Page One

In 1971, Pentagon official Daniel Ellsberg risked his career, his reputation and his freedom to make public what has become known as the Pentagon Papers – 7,000 pages of top-secret documents outlining America’s untold and often nefarious involvement in the Vietnam War. 

On Wednesday night, Ellsberg, who spends three quarters of the year living in Berkeley and the rest in Washington, D.C., thrilled a capacity crowd of nearly 1,500 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall with his insider account of government conspiracy. 

“Truth telling can be risky but is justified because it can save a lot of lives,” he said. 

Drawing from experiences outlined in his new book, “Secrets : A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon” Ellsberg described Wednesday his transformation from U.S. Marine to tight-lipped Pentagon official to anti-war whistleblower.  

Having begun work in the Pentagon in 1964, Ellsberg explained how high-level officials in Washington, D.C. withheld information and lied outright to Americans from the start of the Vietnam War. 

Having stolen concealed documents in 1969 that were published by the New York Times in June 1971, he faced 12 federal felony charges which could have landed him in prison for 115 years. However, the charges were later dropped because of an illegal government investigation into his conduct. 

Now, as the country again stands poised for war, this time with Iraq, the message of Ellsberg’s speech echoed louder than even the home-crowd applause that greeted him Wednesday night.  

He urged today’s intelligence officials to follow in his footsteps: “If you know now that the president is lying us into a new war, I urge you to consider doing what I wish I had done in 1964.” 

And while Ellsberg said that some government secrecy, both past and present, “is justified to keep information from foreign enemies during times of war,” he estimated that the number of secrets actually kept in the name of domestic security adds up to only 1 to 5 percent of Washington’s total silence. 

The rest of the secrets and silence, he said, are those that politicians keep from rivals for power, from members of Congress, and from Washington budget-makers. Secrets are kept, he said, “to prevent accountability; in short, to prevent democracy.” 

Ellsberg drew applause from the crowd when he thanked Congresswoman Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, and Senator Barbara Boxer, D-San Francisco, for voting against the bill Congress passed earlier this month authorizing President Bush to declare war on Iraq. 

He then told Senator Diane Feinstein, D-Los Angeles, and the other lawmakers who voted for the bill, “if you can’t get right on this issue, at least shut up. Don’t give speeches that echo the president’s lies.” 

After Ellsberg’s speech, a group of staunchly anti-war scholars and writers from across the nation, participated in a panel discussion on US foreign policy and the escalating situation in Iraq.  

Stanford history professor Barton Bernstein amused the crowd when he questioned the Bush administration’s seemingly ironic position that only those who have used a nuclear bomb have the right to possess them now. He also challenged the administration to stop riding the wave of post-Sept. 11 fear and to make their case for war “through evidence, not through assertion.” 

The Oakland-based Independent Institute , the World Affairs Council of Northern California and the UC Berkeley School of Public Policy sponsored the Wednesday’s event.