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Pentagon Papers Whistleblower Says Americans Have 'Lost the Republic'

Daniel Ellsberg says that whistleblowers are the last people able to stand up to the federal government.
Daniel Ellsberg Image: Flickr/Carol Leigh Scarlot

Almost exactly five years ago, newly-seated President Barack Obama took the stage at Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall, a 150-year-old auditorium that has, in its history, hosted some of the most important dignitaries and leaders from around the world. It was one of his first major speeches since being inaugurated, one in which he said he had “been called to govern in extraordinary times,” a calling that “requires an extraordinary sense of responsibility—to ourselves, to the men and women who sent us here, to the many generations whose lives will be affected for good or for ill because of what we do here,” and one in which he pledged that the government should “do no harm.”

Those most affected by some of his recent decisions weren’t at Gaston Hall Tuesday night, but some of their most ardent supporters—Edward Snowden’s attorney, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, and journalist Glenn Greenwald (at least a video version of him)—were, to speak up for those who have been jailed or exiled for calling the government out on some of its most egregious abuses of power. In his 2009 speech, Obama was talking about the economy, but it was hard not to think of his words as Ellsberg, now seen as a hero for his role in ending the Vietnam War, said that the people of the United States have “lost the republic” to “elected monarchs.”

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It’s unclear if the mass surveillance tactics Obama’s administration would use were included in his orientation packet, if he even knew the true extent of them on that day in 2009. Most Americans certainly didn’t. But they do now, thanks largely to the documents systematically released by Edward Snowden.

“There’s been a regime change that happened no later than 9/11, an executive coup,” Ellsberg said to at a lecture to students—who periodically interrupted to stand and clap at some of his more powerful comments—where he discussed how his whistleblowing compared with Snowden's and Chelsea Manning's.

Ellsberg brought up a famous Benjamin Franklin quote—that the United States “is a republic, if you can keep it.”

“Well, have we kept it? No, we have not kept it,” Ellsberg said. “Could we get it back? I would say, not without people who are willing to take the risks of ostracism. You have to be willing to be called names like ‘traitor.’”

Like Snowden is today, Ellsberg was originally ostracized for leaking classified government documents to a journalist—in Ellsberg’s case, in 1971, he gave the New York Times roughly 7,000 pages detailing US involvement in Vietnam. The papers shone light on the fact that the US military secretly expanded the scope of the Vietnam War.

“History has vindicated Daniel Ellsberg in such a way that no one is going to stand up in public and contest that what he did was heroic,” Greenwald said in a pre-recorded video statement. “I have zero doubt that 30 years from now, when nobody has an interest in devoting themselves to defending Barack Obama or George Bush … Chelsea Manning’s and Edward Snowden’s acts will be regarded exactly the same as Daniel Ellsberg’s acts.”

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Ellsberg said that, while he has “waited 40 years” for whistleblowers such as Manning and Snowden to step forward, the judicial system and fourth estate of journalism are so broken that, without more whistleblowers, the executive branch can act as it wants.

“A country in which the law is secret is not a republic,” he said. “In the last several elections, we have had the choice between elected monarchs.”

What does he want leaked? Well, for starters, there’s the 6,000-page torture report that the Senate Intelligence Committee has been jostling with the CIA for the right to release to the American people. Then there’s the internal legal justification for the targeted killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki that the Obama administration was just ordered to release by a federal judge.

“The Senate spent four years, and millions of dollars writing a 6,000 page report, and now they’re arguing whether they can even put out a redacted form of a 50-page executive summary. Without oversight, you have a government without law,” he said. “The time has come for that report. It should have been leaked and it should be leaked tomorrow, just like the secret legal opinion of why Anwar al-Awlaki could be executed by the president. It’s not clear we’ll ever get either of those without [them being leaked.]”

If someone does decide to leak those documents, they certainly don't have an easy road ahead of them. But maybe, like Ellsberg said, it's the only way.