ELLSBERG: I believe that what Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz
and the President are telling the public about their reasons for
going to war with Iraq is as deceptive and manipulative as what
the presidents I served Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon were saying.
And for similar reasons. They believe in their policies, and
they don't think they would get adequate support for those
policies from this public, so they tell the public something
else.
SCHER: Any evidence of that in what you know?
ELLSBERG: I don't have inside knowledge. But some of the things
that are being said very flatly are patently absurd the idea,
for example, that we hope for and expect a democratic regime in
Iraq, and that in turn to inspire democracy in the Middle East
is. . . simply absurd. Democracy is not in the cards in Iraq of
a real sort and we wouldn't allow it, because it would lead to a
split between the Kurds, the Shi'ites, the Sunnis, which we
promised our allies the not-very-democratic Turks, and the not-
at-all-democratic Saudis, that we will not allow that to happen.
Shi'ite Muslims that's the religion of Iran are 64% of the Iraqi
population. Is there a chance that we would allow a democracy
that would bring a Shi'ite to power in Baghdad, who might ally
with Iran? There is zero chance of that.
So the next question is, when Cheney says that's what we're
after, is democracy, when the President says that can he
possibly believe that, or is he consciously lying? We'll, on the
first side, I did learn in the Pentagon the Ellsberg
principle , which is: anyone can be as dumb as he has to to keep
his job. Intelligence is no obstacle to that, and Cheney is as
smart as the come.
Can he really believe even that? No, actually, I don't think he
does. He knows we're not heading towards democracy. We're
heading to replace a monstrous, tyrannical dictator in Iraq with
a dictator more to our liking.
A main theme of my book is the ethical and practical problems
faced by officials or employees whose president is deceiving the
public, or lying under oath. What do you do if you feel lives
are at stake? It isn't just the government. What do priests do
in Catholic Church when they know their bishops and archbishops
have been deceiving the public in various ways? Officials at
Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, all the others we've been hearing about,
tobacco companies, and right now, in the CIA, in the White
House, in the National Security Agency well, some of them have
been behaving very creditably, in my opinion.
We've been getting more unauthorized disclosures that's the
official term for leaks than we ever had in Vietnam, and very
usefully. There would not have been 133 votes in the House
against authorizing the President, giving him a free hand in
this war, an undated declaration of war, without those
unauthorized disclosures. There would not have been 23 Senate
votes. After all, there were 2 votes against the first Tonkin
Gulf Resolution in the Senate, there were 0 votes against Tonkin
Gulf Resolution I in the House, and that was because no one in
the government, including me, told them the truth, the way some
people having been doing now. But we need a lot more of that.
SCHER: So you're arguing for the whole whistle-blower concept?
ELLSBERG: Absolutely, and it should apply not only to
corporations, where it's needed much more than we get it, but
much more in what's called the National Security Bureaucracy.
SCHER: But people thought of you as a traitor. There were people
who wanted to, well people put you on trial and you could have
gone to prison. But people thought of you as a traitor.
ELLSBERG: That's right. And for someone as patriotic as I am, in
a very conventional sense I grew up during World War II,
enlisted in the Marines. I was deferred during Korea, but I
thought it was a just war, so I did enlist during the Korean
emergency, and as I say, went to the Middle East at that point,
I went into combat in Vietnam I'm as patriotic as they come. To
be called a traitor is very hurtful. But, I had decided that,
where lives were at stake, being called names was not something
that was going to stop me even very hurtful names.
You know, we were talking about the history here. I think the
Democrats in particular who were in office when we lost China
have reacted to that ever since, up to today. And they were
thought of as being losers in Vietnam, although there was no way
win, there was no Republican route to real victory. But they
were in office, and they were thought of as having been
stalemated in Korea again, we could have broken through that
only at the risk of nuclear war with China but they face that,
and they don't like it. I don't think it's sheer domestic
politics. There's a psychological dimension to this. Democrats
and Republicans alike the ones who voted against this
resolution, like Chafee in Rhode Island, like Jim Leach and
other Republicans but Democrats in particular, were afraid of
being called weak on terrorism, weak on Saddam. Now, they
knew that this war is going to hurt our war on terrorism, it is
going to cost American lives, it is going to do nothing to
reduce our dangers. But they know the public doesn't know that,
and they will be charged with unfair, but very damaging, claims.
