Persecution of Truth-Tellers Part V.V
The Leak and the Media when they actually stood for something
This is part 2 of 2, of the story of the persecution of Daniel Ellsberg by the liars in the Nixon White House. The first half tells the tale of how we got here. This part tells, well read on and you’ll see. This story, I’ll say again, should be a parable of the ages in a Liberal Democracy, without it, we may have fallen to dictatorship. Every child should know of Dan. He was a beautiful soul. And should be regarded with the like of MLK, Malcolm X, Lincoln, and other heroes of the ages. If you missed part 1 catch it here.
The Leak: Execution and Immediate Aftermath
In 1971, when Daniel Ellsberg arrived at a federal court in Boston, a journalist asked if he was concerned about the prospect of going to prison for leaking a 7,000-page top-secret history of the Vietnam War. Ellsberg responded with a question of his own: “Wouldn’t you go to prison to help end this war?”
The decision to leak the Study was not made lightly. Ellsberg understood the risks involved, including potential imprisonment and the end of his career. Ellsberg contacted his friend, Tony Russo, who was an ex-colleague at RAND and told him about the study and what he wanted to do. And Tony leapt off the cliff with him. Tony had a friend with a Xerox machine, and they began photocopying the report in October 1969. It was a long redundant job; at one point he brought his son to help. When questioned about this he said, “If I was going away for a long time, I wanted him to know it was for doing the right thing. And I hadn’t gone crazy.”
Dan at first approached Congress with the documents, targeting Senators who had been critical of the war even when he hadn’t been but, although they may have been critical, they were afraid of being labeled “unpatriotic”.
Patricia asked me how sure I was that it was worth putting out the papers, with the likelihood of prison for me. She said, “These senators don't seem to think it's worth the risk. Why are you so sure that they're wrong about that and you're right?"
I said, “Well, I can't be sure about that. They might be right. No one can say, and I don't know, what the effect will be. The problem is, I'm the only one who's read these documents. They haven't. So, I can't go by their judgment. I have to rely on my own."
But now that we were married, the prospect of my going to prison didn't affect me alone. Patricia deserved to have a voice in that decision, and she couldn't really do that when she didn't know what was in the papers. Up till now I had deliberately kept her from reading them. I wanted her to be able to say that she hadn't known what was in them. But if she was to keep going through this with me now, she needed to have a better understanding of what it was about. The only way to get that was, for her to read some of this material even if that increased her own risk. I thought the time had come for her to read some of the studies. She agreed.
After she read, and seen the lies, and the callous language of the people who were supposed to be in charge of our country, she knew what he had to do, and told him, “You have to put these out.”
The Press
Dan had written an article in the New York Review of Books on war crimes in Vietnam which drew the attention of Thomas Oliphant from The Boston Globe who interviewed Dan in February of 1971, where he mentioned the Pentagon Papers in passing and when the story came out the headline on Oliphant's story March 7, 1971, read: “Only 3 have READ SECRET INDOCHINA REPORT; ALL URGE SWIFT PULLOUT.” In his lead he described the secret review of the history of the war ordered by McNamara and said, "Several individuals in the government at the time read parts of it, but as far as can be determined, only three men read every word of it. Significantly, every one of them today is of the opinion that the United States should withdraw from Indochina unilaterally and swiftly. Moreover, every one of them, before deciding to leave government service…. held sensitive jobs during the formative months of the Nixon Administration." This is the first time he had mentioned the papers to a reporter.
Earlier in March of 1971, he had decided to approach Neil Sheehan, a reporter for The New York Times whom he trusted to handle the sensitive material responsibly. He’d stuck out with Fulbright and McGovern. And even they had recommended the Times. He didn’t turn them over right away, so Neil, afraid that Dan was a loose cannon and would lose the story, broke into his room, took them, got them copied and returned them like nothing happened. There’s actually a much larger story to this. I’ll include it below. Here’s Neil Sheehan’s story of how he got the papers, this story was “Not to be published until he passed away 2021.” As an agreement Neil made with the writer.
Just a note on the story above. It’s a great story. It’s out from behind the paywall so you don’t need a NYT subscription to read it. Neil tends to express a negative opinion about Dan. That he was “only looking out for himself” and ‘“Sooner or later, I was afraid he was going to run into a politician who’d go right to the Justice Department,” That person would get on the phone to the attorney general “and say, ‘Hey, The New York Times has got some kind of big secret study, they got it from Dan Ellsberg.” But as you’ll learn further on in the story the NYT were shut down almost immediately and Daniel Ellsberg acted. By coordinating with the Washington Post and 17 others, the story did live on. It is however entirely understandable for Neil to not want this story released until after his passing. Neil comes off as slightly bitter and a bit grumbly. And Dan spent his whole life defying the “Powers that be”. That’s who Daniel Ellsberg was. The story could be 100% true from his perception. It’s just the most negative interpretation. Which is kind of an element of the persecution that people who tell the truth face.
On June 13, 1971, after months of stalling and diversion to Dan, and a company wide effort behind the scenes, firing and hiring of company attorneys, among many other struggles, The New York Times finally published the first of the 4-part series based on the Pentagon Papers, igniting a firestorm of controversy. The public was furious, Nixon was worried, the White House would soon go into attack mode.
Kissinger Aide, Alexander Haig: Yes, sir, very significant. This goddamn New York Times exposé of the most highly classified documents of the [Vietnam] war.
President Nixon: Oh, that. I see.
Haig: That—
President Nixon: I didn’t read the story. But you mean that was leaked out of the Pentagon?
Haig: Sir, the whole study that was done for [Robert S.] McNamara and then carried on after McNamara left by [Clark M.] Clifford and the peaceniks over there. This is a devastating security breach of the greatest magnitude of anything I’ve ever seen.
President Nixon: Well, what’s being done about it, then? I mean, I didn’t— Did we know this was coming out?
Haig: No, we did not, sir.
President Nixon: Yeah.
Haig: There are just a few copies of this—
President Nixon: Well, what about the—
Haig: —12-volume report.
President Nixon: Well, what about the—let me ask you this, though: what about the—what about [Melvin R.] Laird? What’s he going to do about it? Is—
Haig: Well, I talked with him [unclear]—
President Nixon: Now, I’d just start right at the top and fire some people. I mean, whoever—whatever department it came out of, I’d fire the top guy.
Haig: Yes, sir. Well, I’m sure it came from Defense, and I’m sure it was stolen at the time of the turnover of the administration.
President Nixon: Oh, it’s two years old, then.
Haig: I’m sure it is, and they’ve been holding it for a juicy time, and I think they’ve thrown it out to affect Hatfield–McGovern; that’s my own estimate. But it’s something that—it’s a mixed bag. It’s a tough attack on [John F.] Kennedy. It shows that the genesis of the war really occurred [President Nixon acknowledges] during the ’61 period.
President Nixon: Yeah, that’s Clifford. [chuckling] Yeah, I see.
Haig: And it’s brutal on President [Lyndon] Johnson. They’re going to end up in a massive gut fight in the Democratic Party on this thing.
President Nixon: Are they?
Haig: It’s a—there’s some very—
President Nixon: But also, massive against the war.
Haig: Against the war.
President Nixon: But it’s a Pentagon study, huh?
