Daniel Ellsberg: Secrets - Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

I can assure you that what you will observe is a fast and wait for him today to try and sell make relations we need to dive straight and uncooperative communication good evening it's it's really marvelous to see so many of you here as Roman said on a Friday but it is of course a very special event and I am deeply honored to be introducing our speaker one of the marvelous marvelous gifts that several historians have left for those of us who are historians or White House tapes tapes of meetings tapes of telephone calls this in fact goes back to the days of FDR believe it or not but in a serious way of course we have tapes for three administration's Kennedy Johnson and Nixon and I think there's a reason why we don't have them after Nixon and our guest this evening in fact has something to do with with that but on June 22nd 1971 the following conversation was captured on the Oval Office taping system and it concerns Daniel Ellsberg who is with us tonight it is the president it is Henry Kissinger and it is Attorney General John Mitchell Richard Nixon let's get the son of a into jail Kissinger we've got to get him the president we've got to get him don't worry about his trial just get everything out try him in the press try them in the press everything John that there is on the investigation get it out leak it out we want to destroy him in the press is that clear Kissinger and Mitchell yes and of course the administration did try to destroy Daniel Ellsberg and thus began a series of dirty tricks and I would write crimes that would culminate in the political scandal and constitutional crisis known as Watergate the historian the legal historian David Rubenstein has shown I think that the Massa nations that the efforts of the administration Ellsberg helped to form the basis of two of the three impeachment charges against President Nixon a little bit later on and so in this respect I think it's quite true to say that Nixon's efforts to destroy Ellsberg led to his own demise and you will get of course this whole story told in this memoir that Roman referred to a very important book that I hope all of you will purchase and Dan will be signing copies of this book after we finish this evening and I can't help but conclude by saying that this talk is particularly timely because we live in a perilous age the winds of war are blowing in our nation's capital for the past dozen years or so I've been engaged in research on the Vietnam War and I've had the chance to have many late-night conversations with Dan Ellsberg about what went on in the 1960s and about in particular the failure of lawmakers in Congress who felt privately and the time of the Vietnam War that the war was a mistake that the war was wrong and yet did not have the courage then to speak out against the administration at that time we've also talked about the general public which in the Vietnam case was I think apathetic until far too late and the parallels it seems to me are striking dan I think is going to talk about some of those parallels this evening but what we have with us it seems to me is a person who showed that courage and who decided after being a cold warrior and a believer in the Vietnam War that he had to do something to try to change things and it is my great privilege to welcome and I ask you to join me in welcoming Daniel Ellsberg [Applause] huh [Applause] thank you very much I was warned coming this afternoon you know don't expect too much this is a Friday night we never schedule lectures on Friday night so I'm very pleased to see essentially crowd here thanks for your warm welcome I apologize for being late but there was a very it was inescapable because I was talking to Fred Lahaul and we we don't talk briefly we I never talked to him without learning something I was learning tonight by the way I was hoping not to have to do too much talking to save my voice because I had laryngitis starting out on this book tour a couple of weeks ago I had used up my voice really talking against and being talking about this coming war in Iraq and I was in fact it never occurred to me I'm glad to be able to speak around in a way that's pre-scheduled by Viking because it does give me an opportunity to talk about what's happening right now I must say that I did not foresee when I started writing this working on this some six years ago that or even as recently as six months ago less than that when I finished it and gave it to Viking that at the moment that I would start on a pre-scheduled publication book tour for this book that I would feel it so urgent and timely to read not to buy but to read that that I wanted to give it away and I must say that just four days ago I called him my editor and Viking and I said I want to put this whole thing on the net and I got a rather startled unhappy reactions she said she said you're not going to do better I said I said well look I really need to put chapters 1 3 and 4 on the net right now she said let me talk to the my superiors at Viking about this can you hear me by the way because I'll be speaking quite quietly because of my voice here can you hear me in the back wave if you can if you can't have any problem at any point please let me know so she came back and she said no no no you can put one chapter on put one chapter one and I bargained out of her that I had to put at least on the first two chapters at first two pages of chapter four and I'll explain why about that in a minute so it turns out that I'm not on this tour actually to sell books or to talk about history per se I and I understand a lot of you some people who were going to leave at 2 a.m. this tonight to go to San Francisco how many people are in that category here any because I've talked to people in Santa Barbara there's a bus leaving for San Francisco rally at 2:00 a.m. I was invited by a young person to join them and I said I'm too old for that but I did uh-huh but I did change my planned air fare tonight which was supposed to leave at 12:30 to 10:30 so I could get there in time to attend that rally and if they want me to talk I will certainly want to do it they're coming two weeks or so whatever it is before the election I think are a crucial time for people to be acting to avert this war they say my interest is not talking about history but doing everything I can to avert this history from being repeated as we are in process of doing chapter one which starts the book it starts and I wrote this long ago with my first week in the Pentagon my first day in the Pentagon in the first sentences of the book which by coincidence and as a full-time employee which as a coincidence was August 4th 1964 and now how many people here does that have any resonance with Thunder sheer ok I'll give you another clue here it was the day of an alleged attack which in fact did not take place a second attack on destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf off the coast of Vietnam and it was the night of the first US raids against North Vietnam which then had a hiatus for the election and then after the election resumed and did not stop again until 1973 nine years later eight and a half years later during which time we dropped four times as many tons of bombs on Indochina as in all of World War two two million tons in World War two 7.8 million tons in Indochina so something very big started that first day in the Pentagon and I won't repeat the story here because any of you have this book already actually ok very good around but as I say you don't have to get it or buy it to read those of you have it concerned class 2 page 7 but you don't have to because as I say that's this part is on the web and given that that is the case I won't recapitulate that I'll just sum it up I my first day in the Pentagon was 24 hours because that was there all night following the raids monitoring the raids over North Vietnam that started that night the president announced those raids to the country it'll about 11:00 11:15 that night to catch them before people went to bed so they wouldn't read about it in the newspapers that we were at war essentially and he gave as reasons for the 64 sorties 64 individual planes one over North Vietnam the explanation looking at the TV audience and then later secretary McNamara amplified this and later they said the same things in secret session secretaries McNamara and Rusk the Secretary of State is told here two Senate committees Armed Services Foreign Affairs of the House and Senate combined in top-secret closed session which I was reading the transcripts out at the time because I was had just started as special assistant to since Secretary of Defense now I started I was a highly paid clerk really was highly paid I started the highest civil service rating GS 18 because of earlier work I've done as a consultant on a subject to which I really had become expert nuclear command and control nuclear war planning as I saw averting nuclear war and I took this