Margarita Alarcón : Five Reasons to Remember the Pentagon Papers

Daniel Ellsberg speaks to reporters outside the Federal Building in Los Angeles on Jan. 17, 1973. Ellsberg's co-defendant, Anthony Russo is at center right. Photo by AP.
Five reasons to remember
the Pentagon Papers

By Margarita Alarcón / The Rag Blog / June 14, 2011

Call it the granddaddy of WikiLeaks. Four decades ago, a young defense analyst leaked a top-secret study packed with damaging revelations about America's conduct of the Vietnam War.
[….]
The National Archives released the Pentagon Papers in full Monday and put them online, long after most of the secrets spilled. The release was timed 40 years to the day after The New York Times published the first in its series of stories about the findings, on June 13, 1971, prompting President Richard Nixon to try to suppress publication and crush anyone in government who dared to spill confidences.

Prepared near the end of Johnson's term by Defense Department and private analysts, the report was leaked primarily by one of them, Daniel Ellsberg, in a brash act of defiance that stands as one of the most dramatic episodes of whistleblowing in U.S. history.

-- Associated Press / June 13, 2011

HAVANA -- Daniel Ellsberg served in the Pentagon under then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Ellsberg had been on duty on the evening of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, reporting the incident to McNamara.

For those of you who are rusty on U.S./world history, the Gulf of Tonkin incident served as President Johnson's legal justification for deploying U.S. conventional forces and for the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.

When Daniel Ellsberg, back in 1969, photocopied classified documents from the Pentagon to which he had access, he did so because he was disenchanted with the war his government was pulling his country deeper into; he felt he had to do something to stop the lying and protect the lives of so many that would be lost in the end.

The government of course wanted Ellsberg tried and convicted, but due to gross governmental misconduct and illegal evidence-gathering, and the defense work of Leonard Boudin and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, charges against Ellsberg were dropped.

After his trail ended Ellsberg learned that there had been a plan by the CIA to drug him with LSD and have him appear completely incoherent in front of a mass audience. This “Ellsberg neutralization proposal” originated with Howard Hunt and was recounted in G. Gordon Liddy’s autobiography.

Now here comes the punch line of my rant: who did the CIA have on board to carry out this fiendish act? Well, turns out it was 12 Cuban-Americans no less! Ha! We’re everywhere! The good ones and the bad ones! I leave it to readers to decide which are which.

But as fate or karma would have it, it turns out that the lawyers who defended Ellsberg in one of the most important and decisive trials in U.S. history included a young fresh-out-of-law school attorney who also had the first name of Leonard.

Leonard Weinglass had already garnered a name for himself during the trial of the Chicago 8. But little did Lenny know during the trials of Tom Hayden and Daniel Ellsberg that Cubans would be following him till his dying day.

Weinglass’ last case, his last battle against the same windmills of gross governmental misconduct, involved five Cubans unjustly imprisoned in the U.S. for divulging information to Cuba and the United States on terrorist activities against their Cuban homeland -- and against all those in the U.S., Cuba, and everywhere else, who wanted to see normal relations between our two countries.

So now, 40 years after The New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers -- which helped lead to the end of the war in Vietnam -- wouldn’t it be great if another truth came to light and President Obama, with or without the help of The New York Times, freed the Cuban 5 and, in doing so, took the next step towards ending the U.S.-Cuba conflict?

[Margarita Alarcón Perea was born in Havana, Cuba, and raised in New York City. She studied at Karl Marx Stadt in East Germany and Havana, and is a graduate of Havana University in linguistics. She has taught English translation and North American twentieth century literature, and worked in the Cuban music industry. She is currently a news analyst for Cubadebate in Havana and contributes to The Rag Blog and The Huffington Post. Maggie's father is Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban National Assembly. Read more articles by Margarita Alarcón on The Rag Blog.]