Haig: Done by McNamara. When I came back from Vietnam, he asked me to do the military portion, and I refused because I knew what it was going to be.
President Nixon: Who in the Pentagon? I will fire the SOBs.
Haig: They are all gone now. Clifford, [Morton H.] Halperin, [Leslie H.] Gelb.
President Nixon: How did they get the classified material out?
Haig: I don’t know. It has 4,000 highly classified documents from the [Dwight D.] Eisenhower days on through the end of the Johnson administration.
President Nixon: They won’t affect Hatfield–McGovern, this sort of thing. I would like to know if there are any other people of this type around.
Haig: I would suppose not at this point, but you can’t be sure. Everybody is attacked in this thing. [Henry Cabot] Lodge [Jr.] is brutally attacked.
President Nixon: What do they say about the [Ngô Đinh] Diệm thing?
Haig: They haven’t touched on it yet, but I am sure they have it.
President Nixon: That attacks Kennedy hard. They won’t put that out, huh?
Haig: It’s the most incredible thing. All of the White House papers, [Walt W.] Rostow papers, communications with ambassadors, JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] studies.
President Nixon: We have been more careful, haven’t we? We have kept a lot from State, I know, and enough from Defense.
Haig: Your White House papers are in very good shape.
President Nixon: That’s why we don’t tell them anything.
Haig: Actually, we are clean. Let them tear themselves apart. I told [Ronald L.] Ron Ziegler to keep out of that. It will keep Vietnam in the headlines for weeks. They are going to run a series on it.
President Nixon: Are they?
Haig: Yes, they are. It was really a sabotage act to McNamara. He wanted to have all the documents pulled together and minimize the analysis. As soon as he left, the peaceniks in the Pentagon got started.
President Nixon: Mainly nonmilitary people?
Haig: Yes, but there was a military guy in the study. They tried to show covert escalation without congressional liaison. Nothing has been said about what the enemy has been doing in the meantime.
President Nixon: They only carry it up to the time we came in.
Haig: Yes, sir. Nothing of ours. I told Ron he should take the position you inherited this thing and you have been trying to wind it down.
President Nixon: Yes, and to accomplish our goal. Let’s say, “Apparently this is a fight within the Democratic Party and we are not going to get into it.”
Haig: I have people coming in to analyze the report now.
President Nixon: Do you think the Times has it all?
Haig: I think they have.
President Nixon: Can we allow this sort of thing?
Haig: No. I think this is most serious.
President Nixon: Let’s cut off the Times ourselves for doing this thing. Don’t you think so?
Haig: Yes, sir.
President Nixon: Where is Henry [A. Kissinger]? Has he gone to the West Coast?
Haig: Yes, he will call as soon as he gets there.
President Nixon: That’s all right. I don’t need to . . . when will he get back?
Haig: He will be back tomorrow.
President Nixon: I think we ought to be awful rough on the New York Times in terms of future leaks. They can’t be trusted. OK, fine, Al.
One of the bombshells of the paper that angered the public was in one paragraph they describe “70% of the focus is to ‘save face’”. When Americans with family at war, dying or being maimed or broken mentally, hear that the majority of focus is ‘Saving Face’ they were rightly furious.
The following Monday a telegram was received from John Mitchell, Attorney General for Nixon. It read, “Stop Publication Immediately! If you don’t, we’re going to take appropriate action.” The Times continued.
James Goodale, General Counsel-NYT:
What in God's name have we been fighting for in this country for 2 or 300-years, to have the right to speak, and right to publish, the right to think, against a threat by the Government, if all we’re gonna do is give it up because someone sent you a telegram.
Nixon’s comments to this:
Now listen here. Printing “Top Secret” information, I don’t care how you feel about the war, whether they’re for it or against it, you can’t and should not do it. It’s an attack on the integrity of government. And by God I’m gonna fight that son-of-a-bitchin’ paper! They don’t know what’s gonna hit em’ now.
Gotta love how Nixon taped everything so we can get actual quotes.
The following day a Federal Judge, at request of the White House, halts the NYT series on Vietnam. The first time in American history that the federal government obstructed the free press. Unfortunately, it won’t be the last.
From Secrets:
Tuesday morning the third installment appeared. Attorney General John Mitchell sent a letter to the New York Times asking it to suspend publication and to hand over its copy of the study. The Times declined, and that afternoon the Justice Department filed a demand, the first in our country's history, for an injunction in federal district court in New York. The judge granted a temporary restraining order while he considered the injunction.
For the first time since the Revolution, the presses of an American newspaper were stopped from printing a scheduled story by federal court order. The First Amendment, saying “Congress shall pass no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” had always been held above all to forbid *“prior restraint”* of newspaper or book publication by federal or state government, including courts and the executive branch. The Nixon Justice Department was making a pioneering experiment, asking federal courts to violate or ignore the Constitution or in effect to abrogate the First Amendment. It was the boldest assertion during the cold war that “national security” overrode the constitutional guarantees of the Bill of Rights.
*Prior restraint being that the government cannot, under any circumstance restrain your speech before the fact. Even if it’s something you can be prosecuted for later, such as violence or incitement or in this case state secrets. They cannot stop you before you say it.
A friend of Neil Sheehan’s, Dunn Gifford contacted Dan. In their conversation Dunn told Dan that now that the NYT was shutdown, he should give a copy to The Washington Post so that they could publish them. Rightly, he was worried that the injunction might stand, and these revelations never be published in full. Dan reaction was, “I would never do that.” He had gotten over his irritation with the Times for putting him off and taking the documents without him knowing. He was so happy with how good of a job they did with the story. He felt Neil or the Times might win a Pulitzer Prize for this, and he wouldn’t want to undercut them by going to the Post.
Gifford pointed out that what was at stake here was much larger than how much credit the Times or Neil got. He believed it was essential to keep the momentum going, to maintain a continuity of public interest in the contents of the papers. Who knew how long it would be before the Times could resume publication? We couldn't even be sure that the injunction would be denied! This could be the end of the revelations—unless other newspapers were prepared to pick up the torch, in defiance of the Justice Department and the administration.
Thanks to administration's decision to treat the publication as a national crisis, and justifying unprecedented efforts to censor the press, the contents of the Pentagon Papers were getting amazing attention. Newspaper readers had to assume that the history the executive branch was so anxious to suppress was unusually worth their reading. I had always believed that the full impact of this story depended on the full sweep of the history being available. It wasn't any one page or volume or individual revelation that was so dramatic, it was the tenacity and nature of the patterns of deceit and recklessness and cynicism that were ultimately stunning. For that to register on any one reader or the country as a whole, much more had to come out.
The first three installments in the Times had dealt with the Johnson administration, but a teaser in Tuesday's paper had indicated that the next installment would focus on Eisenhower. I didn't want the history course to be short-circuited just there. The more I thought about it, the more Gifford's proposal appealed to me.
Ellsberg contacted Ben Bagdikian, Editor at The Washington Post. When he talks to Ben, he tells him:
Dan: If I get you the Pentagon Papers, will you print them?
Ben: You damn right I’ll print them.
