Excerpting, re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett
We need more whistleblowers from within.
Their truth telling
to outside authorities and audiences
is essential
— 1969 Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg —
“Secret U.S. Embassy Cables” released
“Wikileaks began on Sunday November 28th publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into U.S. Government foreign activities.
“The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year (2010), contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the U.S State Department in Washington DC. Fifteen thousand six hundred and fifty-two (15,652) of the cables are classified Secret.
“The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice. The cables show the extent of U.S. —
Spying on its allies and the UN;
Turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in "client states";
Backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries;
Lobbying for U.S. corporations; and
Measures U.S. diplomats take to advance those who have access to them
“Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington — the country’s first President – could not tell a lie. If the administrations of his successors lived up to the same principle, today’s document flood would be a mere embarrassment. Instead, the U.S. Government has been warning governments — even the most corrupt — around the world about the coming leaks and is bracing itself for the exposures.
“The full set consists of 251,287 documents, comprising 261,276,536 words (seven times the size of ‘The Iraq War Logs,’ the world’s previously largest classified information release).
“The cables cover from 28th December 1966 to 28th February 2010 and originate from 274 embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions.
“When the Leaders Are the Problem,” Daniel Ellsberg writes —
“Above all, we need more whistleblowers from within. Their truth telling to outside authorities and audiences is essential. And the only way to get it—since dangers to their own careers in their organizations cannot be eliminated—is to somehow encourage them to accept those risks, for the benefit of others.
“Is that asking the impossible?“Humans have the capability for great concern, altruism, and even self-sacrifice in the interest of others outside their immediate families and teams, and they very often show it; only not often enough, indeed quite rarely, in their official roles within organizations.
“Difficult, unusual, unlikely, yes. Yet it is humanly possible and essential.
“Unfortunately, as human beings, we also all have the capability of being selective in our concern, and of being manipulated in our selectivity of concern by our leaders and colleagues in our groups.
“A major reason for the occurrence of disasters is that, as humans, we often choose keeping our job, protecting our reputation, getting promoted, maintaining our access to inside information, getting reelected, assuring college education for our children, preserving our marriage, and holding on to our house in a nice neighborhood—all considerations that are neither trivial nor discreditable for any of us— over actions, including truth telling to the public, that would risk some of these but which could potentially save vast numbers of other people’s lives.”
“… When I released the Pentagon Papers in 1971, former senator Wayne Morse told me that if I had given him those documents at the time of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964 (when I had many of them in my office safe in the Pentagon), “The Resolution would never have gotten out of committee. And if it had been brought to a vote, it would never have passed.” That’s a heavy burden to bear. But scores of other officials, perhaps a hundred, could have given those documents to the Senate as well as I.
“…More recently, any one of a hundred people within the government could have averted the Iraq War by telling the public—with documents—what they knew about the lies the president was feeding the public. Yet no one did.
“When confronted with potential looming catastrophes, people within large organizations often think, ‘Somebody else will take care of this. Surely, the top people know more than I do. It is their job to take care of it, and surely they will.’ The truth is, there is no likelihood at all that the leaders will take care of it.
“In the years since the Iraq War first approached (and more recently, equally disastrous prospects of attack on Iran), I have been urging patriotic and conscientious insiders, who may be in the situation I once was in — holding secret, official knowledge of lies, crimes, and dangers of impending, wrongful, catastrophic wars or escalations — to do what I wish I had done in 1964 or early 1965, years earlier than I did: ‘Go to Congress and the press and reveal the truth, with documents.’ The personal risks are real, but a war’s-worth of lives might be saved.”
“… From my own experience in government, and in my study of national security policy catastrophes in the decades since, I have come to believe that the most dangerous practices in the national security realm reflect priorities, in general, that are set by top officials: getting reelected, avoiding condemnation for past actions, or other political or bureaucratic objectives. Those priorities generally take great precedence over safety or preventing public harm.
“… The behavior of the people down below in the hierarchy is generally responsive to those priorities, because the way for them to keep their jobs and get ahead is self-evidently to conform to the priorities of their superiors, and especially the top boss. … What those superiors often want is help in avoiding or concealing documentation of warnings or recommendations that might convict them, on later examination, of self-interest or recklessness in choosing or continuing policies that failed.…
“… We need more whistleblowers from within. Their truth telling to outside authorities and audiences is essential. And the only way to get it—since dangers to their own careers in their organizations cannot be eliminated—is to somehow encourage them to accept those risks, for the benefit of others.
Sources and notes
Cable gate, http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/
“When the Leaders Are the Problem,” (Michael Ellsberg) July 14, 2009, Daniel Ellsberg’s Afterword to Flirting with Disaster: Why Accidents Are Rarely Accidental (Marc Gerstein with Michael Ellsberg), http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/when-the-leaders-are-the-problem
Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg was a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation in 1959 and consultant to the U.S. Defense Department and White House specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making. In 1961, he drafted the guidance from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on operational plans for general nuclear war. He was a member of two of the three working groups reporting to the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOM) during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Ellsberg joined the U.S. Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs) John McNaughton, working on the escalation of the war in Vietnam. He transferred to the State Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, evaluating pacification in the field.
Returning to RAND in 1967, Ellsberg worked on the top-secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000-page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971, he gave it to the New York Times, the Washington Post and 17 other newspapers.
His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against 327th U.S. President Richard M. Nixon.
Daniel Ellsberg is the author of Papers on the War (1971); Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002); and Risk, Ambiguity and Decision (2001). In December 2006, he was awarded a Right Livelihood Award in Stockholm, Sweden, the citation “… for putting peace and truth first, at considerable personal risk, and dedicating his life to inspiring others to follow his example.”
Daniel Ellsberg was born in Chicago in 1931, graduated from Harvard (1952) with a B.A. in Economics and later studied at King’s College, Cambridge University. In the years 1954 -1957, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps. http://www.ellsberg.net/bio
See also
“U.S. Facing Global Diplomatic Crisis Following Massive WikiLeaks Release of Secret Diplomatic Cables,” November 29, 2010, Guests: Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower; Carne Ross, a British diplomat for 15 years who resigned before the Iraq war, founder and head of a non-profit diplomatic advisory group, Independent Diplomat; Greg Mitchell, writer of the Media Fix blog for The Nation, longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine, author of 10 books including The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics; As’ad Abu Khalil, professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus and visiting professor at UC, Berkeley, author of The Battle for Saudi Arabia, and writer at the Angry Arab News Service blog, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/29/us_facing_global_diplomatic_crisis_following
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