Tomorrow,
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is expected to announce a new game plan for busting leakers,
both in the White House and across U.S. intelligence agencies,
who continue to undermine and humiliate the President.
Just this morning, another leak surfaced:
embarrassing transcripts of phone calls Trump made to the leaders of Mexico and Australia
back in his first week in office:
— These people should be fired!
They should be out of government, they’re disloyal to our government...
— So far, those leakers have managed to remain anonymous,
but the Justice Department does have one alleged informer to make an example out of:
Reality Winner, a government contractor accused of handing classified information to the press.
She’s currently being prosecuted under the Espionage Act—
a once-rare practice that increased dramatically under President Obama,
and could become even more common under the Trump administration.
The first American ever charged under the Espionage Act—
for releasing information to the press—
was Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst
who, in 1971, leaked the top secret indictment of the War in Vietnam
known as the Pentagon Papers.
Ellsberg narrowly escaped conviction and became an anti-war activist.
David Noriega visited Ellsberg at his home in California.
— Daniel Ellsberg’s home office is crowded with books, notes, and pictures
from the time he spent in Vietnam as a member of the foreign service.
— This is when you were in Vietnam for a couple years.
— In the late ‘60s,
working as an analyst for the RAND Corporation,
Ellsberg helped write the Pentagon Papers
before he turned against the war and leaked them.
He was not only charged with a felony for the leak—
the Nixon White House also sent a team of burglars,
including some who would later participate in the Watergate break-in,
to steal files from his psychiatrist.
Parts of the 27,000-page file that the FBI kept on Ellsberg are lying around his office.
— It begins with a memo about the break-in.
— That’s the first memo on the second page.
— The Nixon administration went after Ellsberg hard,
but he escaped by a hair—
the case against him fell apart when the judge found out about the break-in.
— There were a lot of right ways to end this political prosecution,
and this was one of them.
— If convicted,
Ellsberg would have faced 115 years in prison.
— I assumed I was breaking the law, and that I would be prosecuted.
And that the effect would probably be a life sentence.
— So you had to square yourself with the idea of spending the rest of your life in prison
before you could start really start releasing this information.
— I think I wouldn’t have started doing that if it weren’t for the example of young Americans
who were going to prison to protest the war non-violently.
And it didn’t take a lot of thought or anguish.
— So the decision to be willing to go to prison to end the war wasn’t that difficult for you.
— No, it was a question of realizing that this could make a difference,
and that it was worth going to prison
if there was even a small chance of shortening the war.
— So there’s this moment of realization, or radicalization perhaps,
where you realize you’re willing to make this sacrifice.
Do you think it’s possible for the government to effectively and decisively suppress that?
— They suppress it in nearly everyone.
It seemed to me so self-evident this was worthwhile when,
at the moment, when I came to it,
that I hoped that my example would make many other people realize,
“Oh, I can do that, and that’s the right thing to do.”
It didn’t happen, until Chelsea Manning.
And then three years later, we had Snowden.
It’s basically not easy to find others.
Those are the three who’ve done that on a large scale in 40 years.
— Ellsberg sees Snowden and Manning as fellow travelers,
and he’s ardently defended them in the face of controversy.
And he draws a distinction between them and people who leak for political advantage
and with the tacit approval of their bosses.
— So the people who are leaking I think are doing so in part for institutional reasons,
to protect their institutions.
It’s not so much the public at large.
We’re really seeing leaks that are
dangerous to the President, embarrassing to the President,
by agencies that feel themselves endangered by the President.
And that’s the standard kind-of leak.
— You were the first person to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act,
for releasing information to the American public.
Since then, the use of that statute, in that context,
has skyrocketed, you could say.
— Nine or 10 prosecutions under Obama doesn’t seem like so many,
but it’s three times more than there were before Obama.
Now, I expect there to be quite a few under Trump.
I think that Obama set a very bad precedent there,
of using the Act.
— We have our first sort of high-profile, likely Espionage Act case with Reality Winner,
and I guess I’m wondering,
if Trump begins to use the Espionage Act
against leakers and journalists to an unprecedented degree…
— Yeah, which he hasn’t done yet.
— ...which he hasn’t done yet.
do you think that could ever completely chill the impulse of the whistleblower?
— There will be people like Manning and Snowden
who are prepared to take the consequences.
The Pentagon Papers of Afghanistan I’m sure would look just like the Pentagon Papers of Vietnam.
I’m sure we can stand more whistleblowing than we’re now getting.
We need it.
You can’t have a free society, you can’t have a democratic society,
without unauthorized disclosures.