Ben got the go-ahead from his managing editor, Ben Bradlee, who added, when Bagdikian called him from the airport, that if he got the goods and they weren't in the next day's newspaper, the Washington Post would have a new executive editor. Bagdikian checked into his Boston motel under the name Medford and, as he told me later, was dismayed when the clerk said he had a message for a Mr. Bagdikian, who was expected about the same time from Washington. Did that have anything to do with him? Apparently I had forgotten the cover name; I didn't have my friend's instincts. Ben identified himself, saying that he wrote under the name Medford. As he got to his room, he got a call from me to go to a Cambridge address to pick up the material and to tell the clerk to let some friends into his room while he was out.
When he came back in a taxi with one of two identical cardboard boxes he'd been shown in a Cambridge cellar, he found Patricia and me waiting for him in his motel room. I had meant for him to bring the second box as well; I had to call Cambridge, and before long someone delivered it to his room. Meanwhile we had been going through the first messy box of papers. It had nearly a full set of volumes, but they were out of sequence, and because of our several stages of “declassifying” with cardboard strips, scissors, and paper cutter, there were very few page numbers. Most of the numbers had coincided with a top secret marking that we'd removed. The second box, when it arrived, had the same contents. It reflected a condition I wanted to make on giving the material to him, which at first Bagdikian was very reluctant to accept. I wanted him to give the second box to Mike Gravel if the senator from Alaska was willing to use them. Ben's sense of professionalism conflicted with his acting as any kind of intermediary to Congress. As a layman I wasn't very sympathetic about that problem, under the unusual circumstances.
There was a vote happening in Congress for a new “Draft” and Dan knew Senator Mike Gravel was planning on filibustering the draft vote and Dan had contacted him and asked if he would like to use the Pentagon Papers as material to read into the record on the floor for the filibuster.
The Post picked up where the Times left off. With the installment on Eisenhower. They received an injunction the following day from Nixon’s Attorney General.
Dan would need other newspapers to join in or this could be as far as this story makes it.
At this point is when Patricia and Dan see their apartment on the Evening News. FBI agents knocking on the door. Neighbors asking “What’s going on?" “We’re looking for Daniel Ellsberg for questioning about the leak of the Pentagon Papers.” They can no longer go back home.
They get a hotel for a few days under false names. Dan didn’t want to be arrested before the story got out. They didn’t have as much as a toothbrush with them. Everyday following this they changed motels and changed names. This is how you would hide in the 70’s. Don’t use your real name and don’t go home. There was also allies in the Anti-war movement that helped put them up many nights.
Watching the news on the morning of Thursday, June 17, we soon learned why the FBI had chosen that day to call on our apartment. Late the night before, while we were working away in the motel trying to put the papers in some sequence, a journalist named Sidney Zion appea2red on the Barry Gray talk show in New York and announced that I was the source for the Times of the Pentagon Papers.
The legal battle that ensued was swift and intense. The case, New York Times Co. v. United States was heading to the Supreme Court, The Post was enjoined almost immediately, meanwhile the Pentagon Papers would continue being published in a different paper every couple days. Dan was committed to continuing the story to make a difference in the war, that was currently still escalating, and the news media was dedicated to upholding freedom of the press, guaranteed by the Constitution, and detrimental to holding power to account. These small newspapers had to see, if they can do it to the NYT and The Washington Post, they could do it to us.
For thirteen days we were subject to what was described in the press as “the largest FBI manhunt since the Lindbergh kidnapping.” FBI agents were reported interviewing people in so many parts of the world that I began to suspect that some were abusing the opportunity to take junkets. We were in Cambridge the whole time, in five different locations, moving sometimes after one night. The arrangements were made by several key friends, who drew on their own friends among graduate students and others in the neighborhood. It's notable that all these people cooperated in the face of widespread publicity that the FBI was hunting for me. In theory, they just wanted to question me, but it was clear that at any moment a warrant could be issued for my arrest, and our hosts could have been indicted for harboring a fugitive. It was a time in our country's history when you could reach out to almost any young person and say, “I’m doing an action against the war. It may help, it may be important, but it could be dangerous for you. Can you help?” One friend told us later that she simply called acquaintances from antiwar rallies and other activities and told them, “I need your apartment for a few days. We'll take good care of it. Please don't ask me any questions.” No one asked, and no one turned her down. To this day I've never known their names.
On one occasion, “Mr. Boston” went downstairs and across the street to a phone booth on the corner, about fifty yards from the apartment building where we were staying that afternoon. He talked for about ten minutes to my friend Lloyd Shearer in Los Angeles, relaying some questions I had for Shearer, who was giving me advice on whom to deal with in the media. We happened to be looking out the front window when he left the booth and came back. Just as he entered the front door, perhaps twelve minutes from the time he placed the call, four police cars converged on the phone booth from two directions. Brakes screeched, and police jumped out with guns drawn, though the booth was now empty. Evidently Shearer's line was tapped. We all dropped to the bare floor below the level of the windows, which had no curtains, as the police began looking up and down the street. When they left, we arranged to spend the night somewhere else.
Dan’s unnamed ally “Mr. Boston” was pivotal in the distribution of the stories to the other small papers. This next section describes that.
The Press Strikes Back
Our friend "Mr. Boston" turned out to be very talented at clandestine operations. When he had first contacted Ben Bagdikian for me, some of his arrangements for communicating or passing on the documents struck some editors as being more elaborate than necessary, but they worked. The FBI wasn't able to intercept one transfer, as parts of the papers turned up in one spot after another across the country. It was also his idea to parcel out subsequent portions to one paper at a time. He recalls that my own first inclination, after the second injunction, was to dump the rest of it out to a number of papers at once, to make sure it all got out before I was stopped. He quickly persuaded me, from his own earlier experience working for a member of Congress, that it would be better to keep the story going by approaching one at a time, which he undertook to arrange. He deferred to me to pick the next outlet each day, and he made the contact and arranged the handover.
What made all this somewhat easier was that no one had to do a lot of negotiating to get a newspaper to agree. Nearly every major paper wanted to get in on the action — impressively, given the unprecedented legal actions and evident fury of the administration — and not one we approached turned down the opportunity. After the Washington Post was enjoined, the Boston Globe was an obvious choice for the next recipient, not so much because it was our local paper as because it had been one of the first and strongest to oppose the war. That was also true of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which I thought had earned the right to invite an injunction. (It received one, along with the Globe.) As Sanford Ungar has noted, it may be a coincidence that the only four newspapers that were enjoined, out of twenty that printed sections of the papers, were all strong critics of the Nixon administration and skeptical about the war. Others I picked on more idiosyncratic grounds. The L.A. Times, which I thought had also done good reporting on the war, was my former hometown newspaper; the Knight chain of eleven newspapers included my father’s town of Detroit; and the Christian Science Monitor was my father’s main paper (he sent me subscriptions to it for many years).
To stop the war over seas, Dan was casting “His whole vote”, his entire influence. For this the White House was doing all they could to stop the dissemination of the Pentagon Papers. They were doing their best to suppress the First Amendment and Freedom of the Press. For this, the press went to war, with the help of Daniel Ellsberg, against the Nixon White House, to uphold the press freedom guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. There was a war being fought, at home and abroad. Foreign and Domestic. But behind the scenes there was, what one might call, a dirty war, being mulled over just out of sight. More on that very soon.