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Austin : Former Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver Sparks UT Gathering

'1968: A Global Perspective' keynote speaker Kathleen Cleaver, center, at the UT-Austin campus. Immediately flanking her are conference panelists Alice Embree and Thorne Dreyer of The Rag Blog. At far left and far right are Jim Retherford and Carl Webb of MDS/Austin. Photo by Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog.
Cleaver's readings from her upcoming memoir were tender and honest.
By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / October 16, 2008

An interdisciplinary conference at the University of Texas at Austin focused on 1968: A Global Perspective. In a previous Rag Blog article, Thorne Dreyer highlighted the keynote speakers, Daniel Ellsberg and Kathleen Cleaver and a panel discussion on “SDS and Student Activism Today.” The same post gave information on an exhibit at the Center for American History that can be viewed through January 2009. Susan Van Haitsma wrote about Ellsberg’s fine presentation in another Rag Blog article.

Kathleen Cleaver, law professor (Yale and Emory) and former leader of the Black Panther Party read from her memoir, “Memories of Love and War” on Friday, October 10 on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Cleaver was a keynote speaker at "1968: A Global View." Cleaver’s work – still in progress – was both tender and honest.

She and Eldridge lived in Oakland at one of the epicenters of revolutionary activity. She described the raids on her home, the murder of Bobby Hutton, the organizing to free Bobby Seale. It gave context to the news that she and other Panthers heard in their attorney’s office on April 4th – that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. She is unrelentingly honesty. The Panthers were living day-to-day with escalating repression when the advocate for non-violent resistance was gunned down.

Cleaver’s respect for Eldridge was obvious. She came out of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and he came out of prison, a self-educated, well-read political analyst. Their marriage co-existed in the cauldron of revolutionary upheaval. They lived in exile in Algeria for several years.

In her responses to questions, she never seemed to “triangulate” on truth. A student asked her opinion of what the New York Times calls a “post-racial” America. “First,” she said, “don’t rely on the New York Times to define you.” She talked about the Panthers’ study of Franz Fanon and his theories about colonial domination. When an audience member asked her about feminism, she responded that they were focused on trying to keep both their brothers from being murdered.

Cleaver will be coming to teach at the UT law school this spring. Hopefully, this will allow for more dialogue.

On Saturday, October 11th, Thorne Dreyer and I participated as the elder generation in a dialogue about student organizing. Rosario Martinez of (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana/o de Aztlan (MEChA) and Kelly Booker of Campus Antiwar Movement to End the Occupations (CAMEO). Martinez talked about successful efforts to build a coalition around immigrant rights before the April 10 and May 1,2006 Austin marches. Booker spoke of the successes and challenges of antiwar organizing in a post-9/11, Patriot Act environment. There were huge antiwar mobilizations preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. When they did nothing to prevent the invasion, morale shattered and many decided that marches had no effect.

If you want to support the current generation, there are two things that you can do:

1) Boycott Chipotle until they sign a contract with the Florida farm workers and agree to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). This has been an effective strategy with McDonald’s and Burger King and Yum Brands. Visit www.ciw-online.org for more information.

2) Hear Camilo Mejia at 7 pm, on Thursday, October 16 at UT Garrison 01.102. CAMEO is the sponsor of this event. Mejia grew up in Nicaragua and Costa Rica before moving to the U.S. He joined the military at 19. After fighting in Iraq for five months, he became the first known Iraq veteran to refuse to fight. He was convicted of desertion and sentenced to a year in prison. He is the author of Road from ar Ramadi: An Iraq War Memoir.

Also of note, the Center for American History at UT has an exhibit in progress that features 1968 poster art and the SDS Comic Show. Panels from Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History are displayed. The book, published by Hill and Wang, is written by noted graphic artist Harvey Pekar, illustrated by Gary Dumm and edited by Paul Buhle, senior lecturer at Brown University and left historian. Austin panels included in the book are featured as well. The Center is open 10-5 Monday-Friday and Saturday 9-2 (when UT doesn’t play an at-home football game). Parking is easy. The exhibit is free. It will run through January 2009.

