Antiwar.com Blog

Antiwar Radio: Daniel Ellsberg

The man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg calls on national government employees to take secret documents pertaining to the upcoming war with Iran and give them to the Congress and the press as a last ditch effort to stop this war.

MP3 here. (50: 27)

Daniel Ellsberg was born in Detroit in 1931. After graduating from Harvard in 1952 with a B.A. summa cum laude in Economics, he studied for a year at King’s College, Cambridge University, on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. Between 1954 and 1957, Ellsberg spent three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving as rifle platoon leader, operations officer, and rifle company commander.

From 1957-59 he was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard in 1962 with his thesis, Risk, Ambiguity and Decision, a landmark in decision theory which was recently published. In 1959, he became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation, and consultant to the Defense Department and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making. He joined the Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), John McNaughton, working on Vietnam. He transferred to the State Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, evaluating pacification on the front lines.

On return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, he worked on the Top Secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to the New York Times, the Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.

Since the end of the Vietnam War, Daniel has continued to be a leading voice of moral conscience, serving as a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, government wrongdoing and the urgent need for patriotic whisteblowing.

To encourage national security whistleblowing, Daniel launched the Truth-Telling Project in 2004 with “A Call to Patriotic Whistleblowing.” The Project aims to reach current government insiders, journalists, lawyers, lawmakers, and the American public with an urgent appeal for revealing the truth about government cover-up and lies before the next war. Collaborating with the ACLU, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), the Project on Government Oversight, and other organizations, the Truth-Telling Project provides a personal and legal support network for government insiders considering becoming truth-tellers.

Daniel’s book Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers reached bestseller lists across the nation. It won the PEN Center USA Award for Creative Nonfiction, the American Book Award, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Prize for Non-Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

In 2005 the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation awarded Daniel their first Fellowship for his lifetime commitment and continued efforts toward the advancement of peace, nuclear disarmament, and truth-telling.

In August 2005 the Ellsberg Fund for Truth Telling was established to enable Daniel to continue the work he is uniquely qualified to do as a prominent whisteblower—speaking, writing and activism to encourage more national security whistleblowing and to alert the nation to the dangers of government abuses of power.

In December 2006 Daniel was awarded the 2006 Right Livelihood Award, known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” in Stockholm, Sweden. He was acknowledged “for putting peace and truth first, at considerable personal risk, and dedicating his life to a movement to free the world from the risk of nuclear war.” (Read his acceptance speech here.)

Daniel continues to serve as a public speaker, giving lectures at conferences and universities, and countless press, radio and Internet interviews. His recent essay, “The Next War”, featured in the October 2006 issue of Harpers magazine, urges government officials to reveal truths about government secrecy and nuclear planning—with documents—to avert a possible attack on Iran.

Daniel Ellsberg lives in Northern California with his wife, Patricia Marx Ellsberg. Their son, Michael Ellsberg, is a freelance developmental editor and lives in Buenas Aires. His oldest son, Robert Ellsberg, is publisher and editor-in-chief of Orbis Books. His daugher, Mary Carroll Ellsberg, is senior program officer of the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH). He has 5 grandchildren.

Daniel is currently working on a nuclear memoir on the dangers of the nuclear policies of the U.S. and other nuclear states and a call for worldwide nuclear glasnost.

Antiwar Radio: Philip Giraldi

Former CIA agent and American Conservative magazine contributing editor Philip Giraldi confronts America’s march to war with Iran.

MP3 here. (29:55)

Philip Giraldi served as a staff officer in the Central Intelligence Agency for sixteen years, culminating in his selection as Chief of Base in Barcelona from 1989 to 1992. He was designated the Agency’s senior officer for Olympic Games support, and was named official liaison to the Spanish Security and Intelligence services. During the lead-up to the Games, he also expanded his liaison activities through contacts with the Security Services of a number of European, Asian, and Latin American countries. Working closely with the Barcelona Olympics Security Committee, Phil helped develop the overall Olympics security plan and became the principal briefing officer on security preparations for the United States Government. Prior to Barcelona, Phil specialized in intelligence collection and counter-terrorism operations throughout the Middle East and Europe, often working in coordination with the local government security services. In Istanbul, he successfully worked against a number of Middle Eastern terrorist targets. In Hamburg, he developed information on illegal technology sales in Western Europe. In Rome, he ran operations focused on economic espionage and counter-terrorism.

Since 1992, Phil has been engaged in security consulting for a number of Fortune 500 corporate clients. He is the founder and President of San Marco International, an international security consultancy, and is also a partner in Cannistraro Associates of McLean, Virginia.