Besides the papers that were releasing stories directly from the documents, this, the whole story was taking up front pages everywhere, nightly news, morning news. It had garnered more attention than Dan ever expected.
To recap: So far, we have an Ex-Pentagon-Analyst-Turned-Anti-War-Activist with a 7,000-page, Government-funded study exposing the Official Lies of four-White House Administrations being released to the biggest newspapers in America, and in the biggest violation of the Constitution by press censorship in the history of the United States, the White House is using the courts to stop publishing of these Pentagon Papers, as they are now known, and launched a nationwide manhunt of Daniel Ellsberg and comically declaring him “The Most Dangerous Man in America.” This was being cel, Dan chose CBS. Hoping for Walter Cronkite to be the interviewer, he was. How poetically perfect, Walter Cronkite vs Daniel Ellsberg, The Most Trusted man in America meets The Most Dangerous man in America. Here’s this passage from the book:
In the late afternoon of June 23, Cronkite and his crew arrived at a large house in Cambridge, where I was waiting for him. Parts of the interview were shown on the early evening news, with a late, half-hour version from ten-thirty to eleven that same night. In the body of the interview, I had an opportunity to present at some length to a prime-time national audience an understanding of Nixon's secret strategy and how it resembled what I had done in the Pentagon in 1964.
Some of the passages, including the opening and end of the program:
Cronkite [opening]: During the controversy, a single name has been mentioned most prominently as the possible source of the Times documents. Daniel Ellsberg, a former State Department and Pentagon planner, and of late something of a phantom figure, agreed today to be interviewed at a secret location, but he refused to discuss his role, if any, in the release of the documents. I asked him what he considers the most important revelations to date from the Pentagon documents.
Ellsberg: I think the lesson is that the people of this country can't afford to let the President run the country by himself, even foreign affairs, any more than domestic affairs, without the help of the Congress, without the help of the public....
Cronkite: Isn't this correcting of this problem of public information more in the character of the leaders in Washington than it is in anything that can be legislated?...
Ellsberg: I would disagree with that. It seems to me that the “leaders”—by whom, I think, you're referring to the executive officials, the Executive Branch of government—have fostered an impression that I think the rest of us have been too willing to accept over the last generation, and that is that the Executive Branch is the government, and that indeed they are leaders in a sense that may not be entirely healthy, if we're to still think of ourselves as a democracy. I was struck, in fact, by President Johnson's reaction to these revelations as “close to treason,” because it reflected to me this sense that what was damaging to the reputation of a particular administration, a particular individual, was in effect treason, which is very close to saying “I am the state.” And I think that quite sincerely many Presidents, not only Lyndon Johnson, have come to feel that. What these studies tell me is we must remember this is a self-governing country. We are the government. And in terms of institutions, the Constitution provides for separation of powers, for Congress, for the courts, informally for the press, protected by the First Amendment.... I think we cannot let the officials of the Executive Branch determine for us what it is that the public needs to know about how well and how they are discharging their functions....
Cronkite: How was [this study] kept a secret from the White House?
Ellsberg: The fact is that secrets can be held by men in the government whose careers have been spent learning how to keep their mouths shut. I was one of those.
Cronkite: The documentation being somewhat incomplete, “flawed history” is what some have said of it.
Ellsberg: It's a start. It's a beginning toward history. I would say it's an essential beginning, but it's only a beginning.... In the seven thousand pages of this study, I don't think there is a line in them that contains an estimate of the likely impact of our policy on the overall casualties among the Vietnamese or the refugees to be caused, the effects of defoliation in a n ecological sense. There's neither an estimate nor a calculation of past effects, ever. And the documents simply reflect the internal concerns of our officials. That says nothing more nor less than that our officials never did concern themselves with the effect of our policies on the Vietnamese.
Cronkite: How would you describe the men who do not have the same emotional reaction to reading this, to knowing these, being privy to these secrets, as you? Are they cold? Are they heartless? Are they villainous?
Ellsberg: The usual assumption, of course, the usual description of them is that they are among the most decent and respectable and responsible men that our society has to offer. It's a very plausible judgment, in terms of their background. And yet, having read the history, and I think others will join this, I can't help but feel that their decency, their humane feelings, are to be judged in part by the decisions they brought themselves to make, the reasons for which they did them, and the consequences. I'm not going to judge them. The evidence is here.
I'm sure this story is more painful for many people at this moment than for me, because of course it is familiar to me, having read it several times, but it must be painful for the American people now to read these papers—and there's a lot more to come—and to discover that the men to whom they gave so much respect and trust, as well as power, regarded them as contemptuously as they regarded our Vietnamese allies.
Cronkite: What about the immediate effect [of these revelations] on the war as of these days in June 1971?
Ellsberg: Yes, the war is going on. ... I hope the Senate will go much further. I hope that they discover that their responsibilities to their citizens, the citizens of this country and to the voters, do go beyond getting reelected, and that they're men, they're free men who can accept the responsibility of ending this war. My father had a favorite line from the Bible, which I used to hear a great deal when I was a kid: “The truth shall make you free.” And I hope that the truth that's out now—it's out in the press, it's out in homes, where it should be, where voters can discuss it—it's out of the safes, and there is no way, no way to get it back into the safes—I hope that truth will free us of this war. I hope that we will put this war behind us...in such a way that the history of the next 20 years will read nothing like the history of the last 20 years.
Friday, June 25th, U.S. Magistrate Venetta S. Tassopoulos, with the help of a couple unimportant informants, issued a warrant for the arrest of Daniel Ellsberg. He was contacted by his attorney Charlie Nesson with the bad news. He asked that Dan surrender immediately. Dan told him, “I can't do that. I still have some more copies of the papers to distribute.”
Charlie: If you don't turn yourself in, you'll be a fugitive.
Dan: Too bad. I'm not finished.
Charlie chewed that over and left to confer with Boudin.
Charlie: How long will it take you to get rid of the rest of the papers
Dan: A couple of days.
They called the Justice Department and tried out the idea, after checking it with me, that I would turn myself in immediately if Justice would guarantee that I would be released without bail over the weekend. As we expected, they did not get very far. Charlie called me back,
Charlie: When can you come in?
Dan: Monday morning.
Charlie called the U.S. attorney in Boston and told him that I would be surrendering on Monday morning, not till then.
The attorney said, ‘You know he can't do that.’
Charlie said, ‘Well, that's what he's going to do.’
There was a pause. The U.S. attorney said, ‘Oh, well, the FBI couldn't find him by then anyway.’
Charlie said to him, ‘You know, you're talking over a tapped line.’ That was the assumption my lawyers were going on, though they didn't actually know it.
‘You're kidding.’
‘No.’
The Justice Department official said, ‘Oh, God,’ and hung up.
Charlie relayed all this to me and said, ‘You've got two days.’
Dan managed to get the last of the papers out, to Newsday and the Christian Science Monitor, the last two on the list, by Sunday night. The next morning, Attorney Charlie Nesson showed up to accompany Dan and Patricia to his arraignment that morning in Federal court. They’d heard the FBI was desperate to pick him up somehow before court so as to seem like a flight risk. Also, you can imagine they were very embarrassed. Not sure how it was back then but today, if you run like that, make them look bad like that, they’ll take any chance they can to fuck you up. And there is no better way to appear in court than on your own, in your own clothes, on your own terms.
