Pentagon Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg on Upcoming Iraq War Wikileaks Docs (Part 1 of 2)

And welcome for all our listeners and viewers

in all the country and around the world

The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks

plans to release the largest cache of classified US documents

in history tomorrow

The group is expected to post up to four

hundred thousand intelligence reports

on the Iraq War

WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange

is holding a press conference in London

on Saturday Morning

to make the announcement

disclosure of documents will comprise of biggest leaks

in US history

far more than the 91,000

Afeghanistan War Logs

WikiLeaks released this summer

the US government is racing to prepare for

the fallout. A team of more than a hundred analists

from Defense Intelligence Agency have been calming through classified Iraq documents

they think will be leak ... released.

WikiLeaks ...

WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks foreign condemnation from the US government

for the release of the ninety one thousand afeghan war logs in july

The White House and The Pentagon accused the website of irresponsability

they claim they are putting people´s lives in danger

But the Associated Press recently obtained a Pentagon letter reporting that

no US intelligence sources or practicers where compromised by the leak

Nevertheless, WikiLeaks says it´s been targeted by the US government

and in the aftermath of the Afghan War Logs leak

the US reportedly asked Britain, Germany, Australia and other western governments to

open criminal investigations on Julian Assange and severely restrict his international travel

most recently, WikiLeaks accused the US of targetting it

with financial warfare

Last week Julian Assange said the

company responsible for collecting of WikiLeaks donations

terminated it´s account after

the US and Australia placed the group on blacklist

meanwhile army intelligence analist Bradley Manning has been in prison

since May when he was arrested on charges of leaking a

video of a US military helicopter killing a group of innocent iraqis in Baghdad

From now we were joined here in our New York Studio by Daniel Ellsberg

perhaps the country´s most famous whistleblower

He leaked the secret history of the the vietnam war in 1971

he is flying to London tonight to take where place ... he will take part

on the WikiLeaks news conference

that´s on saturday.

Daniel Ellsberg, welcome to Democracy Now!

Can you talk about these four hundred thousand pages or documents that are expected to be released

One hundred thousand documents

allegedly it is, of course, a leak on the scale I couldn´t have done

forty years ago without scanners and digital capability.

I used the most advanced technology at that time

Xerox and I couldn´t have done what I did

ten years before that

You mean xerox on 70,000 pages?

Yes it took a long time, one page at a time

So, I am quite jealous of the current capabilities

but I am glad to express my support

on what WikiLeaks is doing and it´s sources in particular

whoever gave this information to WikiLeaks

obviously understood that they were at risk of being where Bradley Maning is now

accused, in prison. We don´t know. I don´t know who the source was

and if Bradley Manning is shown by army, beyond reasonable doubt to be

the source, he has my admiration

and thanks for doing it. I faced that kind of risk myself forty years ago

and it always seemed worthwhile to me

to be blowing to risk one´s life in prison, even

to helo shorten the war

like Afeghanistan or Iraq that´s what we were suffering then

in Vietnam and it was frequently a secrecy, the secrecy

they run for secrecy in information like this.

They got this into Vietnam

and Afeghanistan and Iraq. It has kept the war going in Afeghanistan

so if there´s any chance of shortening that it was certainly worth a person´s life

And the extent of damage control the militaries apparently

in the mold that it is in.

In the preparation for the release of this

documents as a surprise

You know.

They think they know what´s coming out

they are crying alarm over there. As they always do

in the case of ... in every case of a leak

Certainly they did with the pentagon papers

in fact, in that case they said the damage to national security was so great that

they had to stop the presses for the first

time in our history

The Supreme Court ruled otherwise and

having her testimony on that in the

seventeen, in fact, nineteen newspapers

altogether, decided otherwise

and did printed the papers

in what a mounted a civil desobedience

against the warnings of the attorney general

and in no case was there any harm discovered in that case

and as for the releases in July with all the warnings we heard

passed on by the media quite uncreditly, no damage has been reported

So I think the one should take their warnings now with a lot of salt.

On the Pentagon news conferecen in August

Defense Secretary Robert Gates denounced the leaking of the Afghan War Logs.