To learn more about the conference, see Daniel Ellsberg, Kathleen Cleaver Headline Austin '1968' Conference by Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / Oct. 7, 2008

And Daniel Ellsberg and the Concept of Freedom of Conscience by Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog / Oct. 9, 2008

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Daniel Ellsberg and the Concept of Freedom of Conscience

Daniel Ellsberg at UT-Austin, Oct. 7, 2008. Photo by Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog.
Report-back on Daniel Ellsberg speaking at the University of Texas on Tuesday: 'Truth can free us from war.'
By Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog / October 9, 2008

When I attended the presentation at the University of Texas at Austin on Tuesday evening by Daniel Ellsberg, the concept of freedom of conscience was already on my mind.

A few days prior, I had gone to a special commemoration of Gandhi’s birthday, where conscience was posed as a religious freedom issue by one of the speakers, a local war tax resister. Souvenir bookmarks containing Gandhi quotes were distributed around the tables, and the one I happened to pick up read, “In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.”

Then, over the weekend, an inaugural conference was held in Austin, organized chiefly by the pastor and congregation of the Austin Mennonite Church. The National Assembly to Honor Freedom of Conscience featured guest speakers Walter Wink (noted theologian and nonviolence trainer), Gene Stoltzfus (former director of Christian Peacemaker Teams) and Ann Wright, whose book, “Dissent: Voices of Conscience” was published this year and includes a foreward by Daniel Ellsberg. Conference panelists included conscientious objectors and GI resisters whose stories parallel those in Wright’s book.

Ann Wright spoke also at a book signing event at BookWoman on Monday, where matters of conscience, government, law, risk, family and the military were discussed by those present, including, again, several conscientious objectors. The week seemed to come full circle with Ellsberg’s Austin appearance the following evening.

In conjunction with a UT conference planned for the coming weekend, Ellsberg was asked to compare what was happening in 1968 with what is happening now. He packed a lot in – dates, names, places and people – while his primary message echoed what I had heard all week: truth can free us from war.

Ellsberg did not talk much about the tragedies and tumult of 1968, but rather focused on what he saw and experienced as a government insider. “1968 is a year I don’t like to relive,” he admitted. He spent most of his time describing events leading up to that year, beginning with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964 and the tangled web that was spun from it and later documented in the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg also recounted something about the less tangible factors that led to the escalation of the Indochina War – the human strengths and frailties of the political and military actors at that time, including him.

Ellsberg spoke with an intense clarity of memory, recounting the details of who said what when, what they probably meant and what they probably did or didn’t know at the time. I sensed that in spite of the strange mix of pariah/hero status he attained following the publishing of the Pentagon Papers, he still is proud of the insider position he once held and perhaps even misses the feeling of closeness that resulted from being loyal to powerful people and knowing their secrets. In fact, he said that being called a traitor is something he has never gotten used to.

In his talk, Ellsberg didn’t fully explain his inner change of heart, the private crisis of conscience that led him to shift from personal loyalty to the president and joint chiefs of staff to a more abstract loyalty to the Constitution and international law. But, as he wrote in an article in Harpers in 2006 (quoted by UT’s Evan Carton during his introduction of Ellsberg),

I had long prized my own identity as a keeper of the president’s secrets. In 1964 it never even occurred to me to break the many secrecy agreements I had signed, in the Marines, at the Rand Corporation, in the Pentagon. Although I already knew the Vietnam War was a mistake and based on lies, my loyalties then were to the secretary of defense and the president (and to my promises of secrecy, on which my own career as a president’s man depended). I’m not proud that it took me years of war to awaken to the higher loyalties owed by every government official to the rule of law, to our soldiers in harm’s way, to our fellow citizens, and, explicitly, to the Constitution, which every one of us had sworn an oath ‘to support and uphold.’ It took me that long to recognize that the secrecy agreements we had signed frequently conflicted with our oath to uphold the Constitution.

More about the role of conscience in Ellsberg’s moral conflict can be found in a passage I read about ten years ago in Daniel Hallock’s collection of writings and interviews, Hell, Healing and Resistance: Veterans Speak. The book includes an interview with Ellsberg in which he recalls these pivotal personal events in 1968 and ’69:

Now, two things affected my life at that point. I’d been reading Gandhi since the spring of ’68, when I happened to meet people from the Quaker Action group at a conference in Princeton. I had gone there to study counter-revolution, and they were there as nonviolent revolutionaries. So I started reading MLK, Stride Toward Freedom, and Barbara Deming, who wrote an essay called Revolution and Equilibrium. I read and reread many times a book by Joan Bondurant called The Conquest of Violence, on Gandhian thought, which converted me very strongly, very impressively.

