No matter how much the price is,
Also "certainly worth it".
Author: Chen Jiali
One night in late 1969, Daniel Ellsberg hurried through the sentry post of the Rand Corporation in Santa Monia, carrying a briefcase full of top-secret documents. Over the next few weeks, he took out packets of documents and made copies page by page.
About a year and a half later, the 47-volume, 7,000-page photocopy, called "Pentagon Papers," appeared verbatim in The New York Times.
The world was shocked.
The document revealed the US government's long-standing lies about the Vietnam War, set off a nationwide wave of anti-war, prompted the United States to end the Vietnam War early, and also "planted a seed" for the ouster of then-US President Nixon.
At that time, the 40-year-old Ellsberg almost "buried" the rest of his life behind bars while changing the trend of history. He was brought to court by the U.S. government, facing 115 years in prison, and even after his acquittal, he has been regarded by the government as "the most dangerous person in America." But he was also like a beacon with a clear banner, pointing the way for later generations including Snowden, Manning, Assange, etc., and was regarded as a hero by the world.
On June 16, 2023, Ellsberg died of pancreatic cancer, ending his life of pursuing justice and truth.
Become a leaker
Ellsberg was born in Chicago in 1931. In the eyes of neighbors and classmates, he was an introverted child as a teenager, but he was particularly talented, especially good at math and piano, and had an excellent memory.
In 1962, Ellsberg graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D., and the research results of his doctoral thesis "Risk, Uncertainty and Decision" became known as the "Ellsberg Paradox". The theory is considered a milestone in the fields of decision theory and behavioral economics and is still widely used and discussed today.
After graduating, he joined the RAND Corporation, a U.S. think tank, as a strategic analyst, and served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense and the White House, specializing in nuclear weapons mastery and control, nuclear warfare planning, and crisis decision-making.
On August 4, 1964, Ellsberg joined the Department of Defense as a special assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton. Perhaps by coincidence, his appointment to the Defense Department coincided with the day the United States was preparing for a full-scale intervention in the Vietnam War.
One year later, Ellsberg was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, South Vietnam, to assess the Vietnam War situation on the ground. Soon after, he contracted hepatitis and left Vietnam to return home.
In late 1967, Ellsberg returned to the RAND Corporation to write a top-secret report arranged by then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The end result was the Pentagon Papers, which would later change his life.
Ellsberg photocopied and collated some of the documents.
The truth stunned Ellsberg. The document reveals how senior former administration officials pulled the United States into war step by step for their achievements, revealed the fact that the Vietnam War killed 1 million Vietnamese and 55,000 American soldiers, and how the successive Nixon administration continued to deceive the American public and cover up the truth about the war.
As a Vietnam veteran who was born and died on the front lines, Ellsberg knows the deadly toll war has inflicted on countless people. He believed that making the inside story public was the fastest way to get the United States out of the Vietnam War.
After gathering enough evidence — more than 7,000 pages of top-secret documents — Ellsberg began reaching out to some members of Congress to try to persuade them to release the documents.
However, his efforts hit a wall everywhere, and the congressmen who spoke out against the war avoided the documents when they saw them, and no one was willing to gamble with their political future.
As a last resort, Ellsberg thought about the media.
In March 1971, Ellsberg handed over the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, which published it in full three months later. The document shocked the Nixon administration, the American press, and ordinary people at the time. Soon, the U.S. government took The New York Times to court, asking the court to issue a temporary restraining order banning the publication of the top-secret document while the case was in progress. At this point, the Washington Post took over the baton and continued to report, but it was also sued in court.
The final outcome of the court's decision was that the U.S. government lost the case, and The New York Times and The Washington Post won. The court ruled that newspapers had the right to publish historical records, regardless of whether they had top-secret letters.
In 1971, Ellsberg spoke to the media.
Ellsberg was arrested in late June 1971 and charged by the U.S. government with 12 felony counts of espionage, theft and conspiracy, facing 115 years in prison. But he did not flinch, and immediately forwarded the document to seven other newspapers.
Ellsberg is a longtime critic of the U.S. Espionage Act.
The president's frantic retaliation
President Richard Nixon was embarrassed that such leaks challenged the authority of the government.
In Ellsberg's autobiography, The Secret, he revealed how Nixon would stop at nothing to make his reputation stinky. A tape about Nixon's request to "rectify" Ellsberg was exposed.
Nixon's voice said, "Let's throw this dog mongrel into jail." ”
Henry Kissinger, then the president's assistant to national security affairs, said: "We have caught him. ”
Nixon continued: "Don't worry about his trial ... We are going to use the media to judge him and use the media to put him to death... Do you understand? ”
Kissinger and Attorney General John Mitchell's voices said in unison: "Understood." ”
In the end, they agreed to present Ellsberg in the media as a "playboy raised by women."