I think that very many Americans have died in the last 50 years,
and ten times as many foreigners, because of, essentially,
Democratic fears of being label unmanly, weak, insufficiently
concerned about the military and aggression and so forth. And to
avoid that, they are willing to take risks that in fact result
in the loss of many, many lives.
SCHER: Why do you say that they know that anything that occurs
in Iraq won't have any effect on the war on terror?
ELLSBERG: Because of not only the unauthorized disclosures, but
such revelations as the unclassified letter that director of
Central Intelligence George Tenet, of whom I hadn't been a very
big fan, up till now now I give full credit. He gave the honest
opinion, I believe it's honest, that my judgment because it
didn't help him with his President, to be sure that there was no
evidence of any connection between Saddam and al Qaeda al Qaeda
being a real threat to this country, in a way that Saddam, if he
is not connected, and we have no evidence that he is, Saddam is
not even comparably a threat to this country. He also said that
there is a high chance that, if we attacked him, then he would
use what chemical and biological weapons he had against us and
Israel. That could lead, could lead, to use of nuclear weapons
by Israel or this country.
There's two aspects that bear on the war on terrorism, very
quickly. I am sure that Osama bin Laden, wherever he is, is
praying. . for this attack to take place, because it will result
in two things. No matter how careful we our with our smart
bombs, there will be television pictures around the Arab and
Muslim world, if not here real pictures of Muslim women and
children being slaughtered. That will result in a flood of
recruits, of suicide bombers, to al Qaeda, much more than al
Qaeda has now, and it will result in such outrage in countries
with Muslim majorities that their leaders cannot cooperate with
us in intelligence and police operations against al Qaeda.
That's dangerous for us, and that's what this war is almost sure
to result in.
SCHER: Rumsfeld and Cheney and others have alluded to the fact
that there's more information that many members of Congress
aren't privy to and the American people aren't privy to, and
their concern is that, with secrets released, we compromise
individuals who [gather] that information.
ELLSBERG: Okay, they are saying that, and of course, it could be
true. I'll tell you why I judge that that's very unlikely to be
true. We now do have an apparatus which is extremely reliable
the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. The members of
those committees, including the Chairman, Bob Graham, who is no
liberal, voted against this bill, and have stated that they have
received no information in their higher-than-Top-Secret
briefings from the President, that would support the President's
claims that there is a link between Saddam and al Qaeda, or that
Saddam is likely to use nuclear weapons or other weapons against
the US if he is not attacked.
Now, I believe if the Administration had such evidence, they
would have shared it with those committees. And when Barbara
Boxer, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee she
doesn't give any secrets away she just says the big secret,
which is, I haven't seen anything in that committee which
supports what the President claims.
Her colleague in California, Diane Feinstein, who voted for the
bill she wants to be, I believe, Vice President some day, if not
President she voted for that bill, but not because she knew
something that her colleague Barbara Boxer did not know. Barbara
Boxer is on the intelligence committee! When Senator Kerry, who
definitely wants to run for President, voted for this bill, it
was not because he knew something that his colleague Edward
Kennedy of Massachusetts did not know.
So, I do not believe the claim that they have intelligence that
they can't afford to share with the public, that would support
their claims. I don't think they have such intelligence. . . .
There is a positive message to my book. I hope it will encourage
people to consider right now, that's why I happen to think this
book is extremely urgent, so much so that two days ago, I put as
much as I could negotiate out of Viking on the internet. I don't
want to wait for people to buy the book to read some of the most
relevant passages, and we put them on the website, which my son
Michael constructed for me, ellsberg.net, and I put the first
chapter, and a few pages of chapter 4, and the preface it would
have been more, if it were up to me so that people could see
what was happening right now, and possibly avert it, before the
bombs are falling.
The message that I wanted to put out, which is in my preface I
hope this book will encourage people in the government to do, or
consider doing, what I wish I had done in 1964 and early '65,
before the bombs were falling, and that is, go to Congress, and
the press, and tell the truth, with documents.
People don't do that because they tell themselves, it will not
only have costs in their personal relationships and their
careers, which is true there will be risks but that it can do no
good. This book shows otherwise. It can do good. The power to
tell the truth is a power held by individuals, in corporations,
in the Catholic Church and not only the Catholic Church in
hierarchies everywhere. The power is a great power to change
wrongful policies and dangerous policies that depend on secrecy
and deception to be viable. . . .
