Manning, Snowden give Ellsberg “hope”, Ellsberg says at hacker conference

Tuesday, July 22 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
Last weekend at the Hope X (Hackers on the Planet Earth) conference in New York, Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden led a discussion touching on the importance of government transparency and whistleblowers in order for the public, as Snowden said, “to be given back its seat at the table of government.”

Ellsberg and Snowden speaking at the Hope X convention

Snowden continued, “If we’re going to have democracy, if we’re going to have an enlightened citizen, if we’re going to be able to actually provide the consent of the governed- we have to know what’s going on. We have to know at least the broad outlines of the policies. And we can’t have the government shut us out from every action they’re doing.
We have a right as Americans and as members of the global community to know the broad outline of government policies that have significant impact on our lives.”
Ellsberg stated that Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden give him hope, emphasizing the rare and heroic nature of risking their personal freedoms and lives to put forth massive disclosures for the good of the public:

“Hope… which had not been in great supply for me.  Recently when I saw the name of this conference I had mixed feelings about it. My feelings of hope go up and down and haven’t been too high… and there’s no question I felt [hope] when Chelsea manning was revealed.

I used to… ask in a way, ‘How often do you need a Pentagon Papers?’- which is a massive disclosure that is unequivocal of documents that really shows- one document doesn’t really do it’ …They can say, ‘Well we changed that the next day, that was just some particular little department, some low level person.’ What you really need is the massive stuff, as in the Pentagon Papers, that shows, no, this is what they said the next day, and the day after that, and here was the official policy and so forth.

And I waited forty years to hear that and so I was pretty much  losing hope that there would be anybody inside who was willing to risk his freedom, his life or her life and freedom to put out what needed to be put out.”

Ellsberg discredits politicians, most recently John Kerry and Hilary Clinton, who attempt to claim his leaks were a proper example of whistleblowing but proclaim Manning and Snowden to be traitors.

“This bullsh*& in a way started with Barack Obama, when somebody actually took the occasion to ask him about Manning… and said, ‘Didn’t Chelsea Manning do exactly what Ellsberg did?’ What [Obama] said was, ‘Ellsberg’s material was classified in a different manner’—Well, that was true in a way-  as I mentioned earlier, everything Manning put out was ‘Secret’ or less- and everything I put out was ‘Top Secret’. That was the difference.

…Thanks to Manning, and now to [Snowden], I’m getting more favorable publicity than in forty years. Because suddenly people who were all for putting me in prison for life before now realize that I’m a pretty good guy, I was the ‘good whistleblower’.

…When I read that Manning had said to Lamo, …[she] was willing to go to prison for life or even be executed, I said to myself I have waited forty years to hear somebody say that. That’s the way I felt forty years ago. And it’s taken this long. So I felt an immediate identification with [her]. So I identified with them, and I couldn’t bear to hear me getting good press, from the Secretary of State and from others, on the grounds that my motives were ‘different’.”

Tabling for Chelsea Manning at the Hope X conference, June 18, 2014

Ellsberg explained that he and Manning had similar humanitarian motives, and that he identified with Manning:

“My interest was not in setting the record straight, my interest was in ending an on-going war and for that I would much have preferred to put out current documents, which I at that moment didn’t have access to… It was a big secret what Nixon was up to, including nuclear threats. I hoped my documents would show a pattern that extended into the present and I failed.

Hardly anybody was willing to extrapolate and say, ‘Well, Ellsberg has shown that four previous presidents lied in the same way, escalated in the same way, made the same kind of secret threats: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson’… I thought, ‘Maybe they’ll figure out that maybe the current president is doing the same.’

But, no, it took documents and I didn’t have that.

So for years I’ve been saying to people it’s got to be with documents, even though it increases their risk. Well, people know that basically, but they weren’t willing to take the risk, I’m sorry to say.

So then Manning came out with [her]… hundreds of thousands of cables, and then [Snowden] with documents… it took those documents which took the risk… I saw it right away… without having met [Snowden], without having met Manning- this was someone I identified with and at the same time heroes.”

Government treatment of Manning and Snowden sets chilling precedents in their attempt to discourage further whistleblowers. Manning was criticized for not reporting through “proper channels”, but Snowden brings up negative government reaction to whistleblower, Thomas Drake, regardless of his use of “proper channels”:

“We in the public, we see these stories, they come in the news- The justice department, the President, all talking heads- they say these guys are bad guys. They say they risk country, they say they are spies, they get charged under the espionage act, they did bad things.

But when you look at what happened, when you look at the bad faith the government used in their case, particularly against Thomas Drake… You’ve got to remember that inside the intelligence community they are trumpeting these things, they’re holding these guys up as examples to say look- if you say what’s going on, if you step out of line, even if you’re doing it for the right reasons, even if you’re doing it the right way- there will be repercussions.

They talk about internal channels and what not but these guys used internal channels, and they, people like Thomas Drake, they end up getting indicted”.

Ellsberg continues, pointing out the future potential threat posed even to journalists, who some accuse of ‘aiding and abetting’ the leakers:

“They haven’t yet gone against the freedom of the press idea by prosecuting journalists… It is my opinion that that lies next on the grounds… That supposed journalist, Michael Kingsley, accused Glenn Greenwald, and Peter King has done the same, …and that is, ‘you guys, you journalists are aiding and abetting a crime, a criminal.’

…But aiding and abetting is a legal term and it has to do with a crime and perpetrating. Wasn’t it David Gregory who asked Greenwald, ‘In so far as you are aiding and abetting’ he’s saying ‘in so far that YOU ARE A CRIMINAL why should you not be punished?’ To accept that the giving of the information is unequivocally criminal is the first step, I’m sure to going along with Kingsley and Gregory and so many others… Publishing is also criminal… and they will go after that as well.”

Click here to watch the complete discussion with Ellsberg and Snowden.

 Artist Clark Stoeckley set up a table in support of Chelsea Manning at the Hope X conference, featuring Stoeckley’s book and a donation box for Chelsea Manning’s upcoming legal appeals. Stoeckley’s novel, The United States versus Chelsea Manning, is a graphic account from inside the courtroom of Manning’s court martial last summer. Click here to purchase The United States versus Chelsea Manning or for more information.