job as special assistant to have a window on a sort of a continuous crisis I was rude not because I believed in the Vietnam War which I didn't I'd actually been there in 61 briefly and already could see in one week that we had no prospect of any success there but so I had no interest in working on Vietnam per se but my boss to be John McNaughton a former law professor at Harvard offered me the chance to see the government from inside now I'd been working as a consultant and researcher not just with top-secret but with much higher clearances for some years but he said seeing it from the inside will have a different feel to it and you will learn which turned out to be true I emphasize how insignificant my job was though basically it was getting put in cables together for my boss and helping him on memos and isn't that because that's the point in a way of the following proposition that night I heard my president say and secretary defense say we have just retaliated to an unprovoked attack to an unequivocal evidence of an unprovoked attack on our destroyers in routine patrol in international waters we have retaliated to this we seek no wider war I already know in my unimportant job and certainly within the next few days I had documentary evidence in my hands that every one of those six propositions was false now I won't go into the details of that at this point because it is in the chapter and you can either buy it or read it on the web because I want to get on to some other almost more immediate things reason I press it right now and feel it is urgent is because that's what I think they have in mind for us or is likely to happen within weeks or months in this war within three days of those false statements they had the effect of inducing Congress just before an election to bipartisan support to support the Tonkin Gulf Resolution the original Tonkin Gulf Resolution on August 7th how many people know the essential content of that resolution here could I see your hand side it would be helpful here how many do not actually okay all remember that was of 38 years ago so a lot of you weren't even born then some of you but I can tell the ones if you've been following the paper what the essentials were they were essentially the same as in the act just passed the resolution of support for the president to take armed force action against Iraq which could be called Tonkin Gulf two basic propositions the same the Congress authorizes the president that is delegates it's constitutionally exclusive power to decide the issue of war or peace if we're not under attack if we are under attack the commander-in-chief it has always been understood to have the right to reply to that attack to protect our own troops but in the absence of such an attack on that as now or the UH nimman --nt attack the absence of it as now then only Congress in our system has the power and the authority to decide that but in 64 and again in 2002 Congress has unconstitutionally passed that power in a broad vague way to the President to take such armed action such actions all necessary actions including armed force against in this case Iraq the police names have changed as he deems appropriate he decides the essential attribute of kingship of monarchy which the drafters of our Constitution article 1 section 8 had intended to avoid giving to a president on the assumption that not no one man should like Kings George the third and all other Kings have the power to decide whether or when to go to war which they regarded an unnecessary war or wrongful war is the worst oppression that could be worked on a country and that should be given exclusively to a more representative body like the Congress that was an invention as far as I know that was a anybody tell me that differently I think we hold that we the founders we can identify with his Americans Americans invented that idea and it was a very good idea okay Congress has just flaunted that as they did in 64 I think the consequences could be very grave of that and we are in a time of great danger as a result of that in addition or even enhancing the real danger that we do face from al-qaeda we did not face a comparable danger in 64 from anybody except the possibility of an all-out nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union which we had a possibility we had contributed to enormous ly by our example in our build-up that was a terrible danger from day to day to day indefinitely and to some degree still exists but aside from that nothing like what were faced with with al-qaeda was just a real danger I was reading USA Today on the way from Los Angeles train ride not very long train ride and I'm reading about real threats against railroads here and I made a note I am reading this on Amtrak it said Amtrak made a note of a time actually for historical reference should it come out but that's no joke that thread is not made up what is made up it seems is the president's assertion and Cheney's assertions and Rumsfeld's assertions that the threat from Saddam is the threat from al-qaeda that they are linked that they are the same that the Saddam cannot be deterred any more than Osama bin Laden and I will grant Osama bin Laden and his suicide bombers are not subjects for deterrence or containment Saddam is it so happens he's been tested on that one he's the one leader in the world who had possessed weapons of mass destruction as he called them not nuclear weapons but chemical and biological weapons and refrained from using them under six weeks of heavy bombing because of the consequences he could expect and he is not a suicide bomber he really has been tested on that he is not suicidal and it's George Tenet the director of CIA said in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee just a couple weeks ago we see at CIA no threat in the near future from Osama bin Laden I'm sorry from Saddam Hussein from Iraq of use of his weapons of mass destruction against the United States or their neighbors in the absence of an attack on them and as I say the past would indicate that even bombing which Saddam was confident of surviving would not get him to pull the trigger on that and commit suicide but if we were invading as tenant said director of CIA to the unclassified then we believe he would use whatever he had and we are not we don't think he does have nuclear's or could have for years even one year it would take him a year even if somebody gave him the material for it we do not believe he would give those weapons to al Qaeda or other terrorists not under his control directly both these statements directly contradicting what the president had said two days earlier but we do think and we don't know whether he can launch chemical weapons which he has and caused significant damage with him with thee after ten years of sanctions we don't know if we can but we don't know if he can't we do know he will try to launch if he's faced with destruction as as Bush's openly proposing to face him he will use whatever he can so it's a gamble a gamble that Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney and Wolfowitz and Perl clearly what this country to take and Congress has just passed that trigger to this president who unlike Lyndon Johnson has not lied to them about his intention to destroy Saddam or to to threaten him with these circumstances which would cause him to throw and our troops or Israel whatever he has this is a very serious gamble I personally think that could happen I have thought up until I got a little ray of hope today actually but I have thought it would probably take place before the election and then a minority on that could be wrong and I hope I'm wrong if not before the election I think it's much it's likely that it would happen within the month or two after the election not as late as December or February late December because his support is eroding the evidence against his lies about the actual threat from Saddam as opposed to al-qaeda it's coming out day by day and I don't think he wants to wait for that now actually the thing that got me to decide a few days ago that tough what I had this history that I was presenting here needed wide readership right away and I had already been sending copies of this book to Senators staffs who had voted wrong on this issue because they read this I've been in your position before they were telling me the reasons their senators had voted yes after like John Kerry so long after showing very clearly like Dianne Feinstein that she knew the problems here she knew the risk she knew the candle but then raised her hand yes for this I've been in that position I've kept my mouth shut I've given reasons for my boss doing something that my boss didn't believe in but this isn't the time to do that and I think if you read this you'll get the picture well they say what triggered me to go beyond that and really put this on the web was a Doonesbury cartoon of this is October 19th Saturday and I didn't see it right away where I forget the name of this reporter