So, this is where we come to that famous moment in front of the courthouse, speaking to the press. If the FBI was still planning on arresting him before court, they didn’t stand a chance. He was completely blocked in by press and supporters there to show solidarity.
Dan: I did this clearly, at my own jeopardy, and I am prepared to answer to all consequences of these decisions.
Reporter: Dr. Ellsberg, do you have any concern for the possibility of going to prison for this?
Dan: Wouldn’t you go to prison to help end this war?
Dan was released later that day on his Own Recognizance. This was June 28th, 1971.
Nixon’s War, “The calls coming from inside…
Something I should address now. The famous story of the “Watergate Scandal” has recently received some discrediting. I haven’t dug into it extensively so I’m not sure which parts have turned out to be untrue. A few facts I have learned on this, it is true that Bob Woodward was a ‘Naval Intelligence Officer’ a year earlier and worked in the White House for the Nixon Administration before being assigned the White House beat, a prestigious position in the Journalism world, as a ‘Rookie Journalist’ for the “Washington Post”. And was given the BIGGEST story in journalism out of nowhere. According to some ‘Veteran Journalists’ this doesn’t happen. Another fact, Carl Bernstein, his partner on the story covered the bombshell exposé on “Project Mockingbird” and the CIA’s control of the media in Rolling Stone. Woodward’s source, the famous “Deep Throat” was high up in the FBI. All the plumbers except one were CIA employees, former and current. And my god, his books, they sure sound like the writing of a White House employee, not an adversarial journalist. That part is just how I feel, it doesn’t change this story one little bit. The war on the free press, Daniel Ellsberg, and the persecution of truth-tellers was alive and well and carried out by Richard Nixon.
H. R. Haldeman to President Nixon, Oval Office tapes, June 14, 1971, on the impact of the Pentagon Papers:
To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can't trust the government; you can't believe what they say; and you can't rely on their judgment. And the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it's wrong, and the president can be wrong.
Nixon had many conversations behind the scenes about Daniel Ellsberg, the Times and the Pentagon Papers. At the beginning he found it almost humorous and thought it would help his team by seeming like the administrations before him did a bad job and that his administration was, in turn, doing a good job. It didn’t take long for his famous paranoia to take over and become convinced that his administrations war plans would be the next to come out. The following is conversations Nixon had with various officials of his administration from the release of the Pentagon Papers to Fielding Break-in, and puts a nice bow on the conclusion to this story:
Nixon: Well, that’s—Haig was very disturbed by that New York Times thing. I thought that—
Kissinger: Well, Mr. President, I think—
Nixon: Unconscionable damn thing for them to do.
Kissinger: It is unconscionable [unclear]—
Nixon: Of course, it’s . . . it’s . . . it’s unconscionable on the part of the people that leaked it. Fortunately, it didn’t come out on our administration. [Kissinger attempts to interject.] That appar—according to Haig, it’s all relates to the two previous administrations. Is that correct?
Kissinger: That is right.
Nixon: But I hope [Kissinger attempts to interject] the—but I—my point is if—are any of the people there who participated in this thing, who—in leaking it? That’s my point. Do we know?
Kissinger: In public opinion, it actually, if anything, will help us a little bit, because this is a gold mine of showing how the previous administration got us in there.
Nixon: I didn’t read the thing. Tell—give me your view on that in a word.
Kissinger: Oh, well, it just shows massive mismanagement of how we got there. And it pins it all on Kennedy and Johnson.
Nixon: [laughing] Yeah.
Kissinger: And McNamara. So from that point of view, it helps us. From the point of view of the relations with Hanoi, it hurts a little, because it just shows a further weakening of resolve.
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: And a further big issue.
Nixon: I suppose the Times ran it to try to affect the debate this week or something.
Kissinger: Oh, yes. No question about it.
Nixon: Well, it—I don’t think it’s going to have that kind of effect.
Kissinger: No. No, because it’s—in a way, it shows . . . what they’ve tried to do—I think they outsmarted themselves, because they had put themselves—they had sort of tried to make it “Nixon’s War,” and what this massively proves is that, if it’s anybody’s war, it’s Kennedy’s and Johnson’s.
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: So that these Democrats now bleating about where it went wrong—
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: —or what we’re doing wrong, this graphically [chuckles] shows that—who’s responsible for the basic mess.
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: So I don’t think it’s having the effect that they intend.
Nixon: Well, you know . . . it’s—it may not have the effect they intend. The thing, though, that, Henry, that to me is just unconscionable, this is treasonable action on the part of the bastards that put it out!
Kissinger: Exactly, Mr. President.
Nixon: Doesn’t it involve secure information, a lot of other things? [Kissinger attempts to interject.] What kind of people would do such things?
Kissinger: It has the most—it has the highest classifications, Mr. President.
Nixon: Yeah. Yeah.
Kissinger: It’s treasonable. There’s no question it’s actionable. I’m absolutely certain that this violates all sorts of security laws.
Nixon: What do we do about it? Don’t we ask for an—
Kissinger: I think I should talk to Mitchell.
Nixon: No, I think you should. You tell Mitchell that—
Kissinger: And this is not—an occasional leak is bad enough. But this is everything the Defense Department possessed.
Nixon: Yeah. Let me ask this: call Mitchell. I think you should talk to Mitchell and ask him about his just calling this—getting this fellow in on the purpose of . . . this was a security leak, and we want to know what does he have, did he do it.
Kissinger: Right.
Nixon: And put him under oath.
Kissinger: That’s right. I think we ought to do that. I think we ought to wait till after—
Nixon: Another thing to do would be to have a congressional committee call him in.
Kissinger: I think we ought to do it after Wednesday, Mr. President.
Nixon: A congressional committee could call him in, put him under oath, you know, and then he’s guilty of perjury if he lies.
Kissinger: But I think we ought to wait till after the vote before they get it all confused.
Nixon: Oh, I agree. Well, you couldn’t do it before then anyway, but, you know that—to get it all set up.
Kissinger: Because of the investigation.
Nixon: ‘Cause you’ve got to have the questions and the investigations and know what it is, but—well, we’re not going to get disturbed. These things happen, you know. Clifford pops off and this guy pops off. I would think it would infuriate Johnson, wouldn’t you?
Kissinger: Oh, God. Basically, it doesn’t hurt us domestically. I think—I’m no expert on that—but no one reading this can then say that this president got us into trouble. I mean, this is an indictment of the previous administration. It hurts us with Hanoi because it just shows how far our demoralization has gone.
Nixon: Good God.
Kissinger: But basically, I think they—the decision they have to make is, do they want to settle with you? They know damn well that you’re the one who’s held firm and no matter how much anyone else is demoralized, doesn’t make any difference.
Nixon: Yeah. Right. Right. Well, you’ll find things out there pleasant enough.
Nixon: Well, that’s a long trip for you, but I wouldn’t—that’s—and don’t worry about this Times thing. I just think we got to expect that kind of crap, and we just plow ahead, plow ahead.
Kissinger: Well, Mr. President, [President Nixon attempts to interject] if we succeed in two out of three, as you said [Nixon acknowledges throughout] this summer then this will look like picnic.
