KURTZ: Do you think that the Obama administration is getting as much pressure from the press as it should, particularly compared to previous administrations, say the Bush administration?
ELLSBERG: None. No administration has gotten the pressure that it should from the press on this point. We got into Iraq with as much deceptions as occurred in Vietnam, a generation earlier. A performance by the press no better than we saw of pressing behind the lies of the administration than we got during the Johnson administration when I was in; nor did we get a single person within the administration, the Bush administration now, who saw that the adventure into Iraq was going to hurt our counter-terrorism efforts, hurt our security, and was violating the Constitution in terms of treaties. Another example would be treaties on torture and our domestic laws on torture. People who saw that clearly, not one of them leaked to Congress, or to the press.
(CROSS TALK)
KURTZ: Obviously, there were conflicting opinions and conflicting evidence, for example on WMDs. But let me come back to this.
ELLSBERG: No, pardon me.
KURTZ: Go ahead.
ELLSBERG: When it came to lying — when it came to lying about the nature of the evidence that the evidence was unequivocal, that was as much of a lie as saying that evidence of the attack on August 4th, on our destroyers, was unequivocal. Yes, there was –
KURTZ: You’re comparing the Bush’s building of the case to go to war in Iraq, with Lyndon Johnson’s Tonkin Gulf war incident, just to be clear.
ELLSBERG: I am, indeed. It’s exactly the same in the performance not only by the president, but by all of the people who knew that it was a disaster. And I could name names there, if you want.
KURTZ: Let me — let me jump in here, because we’re short on time.
Let me take you back to this incredible period in American history when you were targeted by the Nixon White House, as I mentioned earlier. Your psychiatrist’s office was broke into in an effort to dig up dirt, on Daniel Ellsberg. And on the infamous White House tapes President Nixon said, to one of his aides, “Just get everything out, get it out, leak it out, I want to destroy him in the press. Is that clear?”
What was it like to be on the receiving end of that kind of campaign from the president of the United States?
ELLSBERG: Of course, Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, were in exactly the receiving end of the same kind of operation from Rove and others in the administration of Cheney, Scooter Libby, and others. I felt very familiar with that one. Get that guy, destroy his credibility because Joe Wilson, former ambassador, had been telling the truth just as I told the truth with documents.
The lesson that I think is there right now, in the Obama administration, and any later administration, is if you, in the government, believe that your oath to uphold the Constitution is being violated by lies, by reckless adventures abroad, you should consider doing what I wish I had done in ‘64 and ‘65. Don’t do what I did, wait until the war has started and the bombs have fallen. Do what I wish I had done earlier, go to the press, and to Congress — not just Congress — with documents, even though that may risk going to prison.
KURTZ: Let me ask you a last question here. “The New York Times” as you know, won a Pulitzer prize for exposing the Bush administration’s secret domestic surveillance program, but Dick Cheney, among others, denounced the paper for doing that. Critics say that journalists who received and published classified information are every bit as morally culpable than the Daniel Ellsberg’s of the world who actually leaked the material.
ELLSBERG: Well, if you think it was culpable. By the way, people who do that unless it involves communication intelligence, or the identity of covert operatives, as in the case of Valerie Plame, are not actually breaking the law in terms of any prior precedent.
KURTZ: What about morally?
(LAUGHTER)
ELLSBERG: Morally, I would say they are very complicit in not putting out that information when they understand that lives depend on their revealing it. And I feel I was culpable earlier and that those who have led to so many deaths, Iraqi and American in Iraq, by not risking their careers, are morally culpable for that. You have to make your choice. You have to make your decision as to where morality lies.
KURTZ: Daniel Ellsberg, thank you very much for joining us.
ELLSBERG: Thank you.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
While watching “The Most Dangerous Man in America” I kept thinking, “that is what’s happening now with Iraq/Afghan”. I also kept thinking, the press wouldn’t behave in that way now. I liked what you said Mr. Ellsberg in this interview, but the CNN commentator conducting the interview didn’t want to hear about the media’s role in allowing Iraq and Afghanistan. We need an independent media and press to have a functioning Democracy – and we don’t.
Dear Dr. Ellsberg,
I wonder your insight to the event of 911? How is it that Building 7 collapsed? How is it that the fire from the Jet fuel is impossible to reach the temperature to melt steel…yet both Towers collapsed? How is it that so much Thermite residue was present throughout ground zero? How is it that with so many unanswered questions, GW Bush had the authority to launch War on two countries when he had no solid proof they did it? Why would terrorists strike the World Trade Center? It was not an American Symbol. There are so many other locations that would have been targeted instead.
