Long before there was Edward Snowden, there was a man named Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg answered questions Wednesday on the online message board Reddit about his life, career and new endeavors.
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In 1969 the military analyst and Harvard graduate released a series of highly classified documents now famous known as the “Pentagaon Papers.” The documents in question detailed private conversations and strategic planning concerning the role of the United States in Vietnam. Though they had never said so publicly, the documents revealed that the US government was well aware that the Vietnam War could not be won, and numerous casualties would abound if it continued.
Now, Ellsberg along with several bold named public figures, is behind the Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organization focused on maintaining transparency within the press. The Foundation recently named exiled NSA leaker Edward Snowden to its board of directors. Ellsberg talked about Snowden and his life in a recent AMA.
Highlights of the conversation below.
What is the best way to hold governments accountable for the creation of the surveillance state?
The so-called Oversight Committees that were created have been a total failure at oversight; they’ve been coopted into being a PR agency of the intelligence community, and a guardian of its secrets. Their own abuses and obstruction of justice deserves investigation by Congress: fat chance! But a new select committee, which would include types like Conyers and Amash, in the House, or Wyden and Udall in the Senate, would have a chance, and should at least be given that chance: with a long mandate, subpoena powers and a big budget. Meanwhile, we need More Snowdens! (Not fewer, as is said to be the president’s misguided focus).
Should Snowden return to the United States, even if he will face charges?
No. Unlike me, in 1971, I don’t believe he’d be out on bail or bond while awaiting trial. Like Chelsea Manning, he’d be in an isolation cell, incommunicado (Manning hasn’t been spoken to by a journalist for the more than three years since she was arrested in Kuwait), probably for the rest of his life. The Constitution hasn’t changed–the laws he is charged under, and I faced in 1971-73, would at that time very likely have been held to be unconstitutional in that application (to leakers: I was the first to be prosecuted for a leak, under the Espionage Act or any law). But with the new courts, that’s much less likely. I don’t think anything or anyone would be served by his suffering that fate.
Why is the current administration so focused on government spying?
This is truly puzzling: why, in particular, has Obama prosecuted nearly three times as many whistleblowers/leakers than all previous presidents combined? I ask this a lot, and don’t get very compelling answers. (Even my friend Noam Chomsky, who is rarely without answers and hardly naive about politicians, has said this has surprised him, and he doesn’t know why)….
Will society ever grow more concerned about Snowden’s revelations?
I’m an optimist: I think there’s a chance of it. That’s the sense in which I’m “optimistic” about most of the things I work toward: e.g., human survival, in the nuclear age; effective action against catastrophic climate change; the recovery of our constitutional democracy. If you asked me for my private odds, for any of these, they’d be pretty low. But I can keep working on a pretty thin diet of hope, and so, I find, do my friends. If that weren’t the case, there’d be little basis for hope at all, in my view.
Is there ever information that should never, ever be made public?
Do I think the government is ever justified in keeping some information secret, for some period of time? Yes.
“Never”; justifies secrecy “forever”? That’s pretty doubtful. Nearly ALL classified information–some of which deserves secrecy for a while–is actually kept secret FAR longer, by decades or more, than can be justified in a democracy. And, “secret from all members of Congress”? Very little, if any. The reason that so much is classified, and remains classified unjustifably (from the point of view of democracy, not the bureaucracy) is that those who classify it can’t predict just what item of information might appear embarrassing to officials or agencies in the future, or incriminating, or evidence of lying or of awful judgment: so, classify it all and keep it that way.
Will there ever be another Snowden?
Snowden has reported that he knew of many others who felt much as he did; that’s the usual case with whistleblowers. Russell Tice, an NSA whistleblower, has said the same. Most people–nearly all, in fact– are kept silent by fear of losing their jobs, clearance, access, status, income: real risks. Less by fear of prosecution, since there have been so few prior to Obama; this president is trying to change that, along with other steps, to be announced on Friday, to “prevent more Snowdens.” And of course, the imprisonment (and torture) of Chelsea Manning and imprisonment of John Kiriakou. the crushing financially of tom Drake (by malicious prosecution), the effective exile of Snowden, and even of Greenwald and Poitras, are all intended to deter future Snowdens, and will undoubtedly have that effect on many.
