Revealing Deliberate Deceptions: A Truthout Interview With Daniel
Ellsberg
By Sari Gelzer
t r u t h o u t | Interview
Monday 04 February 2008
Daniel Ellsberg, perhaps the country's most famous whistleblower, fears that
before the Bush administration leaves office they will try to attack Iran.
Indeed, Ellsberg's argument gained merit as George W. Bush increased his rhetoric
against Iran when he delivered his final State of the Union Address.
Bush accused Iran of training militia extremists in Iraq, and emphasized the
US will confront its enemies.
In a wide-ranging interview with Truthout, Ellsberg uses insight from his experience
as a Pentagon analyst under the Lyndon B. Johnson, and later, the Nixon administration,
to discuss Bush's plans to begin a war with Iran, the role of the press to give
whistleblowers exposure, and how American democracy can be restored.
Due to Ellsberg's experience working within the government, I wanted his insight
into how the Bush administration is attempting to begin a war with Iran.
When I highlight his experience working for Secretary of Defense Robert Macnamara
in 1965 to draft a speech with the goal of rationalizing and gaining public
support for the Vietnam War, Ellsberg gives a very long sigh.
"That was not my finest hour that I look back on. That was something that
I am ashamed of," he tells me, with a heavy heart.
Ellsberg wishes he spoke out against the Vietnam War sooner. As a civilian
working for the government, he says his oath was always to the Constitution
and he violated that oath until the day he decided to leak the Pentagon Papers
in 1971, to reveal the war was unlawful.
Ellsberg now spends his time ardently encouraging and supporting whistleblowers
to come forward when they see constitutional violations. He emphasizes the importance
of documents as evidence, and of timeliness, so lies are exposed before an actual
war occurs.
Pending War With Iran or Gulf of Tonkin Deja Vu
The recent announcement in December by the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)
revealed, counter to the president's claims, Iran did not have an active nuclear
program. This was unexpected, says Ellsberg.
The administration had said, weeks before this release, they had no intention
of putting out NIE summaries, Ellsberg says. However, the information was released
because, according to newspaper reports, there was the threat of leaks:
"As one news story put it, intelligence officials were lined up to go
to jail, if the administration did not release those findings," says Ellsberg,
emphasizing his creed in the need to take risks for the sake of revealing truth.
"I wish I could say it made an attack on Iran zero, and it hasn't, but
it has reduced it and confirms, in my opinion, the power of being willing to
risk prosecution, willing to give up your career, your clearance, which these
people would have done if they'd put that information out - and the mere threat
was enough to get it out in this case," emphasizes Ellsberg.
Ellsberg says Bush will simply find a different pretext from the nuclear program.
"After all, it was about a year ago that he really stopped pressing the
nuclear program as the main reason to start attacking Iran and start talking
about what they were doing against US forces in Iraq," says Ellsberg, who
claims people in the military have recently undercut this statement by saying
there is no evidence of Iran's involvement against US forces in Iraq.
Bush could also use an incident that is blamed on Iran as a means to begin
a war with them.
Early this year, Ellsberg experienced deja vu when the white house and a complicit
media portrayed an incident in the Strait of Hormuz
that deeply paralleled the Tonkin Gulf Incident of 1964.
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was an alleged attack by North Vietnamese ships
upon American boats. As a result of this alleged aggression, Congress passed
the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave former President Johnson the permission
to expand the Vietnam War.
The recent incident involving Iran alleged serious threats were being made
to US ships by Iranian speedboats. Within days of the events in the Straight
of Hormuz, information revealed the details of the entire event had been fabricated. Ellsberg sees promise
in the quickness of this revelation because, in contrast, it was only in 2005
and 2008 the inaccuracies and deceptions of the Gulf of Tonkin incident were
revealed by the declassification of National Security Administration reports.
Ellsberg is worried Congress has not put forth an effort to demand they be
informed before an attack on Iran should occur. Currently, there is a Senate
resolution to demand Congress be consulted in the event of plans to attack Iran,
but it has not gotten out of committee.
Instead, the Senate has virtually endorsed the president's power to begin a
war with Iran, says Ellsberg, with the passage of legislation last September
declaring Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is a terrorist organization.
"To say that the Revolutionary Guards in Iran are a terrorist organization
... is very close to saying that the president is able to attack them at his
discretion. Now to give this president that discretion is inexcusable, outrageous,"
says Ellsberg.
The Democratic Congress should be having open hearings on Iran, says Ellsberg,
as well as on how we got into the war against Iraq, and regarding Guantanamo.
But the Democratic chairmen are not holding such hearings.
The American public, and media in general, have not picked up on the urgency
surrounding a pending war with Iran, Ellsberg says. For over two years, Sy Hersh
and others have been writing detailed articles stating operational plans against
Iran are being updated to the minute, so that within hours or a day they can
be implemented.
