2RHPZ
09-29-2004, 07:02 AM
There are times to spill the secrets
Daniel Ellsberg NYT
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Advice from a leaker
KENSINGTON, California On a tape recording made in the Oval Office on June 14, 1971, H.R. Haldeman, Richard Nixon's chief of staff, can be heard citing Donald Rumsfeld, then a White House aide, on the effect of the Pentagon Papers, news of which had been published that morning:
"Rumsfeld was making this point this morning," Haldeman says. "To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing. ... It shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it's wrong, and the president can be wrong."
He got it exactly right. But it's a lesson that each generation of voters and each new set of leaders have to learn for themselves. Perhaps Rumsfeld, now defense secretary of course, has reflected on this truth recently as he has contemplated the deteriorating conditions in Iraq.
Understandably, the American people are reluctant to believe that their president has made errors of judgment that have cost American lives. To convince them otherwise, there is no substitute for hard evidence: documents, photographs, transcripts. Often the only way for the public to get such evidence is if a public servant decides to release it without permission.
Such a leak occurred recently with the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. Reports of its existence and overall pessimism - but not its actual conclusions - have prompted a long overdue debate on the realities and prospects of the war.
Leakers are often accused of being merely partisan, but the measure of their patriotism should be the accuracy and importance of what they reveal. It would be a great public service to reveal a true picture of the administration's plans for Iraq, especially before this week's presidential debate on foreign policy.
The military's real estimates of the projected costs - in manpower, money and casualties - of various long-term plans for Iraq should be made public, in addition to the more immediate costs in American and Iraqi lives of the planned offensive against resistant cities in Iraq that appears scheduled for November. If military or intelligence experts within the government predict disastrous political consequences in Iraq from such urban attacks, these judgments should not remain secret.
Leaks on the timing of this offensive, and on possible call-up of reserves just after the election, take me back to Election Day 1964, which I spent in an interagency working group in the State Department. We were there to examine plans to expand the war, precisely the policy that voters soundly rejected at the polls that day.
We couldn't wait until the next day to hold our meeting because the plan for the bombing of North Vietnam had to be ready as soon as possible. But we couldn't have held our meeting the day before because news of it might have been leaked - not by me, I'm sorry to say. And President Lyndon B. Johnson might not have won in a landslide had voters known he was lying when he said his administration sought "no wider war."
Seven years and almost 50,000 American deaths later, after I had leaked the Pentagon Papers, I had a conversation with Sen. Wayne Morse of Oregon, one of the two senators who had voted against the Tonkin Gulf resolution in August 1964. If I had leaked the documents then, he said, the resolution never would have passed.
That was hard to hear. But it hadn't occurred to me to break my vow of secrecy. I knew the war was a mistake, but my loyalties were to the defense secretary and the president. It took five years of war before I recognized the higher loyalty all officials owe to the Constitution, the rule of law, the soldiers in harm's way or their fellow citizens.
Like Robert McNamara, under whom I served, Rumsfeld appears to inspire great loyalty among his aides. As Abu Ghraib shows, however, there are more important principles. Rumsfeld might not have seen the damning photographs and the report of Major General Antonio Taguba as soon as he did - just as he would never have seen the Pentagon Papers 33 years ago - if some anonymous people in his department had not bypassed the chain of command and disclosed them to the news media.
All administrations classify far more than is justifiable in a democracy, and the Bush administration has been especially secretive.
Surely there are officials in the present administration who recognize that the United States has been misled into a war in Iraq, but who have so far kept their silence - as I long did about the war in Vietnam. To them I have a personal message: Don't repeat my mistakes. Don't wait until more troops are sent, and thousands more have died, before telling truths that could end a war and save lives.
Do what I wish I had done in 1964: Go to the press, to Congress, and document your claims.
Daniel Ellsberg is the author of "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers."
Daniel Ellsberg NYT
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Advice from a leaker
KENSINGTON, California On a tape recording made in the Oval Office on June 14, 1971, H.R. Haldeman, Richard Nixon's chief of staff, can be heard citing Donald Rumsfeld, then a White House aide, on the effect of the Pentagon Papers, news of which had been published that morning:
"Rumsfeld was making this point this morning," Haldeman says. "To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing. ... It shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it's wrong, and the president can be wrong."
He got it exactly right. But it's a lesson that each generation of voters and each new set of leaders have to learn for themselves. Perhaps Rumsfeld, now defense secretary of course, has reflected on this truth recently as he has contemplated the deteriorating conditions in Iraq.
Understandably, the American people are reluctant to believe that their president has made errors of judgment that have cost American lives. To convince them otherwise, there is no substitute for hard evidence: documents, photographs, transcripts. Often the only way for the public to get such evidence is if a public servant decides to release it without permission.
Such a leak occurred recently with the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. Reports of its existence and overall pessimism - but not its actual conclusions - have prompted a long overdue debate on the realities and prospects of the war.
Leakers are often accused of being merely partisan, but the measure of their patriotism should be the accuracy and importance of what they reveal. It would be a great public service to reveal a true picture of the administration's plans for Iraq, especially before this week's presidential debate on foreign policy.
The military's real estimates of the projected costs - in manpower, money and casualties - of various long-term plans for Iraq should be made public, in addition to the more immediate costs in American and Iraqi lives of the planned offensive against resistant cities in Iraq that appears scheduled for November. If military or intelligence experts within the government predict disastrous political consequences in Iraq from such urban attacks, these judgments should not remain secret.
Leaks on the timing of this offensive, and on possible call-up of reserves just after the election, take me back to Election Day 1964, which I spent in an interagency working group in the State Department. We were there to examine plans to expand the war, precisely the policy that voters soundly rejected at the polls that day.
We couldn't wait until the next day to hold our meeting because the plan for the bombing of North Vietnam had to be ready as soon as possible. But we couldn't have held our meeting the day before because news of it might have been leaked - not by me, I'm sorry to say. And President Lyndon B. Johnson might not have won in a landslide had voters known he was lying when he said his administration sought "no wider war."
Seven years and almost 50,000 American deaths later, after I had leaked the Pentagon Papers, I had a conversation with Sen. Wayne Morse of Oregon, one of the two senators who had voted against the Tonkin Gulf resolution in August 1964. If I had leaked the documents then, he said, the resolution never would have passed.
That was hard to hear. But it hadn't occurred to me to break my vow of secrecy. I knew the war was a mistake, but my loyalties were to the defense secretary and the president. It took five years of war before I recognized the higher loyalty all officials owe to the Constitution, the rule of law, the soldiers in harm's way or their fellow citizens.
Like Robert McNamara, under whom I served, Rumsfeld appears to inspire great loyalty among his aides. As Abu Ghraib shows, however, there are more important principles. Rumsfeld might not have seen the damning photographs and the report of Major General Antonio Taguba as soon as he did - just as he would never have seen the Pentagon Papers 33 years ago - if some anonymous people in his department had not bypassed the chain of command and disclosed them to the news media.
All administrations classify far more than is justifiable in a democracy, and the Bush administration has been especially secretive.
Surely there are officials in the present administration who recognize that the United States has been misled into a war in Iraq, but who have so far kept their silence - as I long did about the war in Vietnam. To them I have a personal message: Don't repeat my mistakes. Don't wait until more troops are sent, and thousands more have died, before telling truths that could end a war and save lives.
Do what I wish I had done in 1964: Go to the press, to Congress, and document your claims.
Daniel Ellsberg is the author of "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers."