Time Is Right for New Pentagon Papers
Posted on Jun 26, 2007
By Amy Goodman
Of the Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Mike Gravel is probably the least well recognized. His dark-horse candidacy may be the butt of jokes on the late-night comedy shows, but that doesn’t faze former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg: “Here is a senator who was not afraid to look foolish. That is the fear that keeps people in line all their lives.”
The famed whistle-blower joined Gravel this past weekend on a panel commemorating the 35th anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers by the Beacon Press, a small, nonprofit publisher affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association. It was this publisher that Gravel turned to in 1971, after dozens of others had turned him down, to publish the 7,000 pages that Ellsberg had delivered to Gravel to put into the public record.
The story of the leak of the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times is famous, but how they got published as a book, with Gravel’s face on the jacket, reads like a John Grisham novel.
Ellsberg was a military analyst working for the RAND Corp. in the 1960s when he was asked to join an internal Pentagon group tasked with creating a comprehensive, secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Ellsberg photocopied thousands of documents and leaked them to The New York Times, which published excerpts in June 1971.
President Richard Nixon immediately got a restraining order, stopping the newspaper from printing more. It was the first time in U.S. history that presses were stopped by federal court order. The Times fought the injunction, and won in the Supreme Court case New York Times Co. v. United States. Following that decision, The Washington Post also began running excerpts. Ellsberg gave the Pentagon Papers to the Post on the condition that one of its editors, Ben Bagdikian, deliver a copy to Gravel.
Gravel recalled the exchange, which he set up at midnight outside the storied Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.: “I used to work in intelligence; I know how to do these things.” Gravel pulled his car up to Bagdikian’s, the two opened their trunks and Gravel heaved the boxes personally, worried that only he could claim senatorial immunity should they get caught with the leaked documents. His staff aides were posted as lookouts around the block.
Thwarted in his attempt to read the Pentagon Papers into the public record as a filibuster to block the renewal of the draft, Gravel called a late-night meeting of the obscure Subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds, which he chaired, and began reading the papers aloud there. He broke down crying while reading the details of Vietnamese civilian deaths. Because he had begun the reading, he was legally able to enter all 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers, once top-secret, into the public record.
Though ridiculed by the press for his emotional display, Gravel was undaunted. He wanted the Pentagon Papers published as a book so Americans could read what had been done in their name. Only Beacon Press accepted the challenge.
Robert West, the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association at the time, approved the publication. With that decision, he said, “We started down a path that led through two and a half years of government intimidation, harassment and threat of criminal punishment.” As Beacon weathered subpoenas, FBI investigations of its bank accounts and other chilling probes, Gravel attempted to extend his senatorial immunity to the publisher. The bid failed in the U.S Supreme Court (the first time that the U.S. Senate appeared before the court), but not without a strongly worded dissent from Justice William O. Douglas: “In light of the command of the First Amendment we have no choice but to rule that here government, not the press, is lawless.”
Which brings us to today. Sitting next to West and Gravel, Ellsberg repeated the plea that he is making in speeches all over the United States: “The equivalent of the Pentagon Papers exist in safes all over Washington, not only in the Pentagon, but in the CIA, the State Department and elsewhere. My message is to them: Take the risk, reveal the truth under the lies of your own bosses and your superiors, obey your oath to the Constitution, which every one of those officials took, not to the commander in chief, but to the Constitution of the United States.”
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.
© 2007 Amy Goodman. Distributed by King Features Syndicate
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free
Showing posts with label Intelligence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Intelligence. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Domestic Spying
The simple truth of the matter is that the Bush administration is not trusted, period.
Too much water under the bridge, so to speak.
What's worse, more and more, of us are wondering, at this point, whom we can trust. Congress? Oh, puleeze!
Trust in this country, for our government, is in stunningly short supply. Is there any wonder?
Wise-up intelligence
Congress has reason to be skeptical, but some White House changes to an eavesdropping law make sense.
May 9, 2007
WHEN THE BUSH White House proposes changing a law that protects Americans from unchecked electronic surveillance, civil libertarian knees begin to jerk. And understandably so.