The problem with these articles, says Ellsberg, is not that Hersh, a Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist, lacks credibility, it's that his sources are not willing
to go beyond their anonymity. Ellsberg emphasizes the sources in Sy Hersh's
reports, and others within the government, must reveal documents, risk their
career and testify before Congress, if they wish to profoundly alter the course
of a pending war with Iran.
Gateway for Whistleblowers: The Press
Whistleblowers depend strongly on the press to relay their information to the
American public, who will then be able to exert pressure in politics. When I
ask Ellsberg if he believes the press is doing a good job of this, he gives
me the most matter-of-fact answer of the evening: "No."
In October of 2004, whistleblowers gave The New York Times knowledge of an
illegal and unconstitutional domestic spying program that was being carried
out by the US government. The newspaper waited a year to reveal this information.
This was not just any year, says Ellsberg, they held this information at the
request of the White House till after the 2004 election, avoiding the possible
impact it could have had in swaying voters.
The New York Times, says Ellsberg, was pressured to publish the article because
their internal reporter, James Risen, was going to release a book regarding
The New York Times's choice to remain silent at the request of the White House.
The New York Times received a Pulitzer Prize for releasing this story. Ellsberg,
shares that he believes not only reporters, but whistleblowers, too, who reveal
important information should receive a prize in recognition of their public
service. This is not a retroactive attempt on his part, he says, to receive
an award.
Ellsberg smiles. "In my case my prize was the indictment," which
he says he has taken to be as great an honor as he needs in life.
The press in America, says Ellsberg, is currently avoiding the story of an
explosive whistleblower by the name of Sibel Edmonds. A former FBI translator
of Turkish and Persian, he says she has been attempting to speak before Congress
for five years.
Early last month, Sibel Edmonds appeared on the front page of the London Sunday
Times to reveal information she learned as an FBI employee. Ellsberg describes
her claims, that the US government is giving nuclear materials, equipment, and
techniques to countries, including Turkey, which in turn sell them to other
countries, including Pakistan. In effect, says Ellsberg, there is criminal bribery
going on.
Ellsberg says Edmonds is also revealing the US government is allowing a drug
trade that finances terrorist operations, such as al-Qaeda, to continue. Ellsberg
describes her revelations further, saying the US government is turning a blind
eye to the drug trade of US allies such as Turkey and Pakistan, as well as to
countries such as Uzbekistan, where the government wants to gain military base
rights.
These allegations or only part of the knowledge Edmonds wishes to share before
Congress, and she awaits the chance to do so, claiming she has people in the
FBI, CIA and NSA who will corroborate her statements, says Ellsberg.
This is in direct parallel, says Ellsberg, to what happened to Katharine Gun,
a British whistleblower whose actions, he believes, were more important then
the release of the Pentagon Papers, because she gave information at a time that
could have prevented the Iraq war.
Gun, who worked as an employee for British Intelligence, Government Communication
Headquarters, revealed a document showing the US was "tapping the UN security
council members in order to influence their votes in support of an aggressive
war, which was about to take place," says Ellsberg.
This was front-page news, not only in London, says Ellsberg, but all over the
world, except the US, where it did not appear for about 11 months. Ellsberg
says it was reasonable to believe she could have stopped the war, and he believes
she prevented the UN Security Council vote in support of the war.
"The same thing is happening to Sibel Edmonds as we speak," says
Ellsberg, intensely.
How to Restore American Democracy
As the days of Bush's final term in office dwindle, Ellsberg emphasizes that
no matter how much time is left, impeachment is one thing that must happen for
the sake of preserving American democracy.
Impeachment proceedings are essential, says Ellsberg, "both for the information
that it will produce and above all to make it clear that Congress perceives
the illegal and unconstitutional acts taken by this administration to be high
crimes and misdemeanors, and for the deterrent effect that will have on future
presidents."
In addition to impeachment hearings, Ellsberg says Congress must reverse the
laws that have "outrageously" passed under "intimidation"
by Bush. These include say Ellsberg: "The patriot act, the military commission
act, which among other things essentially denies habeaus corpus, the signing
statements, which essentially gives the president the power to ignore constraints
on torture, and they could change the so-called Protect America Act which legalized
much of the unconstitutional surveillance that the NSA was doing without congress
even knowing what they were legalizing."
For those things that Congress cannot overturn, Ellsberg suggests hearings
held by Congress to show, for example, that "not only was torture illegal,
it should continue to be illegal because it hurts our national security."
None of these changes will happen without an active American movement, says
Ellsberg, which must demand Congress uphold their oath to support the Constitution
rather than their political careers.
Looking at the current primaries and the future presidential election, Ellsberg
says the American public must create priorities that are different from those
offered by the current candidates.
The changes that need to occur are drastic, and given the stakes, Ellsberg
believes the American public should be willing to invest their time, so the
crisis we currently find ourselves in can be met with strong action:
"If enough people simply look clearly at what we are doing in our course
towards an abyss right now, they do have the power with the remaining democracy
we have still in this country to turn it around."
Sari Gelzer is an assistant editor and reporter for Truthout.
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