The battlefiled consequences of the release of these documents are potentially severe

and dangerous for our troops, our allies and afghan partners

and may well damage our relationships and reputation in that key part of the world

Intelligence sources and methods as well as military tactics

techniques and procedures will become known to our adversaries

this department is conducting a thorough aggresive investigation

to determine how this leak occurred

to identify the person or persons responsible and

to access the content of the information compromised

Speaking at the same news conference, Admiral Mike Mullen the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

accused WikiLeaks of having blood on his hands

Mr Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good

he thinks he and his sources are doing

but the truth is they might already have on their hands

the blood of some young soldiers

or that of an afeghan family

Disagree on the war all you want

take issue with the policy

challenge me or our ground commander

on the decisions we make to accomplish the mission

we´ve been given

But don´t put those who willingly go in the harms away

even further in harms away just to satisfy your need to make a point

And yet the Associetad Press obtained this Pentagon letter reporting "No US intelligence forces or practicers

were compromised by the leaks".

Daniiel Elsberg

You know for all of the Admiral Mullen or, for that matter, president´s Bush or

Barack Obama tell us of the good they hope to accomplish

we haven´t seen any evidence of that

I would say in terms of blood on their hands

and I sort of say a lot of actual blood has been spilled

as opposed to this hipotetical possible blood of which none has been reported

from the WikiLeaks.

Actually the demands they are making at the press to stay away from this story

or we the readers not to read it. And they are talking about returning the material.

Seems absurd on it´s face, returning released material on the cyberspace seem rather absurd.

They are obviously threatening prosecution

because they are using the words of the charges that were first used against me

the spionage act which is not intended as an official secret´s act.

But they use this language like "returning the information", "eighteen US

Dialogue: 0,0:07:30.71,0:07:34.60,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,I was the first person to have the experience of having those charges made.

In this case they have some credibility of prosecution because President Barack Obama has already

brought his Manning prosecution for leaks to the american public.

as all previous presidents put together

this is a small number, it´s tree

but since he didn´t have a really law intended to do that

no other president has brought more than one prosecution

he´s brought tree and including what he is threatening here

the press, including you and even your readers for not returning the information

that they are not authorized to receive

Is a clear warning I would say of a prosecution.

Which means that ... I think this administration is moving toward really agressively

using the spionage act as an oficcial secrets act. In which case

we will know even less than we do about the lies

that prolong wars and get us in too long for wars.

But what about that policy giving the fact that President Obama came in to office talking

about a more transparent and open government and

appears to be going in the opposite direction

Well, this promise is going away as his promise to close Guantanamo.

And a number of other promises he said. In no way of general defense

or homeland security area is he less opaque, more transparent

than Bush and some say he is even more agressive in pursuing prosecution

what other aspect to that is, in my understanding is that

the impression he is giving is that he is ending the war in Iraq

or that he has ended, even. The war described by these four hundred thousand documents

is I think a conscious lie. I think it as much as a lie as Lyndon Johson´s as I was working for

he underestimated for the public scale and the duration of the war we were getting into

I´ll predict without have seen these documents. I will make a bet here

I will stick my neck out: There´s no hint in those four hundred thousand documents

which go up unto this year. That President Barack Obama intends

to remove our basis from Iraq.

Next year, or the year after, or any time his ...

There hasn´t even a contigency plan

Returning over those basis to Iraqis and that means that rather

than doing what he´s promised which is to get all american

troops in the end of next year

I think there are tens of thousands there. He´ll never release officers in 2013 or

four years after that.

Well, let´s just say, you´re high level. You were a high level Pentagon official working

for the RAND corporation

That´s right, I spent years keeping the ... I was working for the Pentagon

in the State Departament.

I spent years keeping my mouth shut as president was lying to us

and kept these secrets I shouldn´t have done

that and that´s why I admire someone even who is accused

like Bradley Manning, if he is the source, or whoever the source was

of actually risking their own personal freedom in order to tell the truth

I think that they are being better citizens and showing their patriotism in a better way

than one who keeps the mouth shut.

Daniel Ellsberg can you go back to the language of 1973, the law that goes after whistleblowers

and how it can go after journalists as well?

The ... It actually can apply. The words are so broad that because they really were intended for spionage, for

people who are secretrly giving information to an enemy. So