This, after all, is the administration that for five years eavesdropped on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens suspected of ties to foreign terrorists without seeking the approval of the special court that was created to oversee such surveillance. The administration complained that the oversight was too restricting, only to discover this year that it could operate within the law after all.
And even as the administration asks Congress to expand its leeway under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the White House continues to insist on the president's inherent power to disregard even his preferred version of that law. No wonder J. Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, received a skeptical reception from Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee when he testified last week in favor of "modernizing" FISA. But some of what McConnell requested makes sense. The threat of domestic terrorist attack does require greater flexibility, as do changes in technology. FISA was enacted at a time when most international communications traveled by radio or satellite and thus were outside the law's regulation of wire transmissions; today, those same communications move along fiber-optic cables. Likewise, a court order should not be required just because a phone call or e-mail from one foreign location to another happens to pass through the United States.
The problem is that these sensible adjustments are weighed down by two kinds of baggage: the administration's past casualness about privacy, and language in the "modernization" bill that seems to give past and future eavesdropping on Americans too much benefit of the doubt.
For example, the bill defines "electronic surveillance" governed by FISA as the surveillance of "a particular known person" in the U.S., which seems to exempt the monitoring and recording of communications between a foreigner and multiple Americans. And it would unjustifiably immunize from lawsuits companies that provided the National Security Agency with private records between 2001 and the enactment of this legislation.
As it must do in other areas, the administration will have to negotiate with a suspicious, Democratic-controlled Congress to effect changes in FISA. Part of that bargain should be frankness about why it flouted the law for five years.
Going forward, the administration should consider legislation — such as that introduced by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) — that would give the government greater maneuverability under FISA while reaffirming the law as the "exclusive means" for gathering foreign intelligence when that process could compromise the privacy of Americans.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free
Too much water under the bridge, so to speak.
What's worse, more and more, of us are wondering, at this point, whom we can trust. Congress? Oh, puleeze!
Trust in this country, for our government, is in stunningly short supply. Is there any wonder?
Wise-up intelligence
Congress has reason to be skeptical, but some White House changes to an eavesdropping law make sense.
May 9, 2007
WHEN THE BUSH White House proposes changing a law that protects Americans from unchecked electronic surveillance, civil libertarian knees begin to jerk. And understandably so.
This, after all, is the administration that for five years eavesdropped on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens suspected of ties to foreign terrorists without seeking the approval of the special court that was created to oversee such surveillance. The administration complained that the oversight was too restricting, only to discover this year that it could operate within the law after all.
And even as the administration asks Congress to expand its leeway under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the White House continues to insist on the president's inherent power to disregard even his preferred version of that law. No wonder J. Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, received a skeptical reception from Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee when he testified last week in favor of "modernizing" FISA. But some of what McConnell requested makes sense. The threat of domestic terrorist attack does require greater flexibility, as do changes in technology. FISA was enacted at a time when most international communications traveled by radio or satellite and thus were outside the law's regulation of wire transmissions; today, those same communications move along fiber-optic cables. Likewise, a court order should not be required just because a phone call or e-mail from one foreign location to another happens to pass through the United States.
The problem is that these sensible adjustments are weighed down by two kinds of baggage: the administration's past casualness about privacy, and language in the "modernization" bill that seems to give past and future eavesdropping on Americans too much benefit of the doubt.
For example, the bill defines "electronic surveillance" governed by FISA as the surveillance of "a particular known person" in the U.S., which seems to exempt the monitoring and recording of communications between a foreigner and multiple Americans. And it would unjustifiably immunize from lawsuits companies that provided the National Security Agency with private records between 2001 and the enactment of this legislation.
As it must do in other areas, the administration will have to negotiate with a suspicious, Democratic-controlled Congress to effect changes in FISA. Part of that bargain should be frankness about why it flouted the law for five years.
Going forward, the administration should consider legislation — such as that introduced by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) — that would give the government greater maneuverability under FISA while reaffirming the law as the "exclusive means" for gathering foreign intelligence when that process could compromise the privacy of Americans.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free
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