To achieve their goal, they eavesdropped on Ellsberg's phone in an attempt to prove that he had leaked secrets just for fame and fortune. They also illegally broke into and searched Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in an attempt to find evidence that Ellsberg had mental problems and dispel public attention and trust in him. At the same time, Nixon also summoned a group of thugs who wanted to break Ellsberg's legs.
During the 1973 trial, the judge in charge of the case was "bought," leaving Ellsberg almost for the rest of his life in prison. The judge "got his wish" and was offered the post of FBI director.
However, people are not as good as heavenly calculations. The "retaliation" against Ellsberg was exposed, which became a fatal blow for Nixon from his impeachment to his resignation. After Nixon stepped down, the judge in charge of the case was pressured to cancel Ellsberg's trial and acquit him.
In 1973, Ellsberg, who was acquitted, appeared in front of a federal courthouse.
There has also been a subtle change in attitudes towards Ellsberg.
When Ellsberg first revealed the Pentagon Papers, many inside and outside the government accused him of being a "traitor" and suspected him of espionage. However, over time, more and more people realized that Ellsberg was an extraordinary and brave hero, a hero who risked losing his personal freedom to reveal the truth.
"The Pentagon Papers revelations make it clear that the president has been lying, not just occasionally, but all the time," Ellsberg said. Not only is everything they say a lie, but everything they may say is a lie. ”
News of Ellsberg's release made headlines.
Raise the flag for those who are "connected to the same destiny"
For more than 50 years since the Vietnam War leaks, Ellsberg has been an anti-war and anti-nuclear activist. He has been arrested for giving speeches, appearing in the media, and regularly participating in protests. According to the BBC, Ellsberg was called "the most dangerous person in the United States" within the US government for his disclosure of secret documents from the Vietnam War.
Moreover, his level of "danger" has not diminished over time, because the Pentagon Papers were not the only documents he copied that year.
In May 2021, The New York Times reported on another confidential document disclosed by Ellsberg. The 1966 U.S. military study shows that after the start of the Battle of Kinmen on August 23, 1958, the U.S. military hierarchy considered launching a "nuclear strike" on Chinese mainland. This is not the first time China has encountered nuclear blackmail from the United States, which repeatedly clamoured for nuclear strikes against China before the successful explosion of China's first atomic bomb.
The document exposes an even more disturbing fact – that the United States, both then and now, is keeping nuclear war at hand.
In his book The Doomsday Machine, Ellsberg revealed that this more secret document was accidentally lost during preservation and buried at a construction site as a foundation landfill, making it difficult for him to expose. A significant portion of the lost documents have been declassified over the past few decades, largely proving what he has in his hands.
In the last years of his life, Ellsberg continued to expose the lies of the U.S. government.
After Ellsberg, one "leaker" after another appeared.
In 2013, Mr. Snowden discovered classified documents proving the existence of the U.S. government's mass surveillance operations. As he grappled with whether to make the documents public, he was inspired by a 2009 documentary, "America's Most Dangerous Man: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon's Classified Documents." When Snowden caused a huge public opinion storm when the documents were exposed, Ellsberg was the first to stand up for him. In 2015, Ellsberg went to Moscow to visit Snowden, who was in exile, and the two became close friends.
Since then, U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange have been charged with violating the Espionage Act. Ellsberg never stopped cheering for those who "shared his fate."
Ellsberg and Assange (left) pose for a group photo.
In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, Ellsberg was asked, "The leak cost you a lot, is it worth it?" ”
Ellsberg replied without hesitation: "Of course it's worth it!" Is it worth it that Snowden had to go into exile in order to expose Prismgate? Is it worth Manning spending seven and a half years in jail for exposing secrets? In my opinion, it's worth it. I think they agree with me, and they're doing the right thing. ”
Ellsberg never regretted his choice.
In March, 92-year-old Ellsberg announced that he had pancreatic cancer. He said he was no longer able to have surgery or chemotherapy, and would receive hospice care.
"I didn't suffer any pain physically." At the time, Ellsberg wrote, "Cardiologists have allowed me to give up my salt-free diet for the past 6 years, which has greatly improved my life: (I can now) eat my favorite foods and have fun!" ”
His body was ready to leave at any time, but regret still grew in his heart. "The world I'm leaving is in a very bad situation... This is not the world I dream of seeing in 2023. ”
Director system: Lv Hong
Producer: Zhang Jiankui
Editor-in-chief: Xu Chenjing
Editor: Ling Yun
(The article shall not be reproduced without authorization, please add WeChat "HQRW2H" to understand the details.) You are welcome to provide news clues, which can be sent to the email [email protected]. ）