June 22
Daniel Ellsberg, famous antiwar
activist and leaker of the Pentagon Papers, talks to members
of Veterans For Peace about his resistance to the Iraq war and
their planned arrest in front of Obama's White House.
Unseen
video of Dan Ellsberg talking to US veterans
I was privileged to do the video above when over 100 US Veterans were arrested at Obama's White House. The majority of the recording is of Ellsberg himself, explaining his moral universe, and the reasons behind his taking and then revealing the top secret Pentagon Papers.
Most people knew what was in the papers before they were published. Most people who were opposed to the Vietnam War certainly did. The US invasion had been started by lies, and as the bodies piled up, these lies grew and grew, until revealing them became an act that could send one to prison for life. In an interesting twist, the man who revealed the lies was to be put away for over 100 years. The men who dreamed up and promulgated these lies to the American people were to lead our country for the next several decades.
Daniel's story in the video about his close friend, Richard Holbrooke, is a good example. As young men, they had both researched the facts in the Pentagon Papers before Ellsberg had revealed them to the public. And when Ellsberg released these secrets to the press, he had asked his friend to back him up. But by then Holbrooke had an impressive career in the State Department, and he know that supporting Ellsberg would cost him his job as well as his reputation. I won't give the story away, but Holbrooke said something on his deathbed that should disturb anyone who cares about America.
Watch the video; it is right on classwars.org. But the issue is simply morality. Most people in the United States believe in doing the right thing, even in foreign policy. But our leaders believe in something else, the ability of our government and the media to cover up the killing fields our country has created in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and now Ukraine. We are the world's most dangerous super power, with an ever expanding number of battlefields around the world. Simply put, to murder that many people, leaders need to lie, and the media needs to back them up with endless propaganda. The Pentagon Papers were a wrench in the machine of world domination. They were a peek at the empire, the most hidden of all national secrets.
Here is to morality and truth telling; here is to the exceptional life of Daniel Ellsberg.