in the doonesbury script he's saying in a press conference at the White House re could you go he's talking to that president's press secretary not too sure on re could you go over it one more time why war with Saddam exactly I mean next year there's no real al Qaeda lick as CIA has been saying he doesn't have nukes his Army's been decimated and he hasn't even been able to shoot down a single us jet talking there about the 900 or so raids we've made over via Iraq Vietnam four years in Vietnam we said Korea people are dramatic that's they Duhamel together a bit so he says he hasn't been able to shoot down a single US jet so he asks isn't there some kind of provocation you can point to anything at all ari says no we don't need one and the other reporter says maybe our guys should fly slower and the first reporter says hey yeah they could like cut their engines and ari says that's it for today well very funny except that that took me back a bit to the part I was reading about writing in Chapter four page 65 which is on the net now so you don't have to take notes on this planning provocation chapter starts - the Tonkin Gulf Resolution paraphrase her little a president who if this sounds familiar had now authorization to take war to go to war when he saw fit use whatever means he saw appropriate but who knew the country was uneasy about that did not feel that this war Vietnam now was necessary or right or the right thing to do in fact this was September they were about in November to vote in overwhelming and unprecedented numbers against the proposition of escalation in Vietnam which was being the main camp a major campaign issue of Lyndon Johnson's opponent senator Barry Goldwater the Republican then who happened to be an Air Force Major General Reserve and was calling for the very escalation which we were planning essentially not exactly the same but escalation that the Joint Chiefs were proposing at that time okay that was to happen in November and the president knew it was going to happen he was going to win a landslide victory for peace and against escalation how then to get the war started because the president like most of his advisors believed that it was essential whatever the public thought to get underway there was no time to lose or he might lose Vietnam so whatever the public thought we were wider war was on the way how to start it I'm saying by the way that the president today I believe faces a very similar problem he's got the authority from the Congress not from the UN and if he doesn't get it from the UN then Congress voting for this cannot make that war legal it remains flat straight aggression which was not clear in Vietnam this is clear if he does it without any UN sanction again does that mean it's impossible for Bush to get started I think not from September on us retaliatory capability I say quote retaliate territory and kill quotes because our retaliation had been against a non-existent attack of which there had been ambiguous or at first unequivocal for a couple of hours evidence that we were under attack but well before our planes got underway having been ordered to do so at the beginning by the president well before that happened we knew that nothing could have been more or more equivocal and indeed there had been no attack it was a mistake which was known before the resolution was passed by the President and by others and by little people like me inside the government but essentially by no one outside the government what I knew about these lies was not shared and for this information by any US senator on any basis or representative and in part they were ignorance of that because I didn't tell them I you know I wondered some people could have told them starting with McNamara in his testimony but instead he lied and Secretary of Defense rust lied I go into that in detail in the book so I will go through it here but now we have the problem that I've described so my boss John McNaughton was talking then about planning quote provocation to be in a good position to provoke a you a military response from Hanoi and to be in a good position to seize on that response examples of actions to be considered and this was signed this proposal drafted by McNaughton was signed by the Secretary of Defense Secretary of State chairman the drug chiefs president's National Security Agency examples of actions to be considered would be running US naval patrols increasingly close to the North Vietnamese Coast they were they were getting ready to Beach them virtually on the coast if necessary to get them shot at and are associating them with covert operations 34a operations and then here's the part that sent me back to this book I didn't have to read the I remembered it when I read the Doonesbury thing the Joint Chiefs were saying there was a little difference they were seeing other examples of actions we should take they were proposing were replacing or supplementing the you to remember the you to high-level claim taking reconnaissance photos with increasingly lower-level reconnaissance planes jets over Hanoi so the little difference was the the way to do this was not to fly them slower but lower how low and actually not slow at all how fast best idea was create a sonic boom at low altitude over North Vietnam which will break every window in Hanoi that I get arise or they would that would get their attention and they had other plans and in effect for getting our troops shot head or getting reports that they were about to be shot at or might have been shot at to which we could decide too risky let's go not for preventive reasons not for UN reasons not for regime change reasons to protect US troops and I think that's the kind of planning that's going on right now by people by the way who don't believe in it on the whole my boss McNaughton was writing this stuff at the time I don't remember if I was helping him on that memo so early as September 3rd I actually can't wrote but I remember the memo and a lot of others liked it I'd been to Vietnam in 61 I thought at that point this is a loser I don't even want to be associated with it John McNaughton thought that more seriously than I did once I suggest that we should be looking six months ahead he said Dan you don't understand I don't want to be in Vietnam in six months I want out out out and yet every memo in the Pentagon Papers that I put out five years later to the Senate a couple years after that to the press every memo shows John McNaughton to be the hawk giving examples how to do it how to strike out of how to attack what not he believed in none of this totally against it if anything more than I was but he worked for McNamara who was for it and I work for him and I did my job and that's not something I'm proud of obviously and not exactly ashamed of in a certain sense not guilty about because I just have to say I never occurred to me to tell the Senators what was going on somebody asked me the other night on television around regular how did you feel that first night when you knew the president everything he's saying was a lie weren't you shocked I said no I I'd been a consultant for about six years at that point I on nuclear matters and I knew the government lied movie lied all the time well I take that back I knew they lied a lot I didn't have a clue that was the difference on being insider as to how different the inside perception was of what we were doing what our aims were what the cost would be what was going to happen from the outsiders I told my friend sy Hersh how many you know who sy her Shuster two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who's exposed CI exposed every administration lies history his beginning his first bullet surprise was for exposing the may lie Massacre in 69 and I've told sigh who wrote a very nice verb for this book first one here four years sy he's regarded as our he is our foremost investigative reporter see I'm trying to convince you you don't have a clue as to how much you are lied to right now and how effective it is how easily you can be fooled and it's it's less than almost anybody else in the country but it's not that hard secrets can be kept a very long time by people like me and people above me who keep the secrets keep their mouth shut when their boss doesn't want things told the idea that all the secrets come out as I said is just a myth it's wrong given that those secrets can be kept so well it's tempting and easy to lie in fact to keep the secrets to some extent you have to lie give an example I was working this is in the book but the kind of thing I hadn't seen as an outsider having to work on little crises that came up every day or every hour consisting the press conference speech this has to cable we have to send out everything was a crisis and had to be done very fast for exciting very pressured and so forth McNaughton comes running in one morning from McNamara's office just down the hall he always ran back and forth I was is very long legs and he didn't want military the generals to see