Daniel Ellsberg / The Washington Post – 2013-07-10 02:02:16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-leaker-snowden-made-the-right-call/2013/07/07/0b46d96c-e5b7-11e2-aef3-339619eab080_story.html
Snowden Made the Right Call When He Fled the US
Daniel Ellsberg / The Washington Post
Daniel Ellsberg is the author of “Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.” He was charged in 1971 under the Espionage Act as well as for theft and conspiracy for copying the Pentagon Papers. The trial was dismissed in 1973 after evidence of government misconduct, including illegal wiretapping, was introduced in court.
(July 7, 2013) — Many people compare Edward Snowden to me unfavorably for leaving the country and seeking asylum, rather than facing trial as I did. I don’t agree. The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago.
After the New York Times had been enjoined from publishing the Pentagon Papers — on June 15, 1971, the first prior restraint on a newspaper in US history — and I had given another copy to The Post (which would also be enjoined), I went underground with my wife, Patricia, for 13 days.
My purpose (quite like Snowden’s in flying to Hong Kong) was to elude surveillance while I was arranging — with the crucial help of a number of others, still unknown to the FBI — to distribute the Pentagon Papers sequentially to 17 other newspapers, in the face of two more injunctions. The last three days of that period was in defiance of an arrest order: I was, like Snowden now, a “fugitive from justice.”
Yet when I surrendered to arrest in Boston, having given out my last copies of the papers the night before, I was released on personal recognizance bond the same day. Later, when my charges were increased from the original three counts to 12, carrying a possible 115-year sentence, my bond was increased to $50,000.
But for the whole two years I was under indictment, I was free to speak to the media and at rallies and public lectures. I was, after all, part of a movement against an ongoing war. Helping to end that war was my preeminent concern. I couldn’t have done that abroad, and leaving the country never entered my mind.
There is no chance that experience could be reproduced today, let alone that a trial could be terminated by the revelation of White House actions against a defendant that were clearly criminal in Richard Nixon’s era — and figured in his resignation in the face of impeachment — but are today all regarded as legal (including an attempt to “incapacitate me totally”).
I hope Snowden’s revelations will spark a movement to rescue our democracy, but he could not be part of that movement had he stayed here. There is zero chance that he would be allowed out on bail if he returned now and close to no chance that, had he not left the country, he would have been granted bail. Instead, he would be in a prison cell like Bradley Manning, incommunicado.
He would almost certainly be confined in total isolation, even longer than the more than eight months Manning suffered during his three years of imprisonment before his trial began recently. The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture described Manning’s conditions as “cruel, inhuman and degrading.” (That realistic prospect, by itself, is grounds for most countries granting Snowden asylum, if they could withstand bullying and bribery from the United States.)
Snowden believes that he has done nothing wrong. I agree wholeheartedly. More than 40 years after my unauthorized disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, such leaks remain the lifeblood of a free press and our republic. One lesson of the Pentagon Papers and Snowden’s leaks is simple: secrecy corrupts, just as power corrupts.
Pentagon Papers Leaker Daniel Ellsberg:
Edward Snowden Is Right to Flee US
David Sherfinski / The Washington Times
(July 8, 2013) — Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers who was charged in 1971 for theft and conspiracy, says NSA leaker Edward Snowden actually made the right call in fleeing the United States in search of asylum abroad.
“Many people compare Edward Snowden to me unfavorably for leaving the country and seeking asylum, rather than facing trial as I did,” Mr. Ellsberg writes in an opinion piece in The Washington Post. “I don’t agree. The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago.”
Mr. Ellsberg writes that when he finally surrendered in Boston after going underground for nearly two weeks after giving copies to The New York Times and The Post, he was released on personal recognizance bond the same day. For the two years, he was under indictment (the trial was dismissed in 1973). He writes that he was free to speak to the media and at rallies and public lectures.
The then-classified documents Mr. Ellsberg released revealed that the government had misled the public about the escalation of the war in Vietnam.
“I hope Snowden’s revelations will spark a movement to rescue our democracy, but he could not be part of that movement had he stayed here,” Mr. Ellsberg writes. “There is zero chance that he would be allowed out on bail if he returned now and close to no chance that, had he not left the country, he would have been granted bail.”
The latest reports have Mr. Snowden holed up in a transit area at a Moscow airport after leaving Hong Kong a few weeks ago. Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have offered him asylum.
“Nothing worthwhile would be served, in my opinion, by Snowden voluntarily surrendering to US authorities given the current state of the law,” Mr. Ellsberg writes. “I hope that he finds a haven, as safe as possible from kidnapping or assassination by US Special Operations forces, preferably where he can speak freely.”
Copyright 2013 The Washington Times, LLC.
