Daniel Ellsberg & Edward Snowden a conversation

On 50th anniversary of the release of the Pentagon Papers 1971-2021

With Daniel Ellsberg & Edward Snowden

EDWARD SNOWDEN (ES): Daniel Ellsberg, it is a pleasure to be talking to you. You have been a friend of mine for quite some time now. You are one of the very first people after 2013 that I met in person and spent time with. You are very much an inspiration of mine. You are known for so many things. Of course, the Pentagon Papers. You are the source or author of many books including ‘Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. And most recently ‘The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner’. Most centrally to me, you were the subject of a 2009 documentary ‘The Most Dangerous Man in America’ about what you did back during the Vietnam War, which I was watching when I was grappling with my decision to come forward back in 2012/13. So I have to say that you were, and are, quite literally, an inspiration to me. Your example changed my life and I would like to think changed the course of history for the better. So thank you for coming to speak with me today. DANIEL ELLSBERG (DE): Well, that couldn’t be more gratifying to me, Ed, because I’ve not only known you as a friend that I respect very much, but to hear the feedback that what I did actually had an influence on someone to affect their life and what they did is something that I very rarely hear actually. In terms of doing pretty much what I did, which was to put out a great deal of material, not just a page or two of document but, in my case, 7,000 pages. I waited a long time. Chelsea Manning, then Bradley, in 2010, thirty-nine years after the Pentagon Papers, was the first person to use the digital era to put out a lot of material. And then three years later you put out even more about a tremendous violation of our constitution and system of universal surveillance. I was very happy to hear, and didn’t assume at all, that it was the case that I had some influence over that. It is very heartwarming for me. would do that. I wouldn’t have thought of doing that without the example of thousands of young Americans at that time, almost uniquely in any country’s history I’m not sure, but thousands of Americans who chose to go to prison rather than cooperate with the draft in a war they thought was wrong. They were doing that at a time when I’d come to realize, after two years in Vietnam and after participating in the escalation of the war in Vietnam, that I saw it as wrong just as they did. That put in my mind the question of ‘what should I do’.

The thought that facing that question and acting on it can put that same question in the minds of other people I think is very good because we need more whistleblowing, and no one of course has done that more than you. ES: There’s so many questions I want to ask you.

It’s amazing. You’ve worked in the government. You’ve been forced to sign all these non-disclosure agreements and made to believe that you’ll never be able to speak to somebody ever again, certainly not legally, who truly understands what you’ve been through.

But there’s an increasing cohort of Americans that you represent — Thomas Drake, Chelsea Manning, Daniel Hale and Reality Winner. More whistleblowers are coming forward and they are limited by the system as much as the government can.

I think there’s the question that needs to be asked. You’re sitting at the desk. You see a war that is being prolonged. And what is the objective? Is it worth it? We’re told that you, Daniel Ellsberg, have no place to make those decisions. But it’s for the Congress. It’s for the President. It’s for the official bureaucracy that allegedly represents us through our elections, which we know are totally unfair But the idea here is that there are people who are supposed to make those decisions, and it is not you.

Yet you made this decision and history thinks that you made the right decision. How do you reconcile that? DE: The 4th of July that we celebrate now is the announcement not only of independence from Britain but a change in the government in which the king is not the sovereign anymore, and doesn’t determine by himself, or by Queen Elizabeth herself; when you go to war, how you pursue it, and how long it goes on and everything else. Actually our Article 1 Section 8 doesn’t say that Congress shares that power. It says Congress has that power. It is an unshared power of deciding whether you go to war or not. And obviously… in the last fifty years... ES: We never declare wars anymore, right… DE: So Section 1:8 of the United States Constitution is almost a dead letter at this point, but another point was the First Amendment we have that the British don’t have. ‘The Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or freedom of the press.’

Now, let me make an analogy here that just came to my mind on the 4th of July. There’s a famous speech by Frederick Douglass, a former slave in 1858, when slavery was still on: “What to the slave means the 4th of July?” he said, on the 4th of July. He was an escaped slave himself. Pointing out that the existence of slavery was totally antithetical to the basic notion of the Declaration of Independence that we were celebrating on the 4th of July. “All men are created equal.” What could be more opposed to that notion than four million people being the property of other Americans, of white Americans. He pointed out that tremendous discrepancy.

Well, it just occurs to me now, to use the Espionage Act which was initially intended against spies to secretly give information to a foreign government in order to harm or advantage them, especially in time of war. But the wording of the 1917 Act, especially as amended in 1950, a very anti-Communist McCarthyite period, allowed it. The general language criminalizes actions such as you and I did, but any kind of leaking for the purpose of public benefit, not for a foreign power, but for patriotic reasons, to keep the government from doing something terribly dangerous, costly, reckless or criminal.

So I think it could be said on this 4th of July, the Espionage Act so applied and so interpreted against leaks that are intended to benefit the public and so accepted by a jury that could recognize this is as antithetical to the First Amendment, the freedom of speech in the press, as the existence of slavery was antithetical on the 4th of July to the Declaration of Independence and the equality of all humans. It is a total contradiction and it strikes at the very notion of democracy.

Not only could slaves not vote in 1858, but free blacks could not vote in the state of the union and of course women could not vote. So the idea of democracy here hadn’t been achieved very much yet. Over time we’ve enlarged the electorate very greatly and now the Republicans are trying to restrict it again, like the century of Jim Crow in the south after the civil war, which essentially tried to exclude or restrict black voting in the south and the Republicans are moving back on that now. But again, it is ironic that on the 4th of July we have to be recognizing not only what the ideals were that were put forward in the Declaration of Independence, but how far we are from actually doing it.

So you say, why did I take it on myself at that time? It was very clear to me that the public