this Assistant Secretary running to his boss so he would sort of stride sort of a Groucho Marx very fast very fast power walking sort of and but on this case actually I think he was running any he came and he said McNamara is just about five to eight he says McNamara has a press conference coming at 8:30 a Blue Springs drone has just gone down over China now a little Springs was a code name for a covert operation of reconnaissance drones which are unmanned photographic vehicles of the kind we're sending over Iraq now quite openly and all over the place but in fact the military was operating something like that over Washington the other day because of the sniper good idea technically but we are definitely edging into that position of using the military on domestic police work which means eroding getting rid of the Posse Comitatus Act which says the US military is not for use against US citizens so in this crisis of the sniper a real crisis for my granddaughter two grand our and grandson who live in Rockville in Maryland and who Huell I called him up there were in lockout they couldn't gain the in the school it couldn't go out for recess or player in serious matter still we're in a situation where we're moving very fast toward using the military in general for police work in this country okay getting this side from the pointer a little bit the Blue Springs drone had gone down all in those days we didn't admit we were flying reconnaissance planes over sovereign other countries like the YouTube he says ok Blue Springs plane has gone down magma has to meet the press at 8:30 we have 10 minutes to give him six alternative lies so he gave me he threw at me practically a yellow pad he took a yellow pad we sat at opposite sides of his desk and we wrote lies as fast as we could we didn't even have time to confer with each other I've got this one are we repeating things or something just wrote real fast not unmanned ok it was a weather plane you know off course that one had a lot bad history because that's what we said about the u2 when I went down over Russia and unfortunately on that occasion they got the pilot and the photographic plane so after Eisenhower had said it was a weather plane of course Christoph humiliated him with the truth but anyway and put it on the list hearing might work this time so I said to McNaughton just thing have us markings on it McNaughton doesn't even look up he says who knows who knows and it was a chinese nationalist plane from taiwan it was a you know various thing so we give him the list he grabs it from any runs down the hall and he comes back about 10 minutes later he says ok McNamara like says he wants four more we have five minutes wrote more like they were a little harder to get at this point they're coming slower and I said said you know why doesn't he just say no comment says McNamara won't say no comment to the press you know McNamara knew everything had all statistics at his fingertips he he waved them into existence it as soon as he made them up as he read along actually it sounded very precise it's sort of like the William F Buckley in history has all these facts that he makes up so he won't say no comment so as mcnamara as McNaughton was going out the the door again I said listen I really want to press this give him one more chance here try on him again no comment which I'd suggested the first time too so because they're tired we they may find it out real fast the press is tired of being lied to I think this was 64 they were if they were tired already they had entire cover yeah but give it a try so he came back later and he said to his amazement he said McNamara had said no comment when the question came up and a reporter came into our office and said will you tell your boss that was really great this morning you know that he said no comment the point being here was in an obviously an intelligence matter that everybody was willing to cut the president slack on they knew it had to be done to keep it secret you had to lie about it we're not doing it it doesn't happen because it was illegal and but they felt it had to be done this kind of lying and secrecy justifies in the minds of all my colleagues my former colleagues all the secrecy you know the times you have to do it don't you lie when you can keep secrets that well which they do unless the plane goes down it's tempting to a president that's a very hard job to use that secrecy and that lying for a lot of other reasons for policies that would be rejected by the public because they're illegal or wrong or a mall or just imprudent extremely recklessly dangerous but if they don't have to know what we're doing or what we plan it's tempting not to tell them or to tell them something else give them other reasons and presidents and all politicians are like Oscar while they can resist anything but temptation so that's what they do do and it's what is definitely happening right now Cheney the Vice President Rumsfeld Secretary of Defense and the president are giving reasons for what they think needs to be done they're sincere about that they think it's in the national interest but like Johnson in Vietnam they do not trust the public to agree with the force of their reasons for going to war and killing people and having Americans die a lot of other things they don't give them those reasons so they give them reasons which might convince them which are more convincing better sell that's not just this administration that's every administration it's every government every government official in the world and nothing new about that particularly but here is a time when for instance what they're saying and the reasons they're giving our untrue or unfounded and it's a little more serious than that we do have a serious problem of let's say al Qaeda getting nuclear weapons sort of nuclear weapons going off somewhere in the world any precedent of this is terribly dangerous for us because it moves us into a world where nuclear weapons gets used and nothing is more dangerous to us than then world and if al Qaeda gets them likewise terrorism is a real threat so the reasons that the president is giving now for going to Iraq are that it will reduce the chance of terrorism it will reduce the chance of al Qaeda and getting these weapons and the CIA points out and everything those are not among the reasons for doing this because in every respect this war will increase those dangers which we really can't afford to do actually they're dangerous enough and we can't eliminate them what are the reasons I I don't know I know that the reasons they're giving or false in this case unlike Vietnam I tried for 38 years and this is where Fred and I just talk forever why Johnson really did do this against the advice against the estimates of as Fred pointed out above all of his top advisors both in the administration some of them and he's definitely top advisors in the Senate who told him that what he was getting into was catastrophic they were right and their arguments for good and there was really no answer to them so the question arises and I learned that in a way about the Senate and even some of the others from Fred log of alts book choosing war how many how many of you know that anybody not didn't get the readership it deserves I learned more from that book before I met Fred then I would say any other book I can remember in the last generation about Vietnam so I very much recommend it not only for then but for what it tells about now that's not even in this book very much because I didn't know it at the time I was a special assistant to the assistant secretary I didn't know that senators Russell head of the our chairman of the Armed Services Committee and Lyndon Johnson's mentor who had made him majority leader in the Senate senator Fulbright had a chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Senator Mansfield Senate majority leader were all telling I learned this from Fred's book choosing war we're all telling Johnson don't do this it will be disastrous in foreign affairs will be disastrous domestically for the Democratic Party his vice president Humphrey was telling him the same the head of intelligence in the State Department Tom Hughes who have met more recently was telling him that I knew none of this at the time because it was so secret it wasn't in McNaughton's files that I had access to and I thought I had access to practically everything and uh it's not in the Pentagon Papers it wasn't in McNamara's files those pieces of paper saying that this is disastrous this is reckless don't do it were so secret because the president wanted to do it to avoid losing and did not want it knowing he was going against the advice and he was misrepresenting the advice he was getting that those papers weren't circulated to those people within themselves or to my boss in many cases an ally it took thirty years in many cases for those to come out that was the longest kept secret of the Vietnam War and as I say not just I really am recommend you read