Man behind Pentagon Papers
Vietnam whistle-blower: "Don't wait" to leak
Daniel Ellsberg to be keynote speaker at Salt Lake City event
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 05/05/2008 08:18:19 PM MDT
Posted: 8:19 PM - ...
"I'm really saying, 'Don't do what I did,' " Daniel Ellsberg said in an interview from his Northern California home. "Don't wait until a new war has started before you tell the truth."
The former Marine officer and military analyst was on duty in the Pentagon when North Vietnamese naval vessels allegedly fired on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, resulting in congressional authorization for then-President Johnson to escalate U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Ellsberg says he was among those who had knowledge of a dispatch from one of the ships' captains, suggesting that "freak weather effects . . . and an overeager sonarman" may have erroneously accounted for reports of North Vietnamese torpedoes in the fall of 1964. Johnson nonetheless stuck by the initial account of the incident and by the end of 1965 the U.S. was fully ensconced in a ground war in Vietnam.
Ellsberg said he has long regretted not informing Congress of the incomplete picture it was receiving from the Johnson administration about Tonkin. "Now, I would like to spare a lot of
other officials that same kind of regret," he said. "And with respect to Iraq, I wish I could have done more to spare others that same regret."
Ellsberg said that watching the Iraq war unfold was like reliving his experiences during Vietnam. But once a war has begun, even significant leaks of information like that of The Pentagon Papers - which revealed that U.S. military leaders had long considered Vietnam an unwinnable war - cannot quickly turn the tide of aggression. Ellsberg said that's why he now strongly advocates whistle-blowers coming forward before a war has begun. He fears that U.S. officials are planning an attack on Iran - and believes that those with access to intelligence assessments have the power to avert an ill-advised war by releasing those documents publicly.
Ellsberg assumed he would be sent to prison for releasing the papers. But in one of the nation's most famous ironies, several of the men charged with investigating him - members of President Nixon's "plumbers" unit - went to jail instead ...
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_9163321
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
