---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 11:53:24 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: Pentagon Papers leaker seeks leaks on Iraq
Pentagon Papers leaker seeks leaks on Iraq
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030311-024340-7995r
By Mark Benjamin
From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk
Published 3/11/2003
WASHINGTON, March 11 (UPI) -- Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 leaked the
Pentagon Papers, on Tuesday called on government officials to leak documents
to Congress and the press showing the Bush administration is lying in
building its case against Saddam Hussein.
Ellsberg, an ex-Marine and military analyst, said he held out hope that
exposing alleged lies by the Bush administration could still avert an unjust
war. He warned that whistleblowers may face ruin of their careers and
marriages and be incarcerated.
"Don't wait until the bombs start falling," Ellsberg said at a Tuesday press
conference in Washington. "If you know the public is being lied to and you
have documents to prove it, go to Congress and go to the press."
Ellsberg did not leak the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times until 1971,
although he says he had information in the mid-1960s that he now wishes he
had leaked then.
"Do what I wish I had done before the bombs started falling" in Vietnam,
Ellsberg said. "I think there is some chance that the truth could avert
war."
The thousands of pages in the Pentagon Papers showed the government's secret
decision-making process on Vietnam since the end of World War II. Their
publication -- the government sued and lost to prevent it -- is widely
credited with helping to turn public opinion against the war in Southeast
Asia.
Ellsberg's press conference comes a little more than a week after the London
Observer reported on what it said is a top-secret memo showing that the
United States planned to spy on U.N. delegates to gain an advantage in the
debate over Iraq.
The Observer reported the electronic memo dated Jan. 31, by high-ranking
National Security Agency operative Fank Koza, says the agency is "mounting a
surge" of intelligence activities mostly focused on U.N. Security Council
members for "information that could give U.S. policy-makers an edge in
obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises."
NSA spokesman Patrick Weadon wouldn't comment on the authenticity of the
e-mail memorandum. "We have no statement," he said.
U.N. ambassadors have mostly shrugged off the memorandum as reflecting the
regular course of business at the United Nations.
Ellsberg said this story on spying at the United Nations is potentially more
significant than the Pentagon Papers because it comes before a war has begun
and it shows a desperate Bush administration. "This leak is potentially more
significant than the release of the Pentagon Papers, since it is
extraordinarily timely," Ellsberg said.
This past Sunday, the Observer reported that an employee at the top-secret
British Government Communications Headquarters had been arrested following
publication of the story. Ellsberg said reporters at the Observer told him
the 28-year old woman arrested was not the source of the leak.
A second U.S. diplomat resigned yesterday in protest against the Bush
administration's war stance. John H. Brown, who served in the diplomatic
corps since 1981, said Bush's disregard for the views of other nations was
giving birth to "an anti-American century." Last month, a senior U.S.
diplomat based in Athens, political counselor John Brady Kiesling, resigned
with similar complaints.
Last week, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic
Energy Agency, rejected a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to
purchase high-strength aluminum tubes to use in centrifuges for uranium
enrichment.
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