Nixon: If we can—[Chuckles.] But, boy, you’re right about one thing: if anything was needed to underline what we talked about Friday—or Saturday morning, about . . . about really . . . really cleaning house when we have the opportunity, by God, this underlines it.
Kissinger: Oh, yes.
Nixon: And people have got to be put to the torch for this sort of thing. This is terrible………
. . . . . . .
Nixon: We do. We do. We do. Well, anyway, I’ll tell you what: on the Mitchell thing, I’d just have them—have him examine what the options are.
Nixon: And the Times will justify it on the basis that it serves the national interest. Is that right?
Kissinger: Of course.
Nixon: My God! My God, you know, can you imagine the New York Times doing a thing like this ten years ago? Even ten years ago?
Kissinger: Mr. President, if—and then when [Joseph R.] McCarthy accused them of treason, they were screaming bloody murder! This is treason!
Nixon: That’s right. No, whatever they may think of the policy, it is treasonable to take this stuff out and—
Kissinger: That’s right. Oh, it’s one thing to—
Nixon: It serves the enemy.
Kissinger: It’s another thing to print ten pages of top secret documents that are only about two or three years old. Well, they have nothing from our administration, so actually, I’ve read this stuff. We come out pretty well in it.
President Nixon: [Chuckles.] Well, somebody over there got the stuff that we got, although we—I asked Haig about that, and he says, “Well, look, our file—as far as the White House is concerned, we’re pretty damn secure.” On the other hand, of course, naturally, whenever I’ve had to call [William P.] Rogers and [Melvin R.] Mel [Laird] in on some of these, on Laos and Cambodia, you can be sure all that’s in some file.
Kissinger: But, Mr. President, all the big things you’ve done in the White House, and—those files will leave with you.
President Nixon: Yeah. That’s right.
Kissinger: Go to the Nixon Library—
President Nixon: But what I meant, though—that’s true of the files. But I mean, these guys, of course, will have made in their own records—they’ll indicate what I’ve ordered, you know.
Kissinger: Oh, they indicate what you ordered, but they weren’t in on the reasoning.
President Nixon: Yeah. Well, let’s not worry about that.
June 15th, 1971 @ 10:39am 2-days later
Henry talks out of both sides of his mouth to convince Nixon that his NSC cabinet would never let something like this happen, but also that he should go hard on it, so it doesn’t happen to him again.
Kissinger: Well, we keep our files separately, Mr. President—
President Nixon: I know. I know.
Kissinger: They’d have to get them [unclear]—
. . . . . . . .
Kissinger: Yeah, but we don’t do business quite that way. We keep most of the files—
Nixon: I know you do, Henry, but you know, I’ve had these people in on Laos [Kissinger acknowledges] and we had the discussion—
Kissinger: [speaking over President Nixon] Oh, yeah, they have their memos.
President Nixon: —and Rogers, you know goddamn he dictated a memorandum.
Kissinger: Yeah.
Nixon: So it’s in their files. That’s what I’m [unclear].
Kissinger: Yeah.
President Nixon: Well, anyway. It’ll be their files that [unclear] they use [unclear].
Kissinger: But that they won’t—I don’t think any Cabinet member will leak his [President Nixon attempts to interject] personal file. Now, afterwards they may do it, but not in a campaign.
Same day, 5:13pm, Olof Palme causes an uproar, calling for the US to pull out of Vietnam.
Henry A. Kissinger: The Swedish prime minister [Olof Palme] has popped off, too. We’ve just got a press ticker. I talked to Bill [Rogers] about it.
President Nixon: The Swedish prime minister?
Kissinger: He said that this proves that it was a war prepared by deceit, that the American government has undermined democracy, and it must withdraw unconditionally from Vietnam. I told Bill we have to call our ambassador back, and he’s going to make a recommendation something to that effect tomorrow morning.
Nixon: But, you know, now, isn’t that a hell of a damn thing?
Kissinger: Yeah.
Nixon: “It proves the war—" But also it shows that that’s part of the conspiracy, in my opinion.
Kissinger: Oh, yeah.
Nixon: He wouldn’t otherwise pay any attention to it. Somebody got to him. Henry, there is a conspiracy. You understand?
Kissinger: I believe it now. I didn’t believe it formerly, but I believe it now.
Nixon: No doubt there is. The fellow who has leaked the papers, whether it’s Leslie Gelb or the RAND Corporation guy, he’s in a conspiracy. Neil Sheehan’s a bastard. I’ve known him for years.
You can truly feel the tension and the paranoia flaring up, this has gone from something to laugh at his predecessors about, to damn near, going to war over. Their claiming a “conspiracy”. Which by all definitions of the word, there is.
June 17th, 1971, 4pm, read along as they consider blackmailing Lyndon B. Johnson for what was contained on him in the Papers.
Haldeman: The—you can maybe blackmail [Lyndon B.] Johnson on this stuff.
Nixon: What?
Haldeman: You could blackmail Johnson on this stuff, and it might be worth doing.
Nixon: How?
Haldeman: The bombing halt stuff is all in the same file. Or in some of the same hands.
… … … … … … … … …
President Nixon: To blackmail him.
Haldeman: The bombing halt—
President Nixon: Because he used the bombing halt for political purposes.
Haldeman: The bombing halt file would really kill Johnson.
Kissinger: Why do you think that? I mean, I didn’t see the whole file, but . . .
Haldeman: On the timing and strategy of how he pulled that?
Kissinger: I—
Nixon: I think it would hurt him.
Three-and-a-half hours later.
Same day, 7:39pm,
President Nixon: Hello, Henry. I think it’s important that you give [Walt W.] Rostow a call. Let me tell you the problem. He’s advising Johnson against doing a press thing. I think John—they’ve got to be told very directly that tomorrow I’ll have 200 press in Rochester, that I am prepared and I intend to defend Johnson on this whole thing, but that I can’t do it unless he’s prepared to defend himself. And that—what they’re trying to do, Henry, is just to let us take the heat on this thing. None of their people are speaking up. Now, you call him and you tell him that I think that—
Kissinger: I think he’s in Newport right now.
Nixon: I don’t care where he is. Call him and tell—who is? Johnson?
Kissinger: No, Rostow.
Nixon: Yeah. You call Rostow. He ought to get ahold of Johnson. He’s advising Johnson against this. Johnson ought to have a press conference. Now, we need it for reasons that you are, I’m sure, quite aware of.
Kissinger: Well, I’m aware of it, Mr. President. But I talked to Bill Jorden and Tom Johnson yesterday on the same topic.
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: And I just don’t think the information is quite so correct. But I’ll call Rostow this minute……
…..Nixon wants Kissinger to contact LBJ’s camp and get LBJ to have a press conference admitting guilt for flubbing the whole Vietnam war. This way it will take the blame off of the Nixon Administration, Ya know, before the Nixon Administration gets the blame……
President Nixon: Well, you ought to tell Rostow this: That unless he has a press conference, I’m not prepared to defend him. Now, just as cold as that. They’ve just got to know. I’m not going to defend him. Why should I?
Kissinger: Well . . . I don’t think you should defend Johnson, anyway. I think you should defend the presidency. I don’t think you should get into the issue—
…….
President Nixon: Yeah. On the other hand, it amounts to a defense of Johnson, you know, when you really get down to it. They say, “I don’t think this is proper, you know, to put one side of the case out rather—and not of the whole case and that sort of thing.” That’s defending Johnson…………………..