Then, in late August 1969 I went to a conference of the War Resisters League – they were founded by World War I CO’s; Einstein was once their honorary president – and in the course of this conference I was induced to go to a vigil for somebody who was going to prison for draft resistance, which was a very unusual thing for me to be doing. There I was, standing in the street outside the Philadelphia post office, passing out leaflets. This was not the sort of thing the GSA Team did. It seemed, you know, rather undignified – giving away your influence and your access in such a ridiculous way, just handing out leaflets like a bum.

Then, at the end of this conference, I met another young man, Randy Kehler, a Harvard college graduate who had gone on to Stanford but then stopped his studies to work for the War Resisters League. He gave a talk and at the end he announced that he was also on his way to prison for refusal to cooperate with the draft. And this came to me as a total shock. It just hit me that it was a terrible thing for my country that the best he and so many others could do was go to prison. I went to the men’s room and just sat on the floor and cried for about an hour and thought, ‘My country has come to this? We’re eating our young. We’re relying on them, to end the war and to fight the war?’ And I felt it was up to me. I was older. I was thirty-eight. It was up to us older people to stop the war.

Ellsberg realized his tool was information and his sacrifice was the loss of his insider position and a risk, like that of the draft resister, of imprisonment. MLK’s April 4, 1967 admonition, “A time comes when silence is betrayal,” gained special meaning for him.

Ellsberg feels we are in a similarly critical time now. It’s a time that calls for greater risk-taking. He said that Obama, for example, could risk standing against an escalation of the Iraq war into Iran, Afghanistan or Pakistan. Links ought to be made between the economic crisis and the war. “Can we afford to murder people at this cost indefinitely?” is the question we must ask, he says. He pointed out that in the five years after 1968 – when the Indochina war had lost almost all popular support, four times as many bombs were dropped in Southeast Asia as were dropped prior to 1968. He fears the same kind of enlargement of war could easily happen again. “Power doesn’t learn from history,” he said. “Power follows its own dictates; power doesn’t give up its power.”

Ellsberg concluded, “This country needs to advance in another direction.” Directed by conscience and moved by the acts of conscience of others, people can change course. His life is a case in point. Truth can stand up to power, and a bum with a leaflet can change the course of history.

[Susan Van Haitsma also blogs as makingpeace at Statesman.com.]

Also see Daniel Ellsberg, Kathleen Cleaver Headline Austin '1968' Conference by Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / Oct. 7, 2008

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Daniel Ellsberg, Kathleen Cleaver Headline Austin '1968' Conference

History as prologue? 1968 A Global Perspective
By Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / October 7, 2008

See more about Daniel Ellsberg, Kathleen Cleaver and the SDS Comic Show Below.

Daniel Ellsberg and Kathleen Cleaver headline an interdisciplinary conference being held this week at the University of Texas at Austin.

Ellsberg, former military analyst best known for his role in releasing the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War is the initial keynote speaker at 1968 A Global Perspective on the campus of UT Austin. Ellsberg speaks on "Secrecy and Presidential Wars: Lessons of '68" tonight, Tuesday, Oct. 7, at 7:30 at Jessen Auditorium.

Kathleen Cleaver, educator (Yale Univerity and Emory Law School) and former leader of the Black Panther Party, will read from her memoir in progress, "Memories of Love and War," Friday, Oct.10, at the Texas Union Theater. Michael Hardt of Duke University, Kristin Ross of New York University and Diana Sorensen of Harvard will also deliver keynote speeches.

The Rag Blog co-editor Thorne Dreyer and contributor Alice Embree, both active with SDS in the sixties and currently involved with MDS/Austin, will help run a roundtable discussion on “SDS and Student Activism Today” Saturday at 2:30 pm in MEZ B0.306 on the UT campus. There will be a number of other panels and workshops during the weekend.