CALLER: How do you translate what we actually hear on the radio
and television today into what's really happening?
ELLSBERG: I'm glad you asked that. The first principle from this
book, which I hope you have a chance to read and the first
chapter, on the web, ellsberg.net, will give you that picture
is, you cannot get even approaching an adequate impression by
relying mainly by statements of government officials, from the
President on down. That just will not give you an adequate
picture. So where do you look? Since the newspapers do spend a
lot of time just reporting those statements. Fortunately, we do
have the internet now, there are sites like antiwar.com and
commondreams.org which give a wide variety of editorials and
news from all over the country and the world. You can inform
yourself very much better than you could just by reading
newspaper, television accounts of what the President is saying.
SCHER: Do you think you can get informed? Not just other
opinions, but actually informed?
ELLSBERG: Yes. And the next question is, what do you do about
it? Well if you're in the government, you can add to that
information by putting some of this information out. How about
other people? I just read in a Seattle paper, about another
website called MoveOnPac.org, which enables you to give money,
by credit card, to people who will give it to people like Paul
Wellstone in Minnesota, in tight races here, and money counts in
these campaigns.
But also, by the way, just letting them know the ones who voted
right on this, like Patty Murray let them know that you are
supporting them in that, and especially the ones who are up for
election in the House right now, and the ones who didn't vote
right, say, It's time get right on this."
And that leaves on final question, which is, how to get more
information out. It occurs to me that there is going to be a
lame duck session before the bombs are falling I'm afraid
there's a serious chance that the bombs will start falling
before the election but in any case, in what time we have left,
hearings in Congress that brought the kind of witnesses that are
experts, and can inform us better, authoritatively, like Scott
Ritter, who wanted to be called, a former UN inspector, former
Marine, who has been telling his truth about this in a very good
way, authorities like Nelson Mandela, who are opposing this war,
saying that it is criminal and aggressive, with great authority
a subcommittee of Congress could bring these people, informally
or formally, before Congress, and get us information that we
don't have now.
SCHER: Suppose there was information that says, Here's the
link, and the government released it, and the gave us
corroborating evidence, through the United Nations
ELLSBERG: Okay, two stages there. First of all, they probably
get evidence supporting what they're saying, in some degree,
every two hours, roughly unsubstantiated reports, ambiguous
reports, as in the Tonkin Gulf. McNamara and Johnson really did
believe, the night of August 4th, that there had been an attack.
There hadn't been, but they had cables that they misinterpreted,
that they sincerely believed, I think, for hours, or a day or
two, that did substantiate that. So merely to have something in
hand is not the last word on this. It has to be looked at. It
has to be examined by intelligence experts. It has to be looked
at by the Senators when they looked at it, some years later, 4
years later, the senators looked at that supposed evidence and
said, What does this prove? How did this lead you?
So the first thing is to ask our representatives, especially our
senators, our top senators, who might be brought in on the event
when they President says I have to go now, before the
inspectors go in, or having nothing to do with the inspections,
before there's a UN resolution, I have to go tomorrow,
literally tomorrow, or next week, or before the election or just
after the elections, because I have to protect American
troops, the first thing to do is to look very critically at
that. Or, I have evidence, against all CIA analysts, they were
wrong they can be wrong it turns out, and the evidence stands
up, that Saddam actually is behind al Qaeda. I could be
persuaded by such evidence. I'm not a pacifist by any means.
If things turned out to be as there's no evidence now as the
President is saying now, he could convince me. But I can tell
you I wouldn't accept the first word I had of such evidence, and
I would hope our senators wouldn't do the same. . . .
[White House officer] Egil Krogh said to his judge, when he
plead guilty, that the main purpose in going after me was and
breaking into my former psychiatrist's office, was not in
response to what I had done, which was putting out history about
the Democrats Nixon was very glad to get that out, the tapes now
reveal, I didn't know that earlier. What he was afraid of was
that I had documents of current relevance to what he had
recently done, and what he was about to do, possibly using
nuclear weapons it now comes out that he himself proposed to
Kissinger at on point the use of nuclear weapons.
That's why it's so important for people, I think, now, not to do
what I did, putting out history, and not to wait till the bombs
are falling. If you know the President is deceiving the public
on matters of life and death, put out current documents, right
now, while it's still possible to effect events. . . .