Kissinger: Well, I’m not so sure—Mr. President, I will call Rostow about the press conference thing, but I think you should concentrate on this—on the theft of documents and on the unconscionable way of attacking somebody without giving him any chance of rebuttal, explaining where the documents came from and so forth. That, I think, is unanswerable. When we say “out of context,” then they’ll say, “Well, why don’t you supply the context?”
………………………………………….
President Nixon: Because Johnson should go to the mat on this. He really should. He’s—
Kissinger: Right.
President Nixon: He should speak up. Don’t you think so?
Kissinger: Well—
President Nixon: Not for his interest, but for ours.
Kissinger: I’m not so sure. Frankly, I think they’re also eager to . . . well, it would certainly get a tremendous brawl started between Johnson and the press.
President Nixon: That’s right, and it’d get off of us. You see what I mean?
Kissinger: Well, it would get it off us on the immediate problem, but it would also drag the whole issue down to the level of “was Johnson guilty or not?”
President Nixon: That’s a hell of a lot better than having whether I was guilty or not, Henry. That’s my point. We’ve got to get the—
Kissinger: Well, I believe—I honestly believe that this episode can be turned into an asset if we go on the offensive and say that these people are deliberately undermining confidence in government and that that’s what it’s all about. That what you’re resisting is the flouting of laws and the principle that the end justifies the means, and the so-called higher morality. I simply don’t find this—I just had Jerry Schecter in here from Time. Now, I know they never write it the way they talk.
President Nixon: Yeah, [chuckles] that’s for sure.
Kissinger: I immediately go on the attack. I always—I said, “Now, I just don’t understand how you people can even—" He began by saying, “How do we know you people aren’t doing the same thing?” And I said, “Don’t you give me that language.” I said, “How do I know you’re not stealing papers all over the place?” And they don’t feel at all confident of themselves. I have yet to meet a newsman who really is sticking to the Times for anything other than guild loyalty. But I may not see a representative sample.
Nixon is tripping. He’s ready to direct any blame there is, drop everything on President Johnson, instead of himself, before anything has even come out against the Nixon Administration. Kissinger is a Fucking Evil Genius! He’s ten steps ahead of everyone including the president. In that exchange, Nixon sees an immediate quick fix, but Kissinger is looking at the long game. He believes he can turn the public against the media by going on the offense and accusing them of being traitors. Hmmmm…. who does that remind you of?…………. Also, in that exchange, you can feel Nixon’s irrationality leaking out. And it gets worse from there.
June 29th, 1971, Dan was arraigned the previous day. They felt like they needed to come down hard on this to keep it from happening again. They could see that he was gaining a lot of support from the public and the harder they come down on him the bigger hero he becomes. They decide it would be much easier to discredit the guy.
Colson: Yeah, from the Left [Nixon says something at the same time that is not clear]. Yup. And the, uh, argument is well he’s- he’s made a hero of himself and, uh, the harder we hit him the more we build him up but, uh, the way I size the fellow up is that building him up doesn’t-doesn’t help the other side because he’s not an uh…
He’s not an appealing personality. He’s a damn good guy to be against.
Now we’ve had all sorts of reports as you know of his tie in with other people. I think an awful lot of this’ll fall out. Jay Lovestone called me today to say that “we haven’t even scratched the surface” he said “this fellow’s really tied in with some bad [unclear-“actors”?].” And of course, he-
Nixon: If you get him tied in some with Communist groups, that would be good.
Colson: Well Jay thinks, Jay thinks he is, but of course that’s-
Nixon: That’s my guess, that he’s in with some subversives you know.
Colson: Well you know Jay Lovestone has an interesting intelligence network, as you know.
June 30, 1971, the Supreme Court delivered a landmark 6-3 decision in favor of the newspaper, affirming the right of the press to publish the Pentagon Papers without the risk of government censorship or punishment. This decision, set a precedent which still stands today. It was the most important moment in American History for Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press. At this time, all printing of The Pentagon Papers resumes……***Sigh of Relief***
But not for Dan. He battles on.
Nixon asks Attorney General Mitchell, “Don't you agree that we have to pursue the Ellsberg case now?"
Mitchell: No question about it.... This is the one sanction we have, is to get at the individuals. . . .
Nixon: . . . Let's get the son-of-a-bitch into jail.
Kissinger: We've got to get him.
President Nixon: We've got to get him. . . . Don't worry about his trial. Just get everything out. Try him in the press. Try him 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. Press. Is that clear?
Kissinger and Mitchell: Yes.
July 1st, 1971, Nixon loses his shit. It’s decided Ellsberg isn’t to be dealt with in the courts until after the election, it’s time to smear him “in the press”.
Nixon: The difficulty is that all the good lawyers around here . . . they're always saying, well, we've got to win the court case through the court. We're through with this sort of court case. It's our position — I don't want that fellow Ellsberg to be brought up until after the election. I mean, just let — convict the son of a bitch in the press. That's the way it's done...
So how does one handle it in the press, first you need a “press” but if you’re the president, there’s entire publications at your disposal. First problem solved. Next problem, what are you going to say? That’s an issue. You need information. Dirt. Credible, dirty, dirt. Where do you look? This guy has worked for y’all most of his life. Ahhhh….. but he’s seen a psychologist, a Dr. Fielding. But if he testifies against a patient or breaks the confidentiality agreement he’s finished. Confidentiality is a respected part of psychology's code of ethics. So, they’re not going to get info that way. Well before all this you need the people who are going to find this dirt. A crew to find leaks and fix them. Such as, a “White House Plumber”. This is how and why the “White House Plumbers” of the Watergate break-in were formed. And Watergate wasn’t their first burglary. The first was the Fielding office. It’s important to remember Dan is still fighting for his life right now.
He’s being charged with The Espionage Act of 1917, I’m sure all of my readers are familiar with that, just in case hears a link to it, it’s just life in prison for sharing, you go in front of a special court owned by the White House and there is not a chance of winning or them even hearing you out, they used it against him then and they’re using it against us now but that wasn’t enough for Nixon, after all, he’s worried about re-election, he needs the people to hate him too.
Egil Krogh, one of the leaders of the White House Plumbers team, wrote in the NYT in 2007,
In early August 1971, I attended a secret meeting in Room 16, a hideaway office in the basement of the Old Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House. Huddled around the table were G. Gordon Liddy, a former F.B.I. agent; E. Howard Hunt, a former C.I.A. agent; and David R. Young Jr., a member of the National Security Council staff. I was deputy assistant to the president.
Two months earlier, The New York Times had published the classified Pentagon Papers, which had been provided by Daniel Ellsberg. President Nixon had told me he viewed the leak as a matter of critical importance to national security. He ordered me and the others, a group that would come to be called the “plumbers,” to find out how the leak had happened and keep it from happening again.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
On Sept. 3, 1971, burglars broke into Dr. Fielding’s Beverly Hills office to photograph the files but found nothing related to Mr. Ellsberg. . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
President Nixon himself said to David Frost during an interview six years later, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” To this day the implications of this statement are staggering.
That was our President, that was how he rationalized all of this. Also, he made the claim many times that he knew nothing about this. He knew about nothing illegal that the Plumbers might have done.