that because now it's so clear that that is true of probably the great majority of senators in the Senate right now Democrat and Republican a lot this were and in this case unlike Vietnam it's clear that the Joint Chiefs and their military people do not want to take these risks regards them as unnecessary as wrongful they don't want it they are doing something which was not done during the Vietnam War at any point they are leaking their dissent they are leaking their it's coming out in places I read it yesterday in USA Today by James Bamford he quotes a lot of others newspaper sources for once they are telling people anonymously not with documents the press aren't following it up on a whole but for example Barbara Boxer has been saying I sit on the Intelligence Committee she doesn't give away any secrets but she says what she hasn't heard on the Intelligence Committee she says I have not heard any evidence that persuades me of the truth of what the president is saying that we have a threat from Saddam was a monster there's a tyrant a great threat to his own people but not as far as CIA can tell at this time to us unless he is attacked so that that is coming out so boxer says okay I haven't seen her and she votes against the act the Tonkin Gulf - now does Diane Feinstein who voted yes in the end know something that Barbara Boxer who sits on the Intelligence Committee doesn't know no she is perhaps running for something else besides the Senate maybe vice president maybe who president someday every one of the potential senatorial and representative candidates to be President in 2004 voted yes although most if not all of them knew perfectly well this was wrong of them to do they shouldn't be doing it they felt they had to do it Gephardt Daschle Biden edwards john kerry lieberman actually the one person who's a presidential candidate who came out against it is Al Gore and I was just thinking today I realized that my god are we left with Al Gore is the only is he the only person I could bring myself to vote for I I don't like that and I will say by the way that I would have preferred that it be Kerry would have been totally consistent with his attacks on the war that he'd been giving up till the day of that vote and I was proud to have him give a major blurb to this book because of his background as he then in Vietnam in combat as a Navy lieutenant had spoken as a former officer before Fulbright with one of the most passionate impassioned speeches and eloquent speeches ever given against the war just before his colleagues in the vets he's helped found the American the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in an unprecedented move camped on Washington opposed or and through their medals which Congress which the White House refused to take from them threw them over the fence remember the image showing on them and how many people remember that photo monthly thank you it's interesting a lot of you haven't but that's a very important moment in our history when they did what they could to say we were there we know what war is we did this and we say this is wrong and should not continue in the honor of the mount and for the good of other soldiers the way to protect people like us is to get out of that work very important move so carry is an important figure in our history and he was speaking he made it clear that he knew all the reasons we should not go into this war but he is a presidential Kennedy in fact he would have been mine and he may still be I may well still vote for him because he may well be the best both in the primaries and even in the election but not with the same enthusiasm that I would have one month ago he wasn't behaving any worse than any of the other presidential candidates or any politicians all of them were behaving in the prudent careful tradition of politics as usual how to run for president but it so happens we're in a crisis here this was not the time to behave in the traditional fashion this is the time for extraordinary action of some kind like those veterans throwing their medals over something violence should we move to that no there's a number of lessons from the anti-war movement of Vietnam and one that I drew in the end I was I guessed it at the time but looking back on it I'm more sure than I was even then when I came back from Vietnam against the war I had enough people asked me they were rather proud in my first public speech in Washington University in st. Louis asked me what I thought of their having burned down the draft of the recruiting station and I said they were clearly very proud of it just happened I said I'm sorry but I can't endorse that I think it is a mistake to do that I think it takes risks of human life that will bring down further repression and make it harder to end the war that was not a popular answer as a matter of fact I was getting a speech that was quite enthusiastic but I got booed at that point well I hope I won't get booed here but if so so be it the thing we were passed out just as I came in about the great moment in aisle of this that well actually the great moment was when people sat down and got arrested peacefully I think that's what they're talking about but the occasion was burning down the Bank of America I understand the desperation at that time God knows I had given the Pentagon Papers to the Senate six months earlier than that I expected when they came out to go to jail for the rest of my life it was a desperate time I totally empathize with the desperation of people and even the weather men who are doing things but they were not shortening the war they were making it easier in a matter of fact we now know one was reading accounts of rock-throwing and violence and burning and explosives and there were a lot of explosions going on he and Haldeman his chief of staff always wrote in the margin good good exclamation point that's what they wanted that's what keep help them keep the war going I think that's still true what does that leave how are we doing by the way on time I know I'm using where how we doing it's like that it's okay because we don't want to get to questions here for sure um excuse me I'm in my voices corner I'm often asked the an essential question of how I came to give the Pentagon Papers after many years of keeping secrets for the government and knowing all the reasons for doing that and having done it for a long time well the answer is a little bit longer so I'll take the five minutes on it then it's good to do another question session it's in the book of course chapters 17 I knew for one thing at that point what other Americans didn't know I knew from a friend in the White House where I had worked for Kissinger and Nixon in early 69 I knew from a colleague there Mort Halpern who's still in the White House that this war was not ending and was going to get a larger not entirely because the president expected that he expected his threats to work I'm sure by the way that Bush and Cheney do not expect their threats to work against Saddam and they would be crazy to believe it they don't believe it the fact that they say they hope that is not true actually in this case it's clear that they want regime change they want to get rid of Saddam and so for that they have to invade but at that time people did think the war was ending and I didn't so what to do about that that was the issue that summer number of things including the early you'll read about it early parts of the Pentagon Papers the history of the conflict that indicated that that was aggression from the beginning that was new to me I've been working on this war in 1569 for five years I thought that it wasn't working it wouldn't succeed but it was an aggression there was you know noble cause and so on that was not true the French aiding from forty-five on a French colonial reconquest of a colony that had proclaimed independence was not a noble cause and it wasn't legitimate from any American standards it was essentially aggression that was new to me what do you do then when you decide that your country is involved in aggression well at that point it was almost hopeless to try to convince my countrymen of that because you had to read thousands of pages or hundreds of pages of history I can get expect to get them to do that but what should I do about it if I thought that we were about to embark I'm sorry that we were continuing and escalating a war there was illegitimate which is to say that all the people we were killing not just the civilians but the military that that was murder was unjustified homicide obviously the civilians but in that case as I say I think that's what we're looking at right now Americans need to ask themselves who do see as a lot of people do is Nelson Mandela has said very forthrightly and many other people as richard armey House Majority Leader Republican I don't remember ever agreeing with him on any subject I can remember said not only this is the wrong thing to do we said this would be a question and it is not American tradition