The reason is that everyone knew the WTC was full of asbestos…..and office space was emptying out….along with the inability to sell the buildings because of the asbestos cost in removal.
Also I think Obama is certainly not a true American like you are… I have great respect for you…in what you did in ending the war in Vietnam…If it was not for you….I would not have the opportunity to be teaching Vietnamese Kids English in my class room today.
Obama is not a true American because he does not want answers to questions….he wants to push everything under the rug….forget about today and always look forward to tomorrow……but tomorrow never comes…..it becomes Yesterday while he thinks that is change….
Things are so bad….that I truely believe America is a Terrorist State…. It is the Military Controlling everyone’s lives in the world. The people in the world are not meant to be militaristic…… Working or living in America you automatically give support to the Miltiary Machine…so they can make more bombs and drones, and H-Bombs….. I know about your father who did not want to work for making the H-Bomb…
I want you to know I feel the very same…..I am ashamed to be American…. I do not want people fearing me……The US Military along with Bush and Obama….use the very tactics only Terrorists would….. They have people write articles to scare the people that the CIA is targeting civilians to assassinate them if they oppose the Military, or the Wars they always deem is right. We have terror in the world….because of the USA…..
because of the dropping of the Atomic bombs on Japan…..targeting those innocent civilians….
I cringe when I think about that….It is so terrible….a reflection from my past…. I neither want to accept that, or be part of the American Establishment……That is unless America became that nation that spoke out against Militarism….even in the face of terorism…..
But America never supports anti guns, anti-violence, anti Military…..or having an Anti- War President….. I firmly believe wars are started and ended by the USA…..They make up some lie feed it to the News Media….go to War……and attempt to say they are winning…..When Wars are never winnable…….They can’t win….
One of the real things that bothers me is America will recognize the Unknown Soldiers, or soldiers killed in action…..but we never honor the innocent people we kill in the battle field…. Thousands died in Japan….Do we have a memorial for them? Are they not people? How many innocent people died in Vietnam? Yet we have a wall that remembers the soldiers in Washington DC….. Literally thousands died in Iraq and Afghanistan….yet we are still there occupying them……Is there a Memorial for the many villagers who were gunned down in Mai Lai Vietnam? And yet Lieutenant Cally walks the streets today somewhere in America… . There is something horrorific about that. Tell us the truth…..Obama will never remove troops from Iraq or Afghanistan……it is the same with Japan….. We have not left there after dropping the Atromic bombs…..and that was 65 years ago… That is nearly your entire life time.
I am utterly dismayed as an American Citizen…..People say things are Political..but the fact is, we do not make things political unless someone is forcing other people to do something they don’t want… In other words forcing us to accept Murder as legitimate….forcing us to accept that the Impeachment Process is fake…..forcing us to believe that Famous people such as Bush and Cheney, and Rumsfled, and others are exempt from their wrong doings.
I don’t want to live as the hypocrites do…..I can’t live in America….because of the hypocrisy… I have no say to where my tax dollars go…..and do not go to…. Without having this protection it violates my Freedom of Religion. In America there is no freedom of religion except the Relgion to the God of Gun….the US Military Religion who believes in Guns and Wars……
Society can not be based upon a War, nor think we all should support lethal weapons of destruction..while we wipe out other societies who believe they need protection from the United States.
Ending Terrorism begins in the USA……Not in other countries of the world…… who only seek to protect themselves from the American Killitary Establishment.
America is not a Society in my view…. It is an out of control Mob of High Tech Military Gangsters……ready to do anything to control God’s resources in the world…. America people have no idea the cultural differences in the world…… America needs to learn that America is not a shoe that fits all sizes and people…. In fact the American gun does not fit in the world period…..
I am happy to know Dr. Ellsberg……I remember well as a child the Vietnam War……and how LBJ is a bad memory in the American psyche……I also know how Dr. Ellsberg is a good name in the American psyche….and it is my hope your great life will be a Northern Star on the compass of National Directions toward a better and sane world by working against the flow of the Military Corporation.
Mr. Dom Jermano
Dr. Ellsberg,
Last night Mr. Obama said that comparing Iraq to Vietnam is a misreading of history. I don’t agree, as it seems there are so many parallels. Perhaps he should read your book. Particularly pages 110-115.