Here’s some Reporting by the Great Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize winning muckraker that still cannot be stopped, even now in 2024:
On Aug. 11, according to another memo, Mr. Ehrlichman approved a recommendation from Mr. Krogh and Mr. Young calling for “a covert operation [to] be undertaken to examine all the medical files still held by Ellsberg's psychoanalyst.”
Mr. Ehrlichman initialed his approval on the document and added the following words: “If done under your assurance that it is not traceable.” Mr. Ehrlichman told the Senate Watergate committee last summer that he assumed the operation would involve the compromising of an office nurse or someone similar. He said he had not expected a break‐in.
Last September Mr. Ehrlichman was charged with three state counts of burglary, conspiracy and perjury in Los Angeles in connection with his role in the Ellsberg break‐in. He pleaded not guilty and will face trial on Dec. 19, along with Mr. Young and Mr. Liddy, who have also pleaded not guilty to charges of burglary and conspiracy. All three may face Federal charges in connection with the still‐pending Watergate investigation here.
On Aug. 25, Mr. Hunt and Mr. Liddy managed to gain brief entrance to Dr. Fielding's office in Los Angeles under false pretenses. They took dozens of photographs of the office and surrounding area without being detected. After the successful reconnaissance, they began planning for the break‐in itself, which was scheduled to take place over the Labor Day holiday, in early September.
Reliable sources say Mr. Young has testified that he told Mr. Ehrlichman of the successful entry into Dr. Fielding's office on Aug. 27, two days after it took place. A few days Iater, the sources said, according to Mr. Young's testimony, he and Mr. Krogh discussed the break-in operation once again with Mr. Ehrlichman by telephone………………………
In addition, the sources said, Mr. Young will testify that he specifically discussed the failure of the burglary—which produced no psychiatric or other material—with Mr. Ehrlichman in a telephone call placed after Labor Day to Cape Cod, where Mr. Ehrlichman was vacationing with his family.
Testimony before the Los Angeles grand jury showed that the break‐in itself—committed the night of Sept. 3 by a three‐man Cuban American team, headed by Bernard L. Barker, two of whose members participated in the Watergate break‐in nearly a year later—was inept.
Mr. Hunt and Mr. Liddy served as lookouts during the operation, the grand jury was told, and did not enter Dr. Fielding's office during the burglary in which no material on Dr. Ellsberg was found.
At his request, Mr. Krogh will not begin his discussions with Federal officials until his sentencing — expected early next year — on the technical charge of criminal conspiracy to deny Dr. Ellsberg's civil rights, to which he has confessed. But one source said that he would testify that he “feels that everything was authorized,” before the Ellsberg burglary took place.
. . . . . . .
At one point during a grand jury appearance in Los Angeles last June, however, Mr. Ehrlichman testified that the HuntLiddy project had been discussed with President Nixon before it was approved. But Mr. Ehrlichman indicated that at no time was the discussion put in the context of a burglary.
During the California grand jury proceedings, the following colloquy between Joseph B. Busch Jr., the Los Angeles County District Attorney, and Mr. Ehrlichman took place:
Mr. Busch: “Did you approve that recommendation [from Mr. Krogh regarding the California operation]?”
Mr. Ehrlichman: “I believe the recommendation was discussed specifically with the President before it was approved.”
Mr. Busch: “By you?”
Mr. Ehrlichman: “No. I—as say, I believe he — he specifically approved it. And it's my recollection that he either discussed with—well, I know he discussed it with Mr. Hoover [the former F.B.I. director, who died in May 1972].”
The questions about Presidential involvement ended there, according to a transcript of the grand jury proceedings.
Here’s is an un-paywalled link to the NYT Hersh article. It really shows how calls from the White House claiming “Ellsberg is a Soviet spy” caused a continuous escalation in how far the “White House Plumbers” group should go to get information on Ellsberg.
The Final Countdown (emphasis my own)
Sorry, that was so long, if you’ve made it this far, I thank you and applaud you. It’s almost over.
All of these events caused a Dominoe effect leading to the full dismissal of all charges against Daniel Ellsberg.
WASHINGTON, May 24 —The Federal judge in the White House “plumbers” case ruled today that the President has no constitutional right to authorize break‐in and search without a warrant even when national security and foreign intelligence are involved.
In the ruling, Judge Gerhard A. Gesell of the United States District Court declared:
“The Fourth Amendment protects the privacy of citizens against unreasonable and unrestrained intrusion by Government officials and their agents. It is not theoretical. It lies at the heart of our free society.”
-Seymour Hersh, New York Times
The Judge in Los Angeles contacted the judge in Washington. Daniel Ellsberg was a free man. He spent the rest of his life as a peace activist, speaking and fighting for those continuing the battle. He was arrested 70 times in his career as an activist. All notches in his belt.
To discredit Ellsberg, at the approval of the White House, they used illegal wiretaps, violated the civil liberties of Dr. Lewis Fielding and the confidentiality of his office. Breaking the Fourth Amendment, Unlawful search & seizure. And the civil liberties of Daniel Ellsberg, and numerous others. The Nixon Administration received a double loss, and the American people got the win. This is now regarded as a principle of the free press to inform the people even if the information was received unlawfully, the people have a right to know. If it’s newsworthy, it’s news.
The “Pentagon Papers Principle” today is in trouble. By elites and government bureaucrats, dare I say, the Deep State, of being overturned.
The same people who benefit from having a monopoly on information want, wait for it…… A Monopoly on Information! This is the AGE of information. The gatekeepers are done, finished! These elite figures at the head of every industry are done. We can learn anything with a simple Google search. We can do anything, nothing can stop us.
If they take away our freedom of speech, they regain power. No matter what your position is, we MUST as a “Whole-of-Society” resist censorship in all its forms, especially speech you do not agree with, for the future of the human race. Declaration of WarLiberty Jordan Lee, Editor-in-Chief
When he passed away at 92, on June 16th, 2023, the world truly lost a hero. Rolling Stone published an article by Glenn Greenwald, We’re Told Never to Meet Our Childhood Heroes. Knowing Daniel Ellsberg Proved That Wrong….:
THAT YOU SHOULD never meet your heroes, as they are bound to disappoint you, has become such conventional wisdom that it requires no author to affirm it. In a 2020 satirical New Yorker article, Alex Witt attributed the proverb to the faceless “they” (“They say, ‘Never meet your heroes,’ ” adding, “It’s good advice. I’ve met all of my idols, and I’ve been disappointed by every single one”). Some internet pages attribute the quote to the British comedian Alan Carr after meeting Paul Newman, though that appears more apocryphal than reliable. It hardly matters who first said it; it just strikes one as intuitively true because the glaring, multifaceted imperfections of humans when seen up close make a heroic image unlikely to survive interpersonal scrutiny.
Daniel Ellsberg, the renowned Pentagon Papers whistleblower, single-handedly destroyed the validity of this advice for me. Ellsberg was one of my two or three top childhood heroes. Though I was only four years old in 1971, when he knowingly assumed a high probability of life in prison to inform the American people about systemic lying by the U.S. government regarding the war in Vietnam, I became engrossed by both the Pentagon Papers and Watergate dramas as I entered adolescence. Those became the formative events for my understanding of politics and journalism.