The news spread in the whistleblower circle. Daniel Ellsberg, godfather, model, activator one might say, will soon be bent, increasingly weaker than his pancreas—a diagnosis made on February 18th left him with little more than a reprieve. Since then, everyone has delighted in remembering what the world owes to this industrious man, who has been a vigil guard of democracy his whole life, and what a sensational entry into the history stage in 1971 with his “The Pentagon Papers”. The curtain fell on Thursday, June 15, at his home in Kensington, California.
Nights Photograph Thousands of Converted Documents: Thus began the public activism of an honest man, enlisted as a military intelligence analyst within the RAND Corporation, a think tank close to power. The young man did not want to keep to himself the evidence of the double-talk from the White House about the Vietnam War, nor the details of the geostrategic goals that had been kept secret since Harry Truman’s presidency in 1945. And then, this war, contrary to official optimism, could not be won. And he reversed that by pushing the country’s youth to the cemetery.
sequel after announcement
> To read: “The Pentagon Papers” How the world approached a nuclear holocaust
Lies to Congress, lies to the American people and all the critical minds banging on the sidewalk against a massacre that was killing 300 soldiers every week – and many more Vietnamese: documents revealing all this appeared in the New York Times and then the Washington Post despite the government’s maneuvering. to censor. For those unfamiliar with the issue, there’s Spielberg’s “The Pentagon Papers,” with Tom Hanks and the impressive Meryl Stipe as Katharine Graham, the Washington Post owner who decides to publish despite the disapproval of all the virile board of directors, furious at The idea of a legal mess on the eve of the stock exchange listing.
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Prosecuted under the Espionage Act, a law intended to rein in the fervor of pacifists of 1917 who rejected US involvement in World War I, Daniel Ellsberg was then subjected to one of those absurd sentences America keeps a secret: 115 years in prison. The charges are dropped at trial when we learn that a secret unit in the White House where CIA agents work – the same unit that would be shown in the Watergate case – entered his psychiatrist’s locker and searched patient records for evidence to discredit the “spy”.
After these misfortunes, if Daniel Ellsberg remains his lifelong traveling and fighting companion whistleblower Like Chelsea Manning (the Assange case) or Edward Snowden (the CIA international eavesdropping case), the Espionage Act of 1917 has continued to be used against them, especially under the Obama presidency (2009-2017) with the prosecution. John Kiriakou, who emerged from the ranks of the CIA to expose the Bush administration’s torture program, or Thomas Drake, who came to publicly express his disgust with the NSA’s core business. The Espionage Act is also being used for the first time against a journalist – and a foreigner, moreover: Julian Assange, that great fellow. The man from the Pentagon Papers has more than once expressed his admiration for the WikiLeaks founder, the source for revelations about American crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars he clearly opposed as a peace activist.
sequel after announcement
Julian Assange, or the price to pay for “cyberpunk” journalism
Police arrested more than once during anti-intervention rallies “warrior” From Washington, he also devoted his time to analyzing the threat of nuclear war, and this concern is always renewed by the war in Ukraine and the current events in Taiwan – his book has become a reference (“Doomsday machine.” Confessions of a nuclear war plan »Bloomsbury, 2017) on behalf of its French publisher. And so Daniel Ellsberg, in his ninety-third year, continues to document the neglect of some of the “greats” of this world and the relegation of awkward people to the information blind spot.
His family said that the dearly departed was not in pain. We cooked him what he liked best, and added salt again, which his doctor allowed which made him very happy. We also know that he asked to see one of the favorite movies of his life several times, that beautiful George Roy Hill western that is Butch Cassidy and the Kid.
