anti-Iraq war activist, and a champion of such future whistleblowers as Edward Snowden.
Read more »
Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed the the truth behind the Vietnam War, dies at 92After Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, Henry Kissinger dubbed him “the most dangerous man in America.”
Read more »
Whistleblower Who Changed the Course of U.S. History Dies at 92By leaking the Defense Department’s top-secret history of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg inspired whistleblowers for the next half century and beyond.
Read more »