Update: We're still at 1/3 of our emergency goal of $5,000.00 to keep Newstalgia online and the archives from being destroyed, and all the history you hear on this site to no longer exist. Please don't make that happen. I am indebted to the ones who have given whatever amount they could afford. Some, a lot. Others, One Dollar. It doesn't matter - it all is used to chip away at this burden and help us pass this hurdle. If you haven't donated yet, or are thinking about it - whatever you can give, whatever amount at all, will be deeply and gratefully appreciated. Please help keep Newstalgia up and running and the archives away from destruction.

With recent news of Wikileaks and the case pending, I ran across this interview with a whistleblower from another time - Daniel Ellsberg and the now-famous Pentagon Papers. Much of the outrage and controversy surrounding Ellsberg at the time had to do with his releasing sensitive documents regarding secret meetings over the Vietnam War. How that was condemned by some to be a horrible betrayal of National Security, but it was supported by others as a means of ending an unjust and unjustifiable war. Release of the papers, and their subsequent printing in the New York Times focused attention on how corrupt our policy was and how blatant our government lied in order to maintain the status quo, at the expense of thousands of American lives.

It was thought by many to be the catalyst in ending the war sooner and, during the time of this interview (July 30, 1972) Ellsberg was in the midst of a trial, the conviction would have been a sentence of some 115 years.

Here is the complete appearance of Daniel Ellsberg, as interviewed by William F. Buckley on Buckley's Firing Line Program from July 30, 1972

The controversy surrounding the Pentagon Papers, and their release to the public was unprecedented in history. Putting it in contemporary perspective, it most closely rivaled that of Wikileaks and the release of sensitive and potentially embarrassing government documents to the public.

The Pentagon Papers basically exposed (or confirmed) a vast series of coverups, deceits and falsehoods during the Vietnam War. The papers were damning to our Foreign Policy, our Military complex and the White House.

Key to the release of those papers was a former Pentagon Official, Daniel Ellsberg, who presented them to The New York Times, where excerpts were published. The resulting storm brought under fire and repercussions, not only Ellsberg and The New York Times, but the whole question of censorship and National Security and the Public's right to know, especially where it concerned the lives of so many of its citizens.

In the end, The Supreme Court sided with Ellsberg and The New York Times. and this broadcast, aired shortly after the decision was given, attempts to cover those bases.

Here is the special program, originally aired on June 30, 1971 from NBC News "The Supreme Court And The Pentagon Papers"

(Daniel Elssberg - the shadow of Nixon was everywhere)

With today's revelations over the Wikileaked "Afghanistan Papers", it brings to mind another famous set of papers that proved an embarrassment to U.S. Foreign Policy. The infamous Pentagon Papers and the subsequent trial of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo. The Pentagon Papers were a huge thorn in the side of the Nixon White House, made worse by illegal wiretaps and break-ins having to do with Ellsberg, all leading to the bigger picture which was Watergate.

Some say the disclosure of those papers, which outlined details of our failed excursion in Vietnam may have brought the war to a conclusion quicker. And had there not been the Pentagon Papers would there have been break ins and wiretaps of Daniel Ellsberg and others leading to the Watergate break in. It's a thought.

In any event, Ellsberg and Russo were jubilant as they held a press conference shortly after the acquittal was announced on May 12, 1973.

Daniel Ellsberg: “It’s a dramatic confirmation of the kinds of lessons that we read and that I first read in the Pentagon papers. And that I wanted to share with the American people lessons that were very painful for me as someone who had worked for the Executive Branch for all my professional life. For fifteen years including the Marine Corps, twelve years at the Department of Defense, White House, others. Those were lessons that the people that I had worked for had been corrupted by the absolute, enormous, unchallenged power that they’d come to exert in the last generation, the last thirty years or so, as any humans would be. That they were acting arrogantly, and ultimately that meant ignorantly and wrongly. And that the papers, of course, don’t tell the solution to that any more than Watergate tells the solution. I think the people of this country are more prepared to learn those same lessons in the domestic context than they were fully ready to learn about the Pentagon papers when the only victims were foreigners.”

Stop me if you're thinking what I'm thinking - but there's an eerie similarity here. The only difference is - Nixon was still in office when these revelations came to light. Bush isn't.