now as Republican leader he ended up voting to give the president that power but not because he believed that it was a good thing so what do you do I read an essay that summer late in my life I was 38 by henry david thoreau american tradition on the duty of civil disobedience original title resistance to civil government how many people have read that I mean okay very good it bears rereading a lot especially this month because it's about why he just mentions in passing actually that he had spent a night in jail and he apologizes it was only a night because somebody paid the fine against his will for protesting the Mexican War what we call the Mexican War which as I now have just read in the last year us grants memoirs I got off the internet I was looking for a quote and as grant the later the head of the Union Army was then a lieutenant says of the Mexican War one of the most unjust Wars ever waged by a larger country against a smaller in which we imitated the aggressive the grandis meant of the European monarchies and look his whole memoirs on the web so there is a lot of interesting stuff in that including the statement I regret that I lacked the moral courage to resign from the Army during that war when he was a lieutenant at that point so Thoreau is saying though that he was a lieutenant so Thoreau was saying when is disobedience to civil authority a duty or agitation which course Thoreau says quote as when a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army end quote when quote ours is the invading army now the regime in Iraq is about as bad as Bush says it is a real tyranny but actually not only as civilians do not deserve to be killed by us in coming weeks or months 17 18 year old 20 year old draftees in the Iraqi army have not done anything the sentences them to capital punishment by us it's not if I didn't see we would all be murder what do you do about it well he said he went to jail his point is this says what civilians can do what you need is disobedience quote like that of quote a soldier who refuses to serve in an unjust war when I read that sentence I ask myself and if anybody knows I was they tell me was there draft resistance was there resistance by soldiers in the Civil War as and a Mexican War actually somebody told me I raised that question the other night in Seattle and somebody told me that there's just been a documentary and a movie starring Tom Berger about two battalions of Irish Americans who were not immigrants they were earlier Americans of Irish who had who loved this country they were immigrants I guess but they were American citizens who joined the Mexican army and fought as the st. Patrick's parade for the Mexican army because they sympathize with the independence of a country that was freeing itself that you know fighting against an elder invasion I never heard of this anybody else ever hear this how come have you seen the movie or something or no really seriously huh can I ask somebody tell me where did you hear it very good okay well I'm 71 I never how many people have never heard that okay I'm not along there that wasn't a piece of history that I got and anyway he says the soldier refused to serve in his state of Massachusetts he claimed such a soldier was applauded by many applauded by many but not imitated out of quote the thousands who are his italics in opinion of his opposed to slavery and to the war who yet in effect do nothing to end them they hesitate and they regret and sometimes they petition but they do nothing in earnest and with effect they will wait well disposed for others to remedy the evil that they may no longer have it to regret at most they give only a cheap vote and then he said votes against the president by the way are never cheap for a politician and I am very appreciative of the people gave that vote and I think we should give them our appreciate Barbara Lee Pete start all the other people from this administration Barbara Boxer should be told who okay great if you know the names let them know the people who've just called out the name given your name to those representatives and said we will work for you we'll help you we'll give money to your campaign you're doing the right thing and then send I had this idea the other day you can send a cheque to Barbara Boxer and it occurred to me sending a fax of that check to Dianne Feinstein and say I think it's a good idea by the way and and say this money went to Barbara Boxer with all my heart because she is protecting the Constitution and what you just did is not the way to run for any any office here and unless you get straight and I will explain that in one moment I will be working to defeat you as a Democrat in the primaries and others and these are the weeks in which politicians hear that two weeks before an election okay so he says then he said thorough and this was the words that just changed my life anyway a month later cast your whole vote not a strip of paper merely but your whole influence a minority is powerless when it conforms to the majority it is not even a minority then but it is irresistible when it clogs by its hole wait a month within a month of that I met young Americans at a war resisters League conference in Haverford Pennsylvania who are on their way to prison that I didn't know they were on their way to prison until I heard them say it Randi Keeler this particular person I just become admiring him what had seen of him at this conference and thinking what a a good American he was I was glad the foreigners were meeting in a lot of it was an international conference a lot of people who I heard him say that he was the last male masked man left in the wars estrus office in San Francisco because all the others were now in prison where he said I'm glad to say I will soon be joining them for refusing to give his change of address to the draft card refusing to cooperate with the draft not because he thought that would end the war but because he and all the others the 5,000 who went to prison during that trade the 50,000 who risked prison I mean were in legal proceedings 50,000 were in legal proceedings probably half a million or more risked that without getting renown for things those people rather than going to Canada I'm going to Sweden rather than going into the Texas Air Reserve or whatever to stay out of Vietnam I don't put those in the same category by the way rather than all the like Chaney our vice president has spent the war years in a secure location in Wyoming like all those people these guys went to prison to send a message to people like me that there was more I could do that I had yet done that there was an obligation there to do what you could all they had at 19 and 20 and 21 they weren't senators they weren't former GSA teens either they didn't have secret documents all they had was their lives and their freedom they gave those they put that on the line non-violently truthfully and I got that message I I won't go through the story it's in here but I can tell you I I heard Randy Keeler saying that it came as a shock to me that the best thing this young American could do with his life was to go to prison I thought my country has come to this I went to a men's room when I sat on the floor and cried just hysterically almost for a couple of hours sounds like an exaggeration I wasn't there for a couple hours just crying and thinking my country has come to this it's come to this we are eating our young both on the barricades and in Vietnam or wasting them we're eating them up and after thinking that washing my face and then crying some morning I thought okay what can I do now that I'm ready to go to prison as they were and I did a number of things from then on most of which didn't involve legal risk I thought the Pentagon Papers was probably one of the lesser effective things I could do because it was just history but I didn't have current documents to give so it was all I had and I put that out thinking would send me to prison but I was doing other things as well the key thing was which we're facing right now what more can we do to avert this war which could lead to nuclear weapons being used within as soon as that invasion starts if tenet says we lose our gamble tenet says it's a gamble if we lose the gamble and Saddam does cause significant casualties among our troops or Israeli people with chemical or biological weapons our president and sharone in Israel have promised the words they use annihilation of Iraq in that case they use terrorism against I mean they use weapons of mass destruction against them we kill their children we kill their people that's the threat but I don't think it's a bluff and it could happen might not happen could happen that's the risk we're taking first use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki first attacks as soon as that invasion happens which if there's a suitable provocation could be like next week or could be early December and which is to say that Saddam's possible nuclear weapons some years from now or