Associated events during the week include the following:

* Pre-Conference Film Series: Celluloid for Social Justice.

* Exhibition: To the Moon: The American Space Program in the 1960s, LBJ Library and Museum.

* Exhibition: Texas Poster Art and the SDS Comic Show, UT Center for American History.

* Exhibition: Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York.

* Exhibition: The New York Graphic Workshop: 1965-1970

The conference takes place October 10-12, and is being held in tandem with the Fifth Annual Graduate Comparative Literature Conference.


Here's how the organizers describe the conference:

The year 1968 has become a central myth for the twentieth century, the purported moment of origin for "the present" -- for current politics, culture, and academics. This conference commemorates the 40th anniversary of 1968 by calling for a reassessment of its local and global impacts, its icons, myths, and images, the traces and absences left in its wake, and the intellectual and cultural heritages that we are still working through, as the collective memory of participants fades into a post-memory of the still incomplete projects of modernization, globalization, and liberation.

The conference aims to create interdisciplinary discussions of the many different 1968 experiences and projects that can be recovered in global, national, and international frameworks. Flashpoints, major players, artistic responses in all media and genres, and (re)theorizings of 1968 and its heritage will be included as conference themes.

Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg is a former American military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers.

The release of the Pentagon Papers contributed greatly to the increasingly vocal and wide-spread opposition to the War in Vietnam.

Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 but the charges were eventually. The release of the Pentagon Papers set in motion a series of events that eventually led to the Watergate break-in and other illegal activities by Nixon's "plumbers" which were revealed during the trial – and the eventual impeachment of Richard Nixon.

Ellsberg has continued in public life as a writer and political activist.

Kathleen Cleaver

Although Kathleen Neal Cleaver [who was born in Dallas] first came to the attention of the public because of her relationship with Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panther Party, she has many accomplishments outside of her relationship with Cleaver for which she is well known. She is widely viewed as a gifted lawyer and educator who speaks out ardently against racism. She is greatly in demand as a lecturer and has published numerous articles in newspapers and magazines. . .

. . . Cleaver's January 1967 arrival at SNCC's (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) Atlanta, Georgia, headquarters set off a series of life-altering events. As secretary of SNCC's campus program, she assisted in organizing a black student conference at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. One of the attendees at the March conference was the minister of information for the Black Panther Party (the Party), Eldridge Cleaver.

Eldridge Cleaver's intense oratory about black nationalism and revolution captivated Kathleen Neal Cleaver. Attracted by the Party's more radical approach to social change, she left SNCC and joined the Black Panther Party and Eldridge Cleaver in San Francisco in November 1967. The couple was married on December 27, 1967.

[Clashes between San Francisco police and members of the Black Panther Party led to charges against Eldridge Cleaver. The two lived in exile in Cuba and Algeria for a number of year.] In 1987, Kathleen Neal Cleaver divorced Eldridge Cleaver. . .

. . .Of her experiences with the Black Panther Party, Cleaver told the New York Times Magazine, "It was thrilling to be able to challenge the circumstances in which blacks were confined; to mobilize and raise consciousness, to change the way people saw themselves, blacks could express themselves."

Cleaver continues to have a very active life. As an advocate for the elimination of racism from our culture, she has published articles in magazines and newspapers since 1968 and is much in demand on the lecture circuit. She has also been featured in a number of film documentaries.

Source / Pan African News Wire

The SDS Comic Show

The SDS Comic Show [see schedule of associated events, above] features panels from Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History (Hill and Wang), scripted by noted graphic artist and historian Harvey Pekar and edited by Paul Buhle, senior lecturer in American civilization and history at Brown University.

The book tells -- in comic book style -- the story of SDS, the organization that served as the heart of the New Left movement and the vanguard of the sixties uprising and was perhaps the most important student organization in U.S. history.

According to editor Buhle, “The SDS Comic Show gives an overview history of the influential, but short-lived SDS and illustrates the local, personal stories of young people changing their own lives as they opposed war, racism, and sexism within the campus movements.”

The full schedule and other information are available at the website of 1968 A Global Perspective.

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