Tell (or Leak) the Truth

Daniel Ellsberg, the former RAND analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, was a guest on CNN's Newsnight with Aaron Brown last night. Atrios points to this closing exchange, which is exceptionally relevant today:

BROWN: We've got about a half a minute left. Do you think there is -- is it your view then that there is some hidden agenda here [with the administration's push for war on Iraq]?

ELLSBERG: Well, I feel confident that the reasons being given for this war by the president, the vice president and the secretary of defense, they can't be right. They're contradicted by everything that comes out from the Senate Intelligence Committee, from the CIA and so forth. So we have to look for other reasons.

That's, by the way, part of the job. That's what I did when I worked for presidents. They -- the message of my book and of the Pentagon Papers, unfortunately, is that officials, like me and my bosses, lie and conceal far more than any outsider can even imagine.

But there is another side to that. It's possible to tell the truth. The message I would like to get to people inside right now: if they feel that what the president and the vice president and the secretary of defense are deceptive of the public, are not founded on the evidence that they know passing across their desks or they know, by expertise, I would like them to consider doing what I wish I'd done in 1964 and 1965, rather than waiting five years, as I did until 1969.

They should consider going to Congress and the press and telling the truth with documents. They shouldn't do what I did, wait until the bombs are falling. That's why I think the message in my book is urgent. So urgent, in fact, that I decided to put the first chapter on the Internet tonight on Ellsberg.net. You don't have to buy the book to read that.

That tells us what is happening right now. It's about the week that Congress passed the first Tonkin Gulf Resolution, having now that -- this is the time to read it, when they've just passed the second one.