DAVID SHUSTER: Occupy Wall Street is now drawing comparisons to the 1960s anti-war movement, with protesters across the country engaging in non-violent resistance. The most recent example, of course, is those pepper sprayed UC Davis students. And perhaps no one is more familiar with civil disobedience than our next guest, activist Daniel Ellsberg, who you will remember leaked the infamous Pentagon papers that contributed to the end of the Vietnam War.
In our fourth story tonight — Ellsberg, who has been arrested an incredible 83 times in acts of non-violent resistance, joins us to talk about the future of the Occupy movement. Ellsberg was a rifle company commander in the Marine Corps in the '50s before joining the Defense Department, where he worked on the escalation of the Vietnam War. In 1971, he became one of the most famous whistleblowers in history when he leaked 7,000 pages of top-secret documents to The New York Times and 18 other newspapers. The documents revealed that the justification for war was based on decades of lies.
(Excerpt from video clip) WALTER CRONKITE: A name has now come out as the possible source of the Times/Pentagon documents. It is that of Daniel Ellsberg, the top policy analyst for the Defense and State department.
(Excerpt from video clip) DANIEL ELLSBERG: I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of these decisions.
SHUSTER: Those decisions helped to bring about the end of the Vietnam War and drew the scorn of President Nixon.
(Excerpt from video clip) RICHARD NIXON: Daniel Ellsberg, whatever his intentions, gave aid and comfort to the enemy.
(Excerpt from audio clip) NIXON: We got to get this son of a bitch.
SHUSTER: In fact, it turned out to be the other way around, with the leaked papers figuring in Nixon's impeachment proceedings. That wasn't the end of Ellsberg's activism, though. In the decades since, he has been involved in acts of civil disobedience to protest nuclear weapons, U.S. military interventions and crackdowns on whistleblowers. And now, 80-year-old Ellsberg's involved in the Occupy movement, camping out alongside protesters at UC Berkley, and speaking about how best to create change peacefully.
As promised, here is activist Daniel Ellsberg. Mr. Ellsberg, thanks so much for your time tonight, we really appreciate it.
ELLSBERG: Thank you for the opportunity.
SHUSTER: How does this movement — the Occupy movement — compare to the anti-war protests of the 1960s?
ELLSBERG: Well, in some ways it's a throwback for me. What I was seeing on the steps of Sproul Plaza — or what's now called the Mario Savio Steps — is a reborn youth movement. The movement against the war then — and even before the draft was a major issue — was the youth movement. The civil rights movement was very largely a youth movement, Free Speech movement at Berkeley. We haven't seen that much of it for a long time. I'm not — nobody's been quite clear why, and I was just very euphoric to see this happening now.
We don't have the draft, but of course, the students are facing — not only crushing student debt and rising tuition — but they're being drafted into the army of the unemployed. That's the future they have looking at them. And I think this particular movement took off from college graduate in Tunis, who could only get work as an unlicensed vegetable seller — Mohamed Bouazizi, who actually burned himself to death in protest against the corruption of the police brutality and the corrupt license fees that they were getting on him.
And then, one other thing happened — WikiLeaks published one of many — a number of cables that were put out by one individual, an American patriot. We don't know for sure who, but the man accused is Bradley Manning, who's sitting in a prison right now in Leavenworth. And those cables showed that the American government was well aware of the corruption of the Ben Ali regime in Tunis, which we'd been backing for years and supporting in various ways. And that lead to an occupation of Tunis Square, and that, in turn lead to the occupation of Liberty Square — Tahrir Square — in Egypt. Both of which actually toppled those corrupt and dictatorial regimes.
Now, my understanding is that this Occupy movement here took heart and inspiration from that very invention of non-violent protest — the idea of a persistent occupation, not just the demonstration that lasts one day. And I hope it will change the corruption in this country.
SHUSTER: It also appears to be fueled, now, by these police tactics that we're seeing over and over. I got to ask you — those images of the students being pepper sprayed at UC Davis — what went through your mind as you saw it, and how do you think that incident, in particular, impacts the movement?
ELLSBERG: I'll tell you exactly. When I was sitting on the steps I was invited into a tent by some young people there on the steps and, in the course of it, they'd been — were still feeling — the effects of being, as the AP put it, "nudged by police batons." And you have probably seen the YouTube pictures of these people being rammed by large batons. Batons are better called bats.
Well, in the course of that night we were expecting — and they were expecting — police assaults on this very peaceful assembly of people sitting and lying and peacefully assembled, a petitioned grievance. And they offered me, one of them, a gas mask from an earlier — the tear gas of the week earlier. I said, "Gas mask, in America?" Peaceable assembly here having to worry about tear gas?" Now, I have been arrested a few times, but never actually tear-gassed or gassed, no chemical war in the course of that.
The last time I ate a lot of tear gas — or breathed a lot — was 40 years ago in Washington D.C., and on that occasion I was maced in the eyes and very impressed, but it wasn't pepper gas. That afternoon, 13,000 people were arrested in D.C.
Well, this to me — if there were pictures like that in Abu Grayb, they would look right at home. This is torture. And it's police torture. The idea — they were spraying these students, as you saw in U.C. Davis, as though they were spraying bugs among weeds, or spraying weeds. And people should be held accountable.
One of the things that is coming out of these Occupations, I think, is 4,000 people peaceably submitting to arrests — non-violently, in civil disobedience — in very dramatic contrast to the zero prosecutions of the people who fraudulently brought this country to its knees in the sub-prime mortgage scandal. Not one person, to my knowledge, has been prosecuted for that at this point. The contrast is very startling.
Corruption in Tunisia —I hadn't heard the word corruption here, although I did hear it earlier on your program, and I was very struck by it. The fact is, that one hundredth of the one percent — not the sports figures, not the movie stars who make millions, but the people who lobby Congress and write our laws — have corrupted Congress, in a way, and the executive branch. They buy the campaigns, they buy the elections and they write the laws.
Nick Johnson, an FCC commissioner 40 years ago, said — at that time — "The problem is not that businessmen break the laws, though God knows they do," he said, "The problem is, they write the laws and they buy the legislators."
A concentrated wealth that this Occupy movement is focusing attention on for the first time has corrupted our democracy, and these young people want to get our democracy back and that's why I'm standing with them.
SHUSTER: Daniel Ellsberg. Mr. Ellsberg, thanks again for your historical perspective and also your courage for these many years. And we appreciate you coming on the program.
ELLSBERG: Thank you very much.
SHUSTER: You're welcome.