North Korea there are not even as comparably as dangerous to us as the weapons we possess in our threatening right now the weapons that Israel possesses I mean right now or India's and Pakistan's were following our example and threatening first use against each other and some of Saddam giving al-qaida weapons because we attacked him al-qaeda getting weapons from Russia's loosely stored weapons at this point all those are real risks enormous ly worse which are going to be made worse by this force so we really have to ask ourselves what do we do when we live in a country with a poor president is acting like a king and not just like a king like an emperor or an empire so the only good what do you do that's the challenge okay well you know more than any of us are doing more than I'm doing more than you're doing what more but I think what's needed is creation creativity imagination I was thinking this afternoon I thought that of in 68 the Paris when the students took to the barricades in Paris in part to protest the Vietnam War by the way to Marlys to go to the government they sprayed very interesting crappy tea on the walls one of them was all power to the imagination another one was be realistic attempt the impossible well people will say it's impossible to stop this war on its tracks right now actually I heard my friend dick talk on this campus couple hours ago pointing out people said it was impossible that South Africa would have a nonviolent transition to democracy some of you're too young to remember I'll tell you was impossible impossible that the Berlin wall would come down I know no one foresaw that impossible that East Europe would get freedom not violently so we have as Fox said to change the conventional wisdom on what's possible the reason I put I'll take one two minutes sorry the reason I put the first chapters on the web or wanted to is because they deal with the current situation the period in 64 I mean their relative analogy the current period in in 64 the current situation is like that in 64 before the bombs started falling the time when his Fred said we could have chosen the president was making a choice others could have made a choice if they'd been informed I want there to be more information out there for I was saying John ashbrook the other day said of just yesterday had this headline while I was just in the minutes before I was on KCET which broadcast this tonight the headline which they hadn't seen yet on KCTS Ashcroft plans stiff punishment for those who leaked secrets in other words for people who did what I did well I had been on every occasion that I speak spoken now which must be 40 times in the last couple weeks said if you know people in the government if I'm speaking to anybody in the government who knows as I did in 64 that the president is lying to the public lying us into a wrong war a reckless war dangerous for a wrongful war if you know that and it turns out the CIA and the Defense Department are filled with people who know that and I said and if you have the documentary evidence of that then I encourage you to consider doing what I wish I had done in 1964 1965 go to Congress and the press and tell the truth with documents I didn't do that till 69 so I said don't do what I did don't wait till the bombs are falling consider doing it now so when I saw this headline last night on KCT just before I got on the air I said okay in my life I don't like to tell people to take risks and he's talking about the risks they're taking that I don't take so I said Ashcroft says the only problem in prosecuting these people is that it's you need it's hard to find out very hard to track down the source of a leak they have to use lie detectors they have to do that I said look this book that I held up in camera I said everything in it was secret or top secret at the time and a lot of it has never been declassified and I will point out the parts and I did some that I believed as far as I know are still classified and have this punishment and in effect I said Ashcroft does not need to give me a lie detector test to find out who wrote this book and what the secrets are and let's get on with the prosecution and this time we'll take it up to the Supreme Court it didn't go that last time because the president took so many crimes against me to stop me from putting out more information that I'd ended the trial but more importantly as Fred was saying it did lead to his own downfall and possible ending of the war so I said okay this time let's test what you say let's go up to the Supreme Court and I'm saying to all of you creative ways pressure this time a lesson from Congress from the annual event last time pressure on Congress to get with it there's going to be a lame-duck session now the people who wouldn't let senator Byrd who was casting his whole vote against this war and using his power as a senator to the extent of his ability he wanted to filibuster and 75 senators including all those presidential candidates and carry any other and Dianne Feinstein but not Barbara Boxer voted to stop that debate and stop him so they could get on with their election and get on with the war they can filibuster again they can filibuster they can stop what the president wants what them for them they can hold hearings of the kind that have not yet been held ever against this war Biden refused to call scott ritter who is casting his whole vote new hero of mine along with barbara Lee who was along stood on this one year ago and who did what they could and what we can do is tell them that's what we want from you do what you can not a cheap vote one way or the other just but everything you can do to inform the public to block this and so forth to postpone this swarm and well that's what's up to us now so let's roll okay thank you [Applause] hi thank you [Applause] [Music] that is a hard one but in Iraq when you really look at it and you realize that what he's saying can't be true Cheney can't believe that we're doing this to make Iraq a democracy and in a sense that what I've just said goes against what I learned in the Pentagon the Ellsberg principle which is anyone can be as dumb as he has to be to keep his job but then I asked myself can Cheney really believe that and I say no no I don't rely and the president so what are they really doing you have to speculate but in this case it isn't too hard there's a number of reasons one oil to oil three oil for Israel and not not for the election I would say and five maybe not Israel but 500 oil somebody said you can't say that too often if you're looking at these guys and the it isn't by the way that they think they're doing that to get back in a corporation's good graces or something that they used to work for that Halliburton will get a lot of construction money which which it will which it will but that's not why he he thinks he's doing it and it's not really why he is doing it the problem with these guys from the perspective they come from these oil men is that they can't perceive a difference between the interests of Aramco and of the other oil companies and the US interests so they're doing it for the US and it just happens from their experience to require the u.s. to control the oil reserves of the whole world not just Iraq we keep hearing about the second-largest oil reserves Saudis were under our thumb pretty long but they've been getting away so we have to nail down the eastern half of Saudi Arabia a lot better than its controls now Iran very definitely some of the Gulf states Kuwait isn't being entirely friendly now Caspian why is I just read today what's what's going on right now terrorism real terrorism by the Chechens against in Moscow as we speak hostages are being held that started again when Putin decided to get real tough as a way of holding on to Chechnya a great way to end terrorism as we found the way Sharon has found you know the way to end terrorism is you get real tough and they can't stand it anymore so they stop actually that isn't good thinking but you have to decide you know there's something wrong with his perspective there or I see a headline here tonight we've just had the sniper we've just had a sniper in here and headline furniture in the USA today Democrats backing away from gun control right for for election reasons very responsible very very clever way to deal with the sniper problem and so on the oil thing they want to control Oh Russia why is what you're doing this so USA Today I think it was I just happened to be reading it on a plane on the train says well the Russians have to hold on to Chechnya which had been proclaimed its independence when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 and so Putin has to go back why back well because it's their path to the oil of the Caspian Sea has to go through that Afghanistan the oil and so phones Allah so their interests as they see them do not justify this war they know America wouldn't agree with that so they they have to lie but it isn't enough just to expose the lives as