Community | June 12, 2011 | 31 comments

Daniel Ellsberg: All the crimes Richard Nixon committed against me are now legal

source: http://inthearena.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/07/daniel-ellsberg-all-the-crimes-richard-nixon-comm...

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CaptSutter
He is the subject of a documentary about his life, "The Most Dangerous Man in America," nominated for a 2010 Academy Award, which took its title from the words former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger used to describe Ellsberg in 1971.
In the 1960s, Ellsberg was a high-level Pentagon official, a former Marine commander who believed the American government was always on the right side. But while working for the administration of Lyndon Johnson, Ellsberg had access to a top-secret document that revealed senior American leaders, including several presidents, knew that the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire.

Officially titled "United States-Viet Nam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense,"–the Pentagon Papers, as they became known–also showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000-page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In, 1971, Ellsberg leaked all 7,000 pages to The Washington Post, and 18 other newspapers, including The New York Times, which published them.



Read more here: http://inthearena.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/07/daniel-ellsberg-all-the-crimes-richar...
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    Obama,  Wikileaks,  Patriot Act,  Nixon,  1 more
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31 comments // Daniel Ellsberg: All the crimes Richard Nixon committed against me are now legal

  • kvb1
    • 0
      kvb1  
    • Image

    • Government Case Against Whistleblower Thomas Drake Collapses. This is the third time the government’s attempt to use the Espionage Act to criminalize ordinary leaking has failed in spectacular fashion. The first such example—against Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg—got dismissed when the government’s own spying on Ellsberg was exposed.

      More recently, the Bush Administration tried to punish two AIPAC employees for sharing classified information on Iran. But when the AIPAC employees moved to subpoena top officials like Condoleezza Rice to testify about leaking the same information, the government dropped the case.

      http://www.thenation.com/article/161376/government-case-against-whistleblower-th...

    • 12 months ago
  • kvb1
    • 0
      kvb1  

    • ALL the crimes he [Nixon] committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.

      That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst's office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White House hit squad to "incapacitate me totally" (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971). All the above were to prevent me from exposing guilty secrets of his own administration that went beyond the Pentagon Papers. But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama,with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama's executive orders. they have all become legal.

      There is no further need for present or future presidents to commit obstructions of justice (like Nixon's bribes to potential witnesses) to conceal such acts. Under the new laws, Nixon would have stayed in office, and the Vietnam War would have continued at least several more years.

      Likewise, where Nixon was the first president in history to use the 54-year-old Espionage Act to indict an American (me) for unauthorized disclosures to the American people (it had previously been used, as intended, exclusively against spies), he would be impressed to see that President Obama has now brought five such indictments against leaks, almost twice as many as all previous presidents put together (three).

      The Constitution has been subverted by both parties on many levels. They are both corrupt as power always corrupts in the end. We can only hope that We, the People, can take back our nation, rewrite our Constitution and add in those provisions that will end the corruption: term limits for all elected and appointed officials; ending personhood of corporations; taxation based on all income, not just "earned"; placing irrevocable war making powers in Congress; making healthcare a right; limiting claims that can be made by companies about products or services without providing independent proof that they work as described. There are many more areas that need to be addressed, but until we can get money out of our system of government, we will always be subjugated by that money.

    • 12 months ago
  • CaptSutter
    • 0
      CaptSutter  
    • kvb1:

      I like your spirit and where you are headed but I think you have missed one of the points.

      Term-Limits are exactly what shifted the power from the voters to the moneyed classes and to the executive branch.

      Yes you/we need a constitutional congress and we need to shift the balance of power back to a congress or parliament, preferably with proportional reputation. The two-party system has proved to be a weak defense against the moneyed interests. Could Cheney have bullied Congress if the members had the support and trust of their constituents.

      The term-limits were designed exactly for the purpose of diminishing that support, AND THEY WORKED!!! Amazing what Koch brother money has achieved in in the last twenty years...

      Take a look at the German constitution, which was basically written under the supervision of the four powers and is surprisingly durable and democratic.

      I keep hoping that Obama is pushing the envelope exactly in hope that the congress starts to do its job again, but I am losing hope there that congress will have the spine and that Obama's intentions are so pure.

      "Every Evil Tyrant has a plan to rule the world, the good people don't seem to have the knack."