Over the past four years, he has specialized in post-September 11th issues for his clients and has also done contract work for the United States government. Phil has been designated by the General Accounting Office as an expert on the impact of illegal immigration on terrorism. As a counter-terrorism expert, he has been brought in to assist the Port Authority of the City of New York in its planning, has assisted the United Nations security organization, and has helped develop a security training program for the United States Merchant Marine. He has conducted security surveys at a number of international airports and ports in Latin America and Asia.

Phil was one of the first American civilians to travel to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, and he has assisted multinational corporations in the upgrade of their security at overseas sites to help them comply with the Patriot Act. Prior to September 11th, he specialized in international risk assessments and “due diligence” investigations. In many cases, his investigations have developed information that led to corporate decisions not to go ahead with planned overseas joint ventures. To meet the needs of clients, he has traveled extensively, most particularly in Latin America, south Asia, and Europe, and has built up a world-wide network of working-level contacts in the security, political, and economic sectors.

Phil is a recognized authority on international security and counterterrorism issues. He appears frequently on National Public Radio and is a Contributing Editor who writes a regular column called “Deep Background” on terrorism, intelligence, and security issues for The American Conservative magazine. He has written op-ed pieces for the Hearst Newspaper chain, has appeared on “Good Morning America,” MSNBC, and local affiliates of ABC television. Phil has been a keynote speaker at the Petroleum Industry Security Council annual meeting. He has been interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the British Broadcasting Corporation, FOX News, 60 Minutes, and Court TV. He also prepares and edits a nationally syndicated subscription service newsletter on September 11th issues for corporate clients.

Phil was awarded an MA and PhD from the University of London in European History, and also holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the University of Chicago. He speaks Spanish, Italian, German, and Turkish.

Ladies and gentlemen, Avigdor Lieberman:

Israel will have to confront the perceived nuclear threat from Iran on its own, the country’s ultra-rightwing Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said.

In related news:

The Israeli Defense Ministry announced Monday that it had tested that country’s state-of-the-art anti-missile system. “The test was a complete success,” said the official. “President Bush picked up on the first ring.”

Has anyone in Africa paid attention to the last 4 years of international news? If so, then why, seeing the unrelenting destruction of Iraq over the years by the United States and its allies, would anyone, let alone human rights activists, complain that the United States has not invaded and occupied a country? Yes, I know, Darfur is horrible, I can’t turn a corner in New York City without a billboard or a subway ad telling me so. But how could they think anyone but the likes of SAIC and Lockheed would benefit? These are probably the kind of people who disapprove of the Iraq war because Bush lied, not because it was a bad idea from the beginning. Like “humanitarian intervention” in Darfur would be.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) before the House of Representatives, Feb. 6:

Don’t Do It, Mr. President

It’s a bad idea.
There’s no need for it.
There’s great danger in doing it.
America is against it, and Congress should be.
The United Nations is against it.
The Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, and the Pakistanis are against it.
The whole world is against it.
Our allies are against it.
Our enemies are against it.
The Arabs are against it.
The Europeans are against it.
The Muslims are against it.
We don’t need to do this.
The threat is overblown.
The plan is an hysterical reaction to a problem that does not yet exist.
Hysteria is never a good basis for foreign policy.
Don’t we ever learn?
Have we already forgotten Iraq?
The plan defies common sense.
If it’s carried out, the Middle East, and possibly the world, will explode.
Oil will soar to over $100 a barrel, and gasoline will be over $5 a gallon.
Despite what some think, it won’t serve the interests of Israel.
Besides — it’s illegal.
It’s unconstitutional.
And you have no moral authority to do it.
We don’t need it.
We don’t want it.
So, Mr. President, don’t do it.
Don’t bomb Iran!
The moral of the story, Mr. Speaker, is this: if you don’t have a nuke, we’ll threaten to attack you. If you do have a nuke, we’ll leave you alone. In fact, we’ll probably subsidize you. What makes us think Iran does not understand this?

Imagine every member of Congress who supposedly opposes war with Iran speaking this clearly and forcefully. Can you?

Link.

Good job, morons: In response to the US announcement that it will pay $5 million for the heads of two men, one a member of Hezbollah, the other a member of Islamic Jihad, the latter organization has threatened to strike US interests. The Hezbollah man was apparently involved in a 1985 plane hijacking in which one US soldier was killed. The IJ man “has furthered the activity of Palestinian Islamic Jihad through activities such as bombings, murder, extortions and money laundering.” There’s no indication as to what this has to do with the United States at all. Though if the neocon goal of making Israel’s enemies America’s enemies is considered, it begins to make sense. I really look forward to being blown up at a pizzeria.