as somebody said once the problem is not just to understand the world but to change it in this case by the way media around the world and even in this country are doing a lot of critical stuff if you know where to look for it it isn't all in any one city there's a internet site now called anti-war calm which I think has terrific daily I rely on a daily supremum on the road here for editorials and news from all over the country and the english-speaking world it's all in English but Japan times India times very good Pakistani papers even and but but in particular the British papers the Guardian the independent Bob Fiske in the independent agrees and so you can get a lot of very good information from that there's also a site called common dreams dot org the first one is anti-war calm I don't know if I said that right and common dreams one word dot org again editorials especially and commentaries and analyses by the way the answer to your question about the oil frankly that's my best answer now and I would not have gotten that from the New York Times in fact but from from the internet analyses from a I think that particular one first opened my eyes to their broad plan for global domination in their own words from the Irish Herald that I saw on anti-war calm so that's you have to start from what your Uncle John told you do not believe what these do not take for granted or even is much more of a start what the official say and unfortunately much of the time the mainstream media will not go very far beyond what the official says but if you look for it now with the internet you don't have to be noam chomsky you who just personally reads every newspaper in the world somehow but you can on the internet you really can't find a lot of that stuff it's occurred to me just recently when I read this stuff about what's happening in the last month the reasons given by the Bush administration the new Bush administration for backing away from this is refusing to rather sign this International Criminal Court is supposedly because our soldiers would be in danger of being brought up before it as having done acts of illegal acts of war crimes right and now I'm not saying this rhetorically or not at or at all this is not a joke it's occurred to me in the last month all that time they've been opposing that our international criminal court these guys knew where they were going on Iraq well before 9/11 there's this whole issue of did they know about 9/11 or what do they know but what I'm saying is the Iraq operation had nothing to do with 9/11 nothing to do with terrorism nothing to do it is a plan that people like Richard Perle who's the head of this defense policy Advisory Rumsfeld Cheney have wanted to go over after Iraq for ten years and more they believe that Bush's father was mistaken not to invade Iraq and get control of that oil and they want to correct that for various reasons so that's been around for a long time that was always going to be aggression and it suddenly occurred to me wait a minute all the time they were opposing this they knew what they were going to do here they weren't worried about American soldiers being brought up they were worried about themselves being indicted not that they would be taken to the Hague like Eichmann or so or even slobodan milosevic no chance of that but the people who have indicted or tried to indict or question Henry Kissinger are all over the world now in their case for going after Bush Cheney Rumsfeld Wolfowitz pearl and if he gets his fingerprints all over these plans as it's likely Powell even though he almost certainly opposes this war just like my boss McNaughton opposed Viet and I was against Vietnam I asked during my trial whether I could use a Nuremberg defense and fought who spoke this afternoon who's teaching I think part of knowledge Santa Barbara partner the point of my raising the defense was not to get off it it never been used successfully the defense being by the way that I had an obligation to oppose what I perceived to be an illegal war so putting out the truth about it was you know an obligation now the chance of that had any weight where the judge or jury was zero but the hope was that we could get the issue raised by calling you know by raising that defense we could get the issue of whether this was an illegal war in the court even if we lost them so it's it has never been done okay now with an International Criminal Court existing without our help Kissinger does have to watch where he travels know and I think Cheney Rumsfeld oh is so to say in Powell if he goes along with it and Bush are actually a subject there right now doing what people were hanged at in part Oh China I'm not in favor of capital punishment by the way for anybody for various reasons let's just say they were convicted in Nuremberg for among other things conspiring to wage aggressive war this government is guilty in my opinion but it's certainly subject to be indicted of that at this moment and all of us all the people in Congress who voted to support that Congress cannot make that war illegal cannot make a war legal under the UN Charter which is the highest law of our land by ordering the President to do it the UN alone if they if we don't extort out of Russia and China and France if we don't extort authorization for this as I'd say the war will be illegal well does that mean that if we have the the court does that mean these people would have to fear being convicted or having to stand in court like Milosevic no but they don't want to face that charge and frankly I think there's a practical reason why they should worry about that Americans don't want to be aggressors just as they don't want to be murderers and they don't want to be torturers and when things get defined by their real names that way you'll find people doing things they wouldn't have done otherwise just as I did and as a matter of fact maybe we should I'm sorry closer this because I've gone on so long let me say something here that something people can do the demonstrations they can do the lobbying they can do everything what we need is something more than business as usual at this point we need extraordinary we can't measure people by the standards of the past and what I've learned at 71 is this the people doing the crimes the murders the genocides the massacres are not actually extraordinary people whether they're Americans or Serbs or row London's or whoever I think now all humans are capable onto some circumstances of if not directly will actually in some cases wielding knives against throats of children and kids extraordinary hard to imagine but I think everybody's Cagle or at least of keeping our mouth shut when we know it's happening and we know it's wrong we're capable of turning our eyes away from it of ignoring it that's a human capability but the other side of that is for everybody I've come to realize to believe everyone is capable of heroism of compassion under the right circumstances with the right example of doing things they didn't know they could do before of writing to the situation doing the right thing despite what they may have done in the past and what they may do again in the future but there is that capability for achieving the impossible and of transcending what we've been and as my sister-in-law has been saying for many years of evolving of using our human capacity for self transformation and transformation of our ourselves not without risk and were capable of taking those risks when the time demands people like Byrd who spent 1964 for some 30 hours filibustering against the Civil Rights Act to block that something that not one senator did against the Vietnam War greville tried of Gasca tried to filibuster was blocked and that night by a trick just the way Byrd was blocked by closure and that night he convened a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on buildings and grounds and Fisheries of the government Operations Committee and he read the Pentagon Papers into the record at a time when the president was still saying that is illegal it is crime it's what Rumsfeld is saying and Bushell we will prosecute anybody who did it and so forth he later got them published the beacon press that I just spoke to with the last remains of my votes the other night I found they were having a meeting in Boston and I rushed over to that after the book signing so I could say to them to give them my thanks for their putting out those papers getting prosecuted for it or other civil action against them which almost bankrupted the beacon press of that time so people can do this and we can do this we can do better than we've done and we can do better than this country has been doing thank you [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: University of California Television (UCTV)

Views: 153,859

Rating: 4.7397261 out of 5

Keywords: Vietnam, Pentagon, communism, defense, Daniel, Ellsberg

Id: OF8nuvGyngU

Length: 88min 32sec (5312 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 07 2008