    • 12 months ago
  • kvb1
    • 0
      kvb1  
    • CaptSutter:

      I would like to put my faith in Instant Runoff Voting, however, I feel that if we do not go back to paper ballots and open public counting, this would be corrupted just as quickly as the rest of the electoral process.

    • 12 months ago
  • CaptSutter
    • 0
      CaptSutter  
    • kvb1:

      BINGO you got it, Paper ballots are the method of choice of most modern democracies. We don't have machines in Germany, and it does require a certain public involvement and good citizenship which seems to have gone missing in the US.

      How can it be, other than by design, that the US voting system is not capable of being used to 100% participation... You get close to 60% participation and there is just not enough polling booths are space assigned to let everyone vote...

      And then the system complains when only 45% show up to vote. Voter suppression is an essential aspect of the US voting system. And I won't even go into the difficulty and expense of voting as an expat.

    • 12 months ago
  • PIANORAMA
    • 0
      PIANORAMA  

    • Where's our Daniel Ellsberg of today? Is there anyone left who has a shred of courage? It seems the ones who do disappear from sight pretty fast . . . maybe that's why.

    • 12 months ago
  • hombre76
    • +2
      hombre76  
    • PIANORAMA:

      ya his name is Bradly Manning and he is rotting in a militay prison in Levenworth. thats what passes as our government does with people who reveal its dirty little secrets. All in our name....kinda makes you wanta burn let it burn let it mother fucking burn....

    • 12 months ago
  • PIANORAMA
  • hombre76
  • CalgarC
  • CaptSutter
  • Leen61
  • Leen61
  • PIANORAMA
  • Leen61
  • hombre76
    • 0
      hombre76  

    • And the point is now we jail these people like we did with Manning and Wikileaks. fucked up BS political prisoners/ prisoners of war you will not be forgoten.

    • 12 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • Leen61
    • +4
      Leen61  

    • I saw "The Most Dangerous Man in America" last year on PBS. It's really a shame to now see that everything Ellsberg went through with releasing the Pentagon Papers has been for nothing. Nixon has been vindicated. Sucks. Afghanistan is today's Vietnam.

    • 22 days ago
  • HSouixZ
    • +2
      HSouixZ  
    • Leen61:

      I was gonna post that PBS had done a stellar documentary but you beat me to it!

      They re-ran that piece this past week here during their pledge drive in my Florida area. My goodness that piece was awesome. And I hate how people use the word awesome superfluously. But that piece was awesome, and there isn't any other better word to describe it.

      I was alive and a teenager during that time, in high-school (just barely a Junior in 1971) at the time when the Pentagon Papers were released. Watching that piece was a phenomenal wealth of information. I was there at the time, but it seemed a part of my world, and still so removed from my world. It was fascinating to revisit that timeline again. It was so odd remembering the days of an EXTRA-Late edition of newspapers. What a different world that was. No internet. No You Tube. We read newspapers so wet with ink our hands were covered in it. Nobody could stand to wait for the next leaked report.

      If anyone has Netflix, it is currently available on instant streaming.

      And I hope that you're wrong about Afghanistan...I hope we find an exit strategy that doesn't take 20 plus odd years to execute. I lost so many school mates and friends, family members to Vietnam. It's a God awful part of our country's history.

    • 12 months ago
  • Leen61
    • +3
      Leen61  
    • HSouixZ:

      Thanks for some background to your connection to the Vietnam war, HSouixZ. That was a terrible time in our history and so many good young men lost their lives for nothing. I would like to be wrong about Afghanistan, but it seems like we are heading down the same path all over again. Which pains me greatly. :(

    • 12 months ago
  • samthesixth
  • samthesixth
  • Leen61
  • Leen61
  • CaptSutter
    • +1
      CaptSutter  
    • Leen61:

      Bob Woodward wrote years back that Cheney, Kissinger and others were fighting the Vietnam War all over again, and the scariest thing is that they thought they could win this time... It is a strange kind of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

      "Hegel says somewhere that that great historic facts and personages recur twice. He forgot to add: 'Once as tragedy, and again as farce.' "

    • 12 months ago
  • Leen61
    • 0
      Leen61  
    • CaptSutter:

      ... "It is a strange kind of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." That is certainly true, CaptSutter. In fact, it was Einstein who coined that phrase.

      'Once as tragedy, and again as farce.' "

      I couldn't agree more.

    • 12 months ago
  • ClassicalGas
  • artemis6
  • CaptSutter
  • EthicalVegan
  • oboith
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