Daniel Ellsberg has died at age 92. I’m not sure where the cut-off line would be between Americans of a certain age who remember Ellsberg’s turn in the national spotlight in the early 1970s and those who might never have heard of him. My guess is that the cut-off age would be in the 50s. Americans under 50-something might never have encountered Ellsberg unless in some course in high school or college that had a unit about the Vietnam War.
Ellsberg’s passing has triggered a flood of memories—both about the man, whom I once met and talked with privately, and about how an increasingly divided American society became even more polarized after the explosive release of the Pentagon Papers. More on my bit of time with Ellsberg later. First, though, a look at his impact on a generation of Americans.
Needless to say, Ellsberg was a polarizing figure. Most Americans saw him as either hero or villain. To many patriotic Americans, the former U.S. Marine was deemed a traitor. They thought that only someone as low as a traitor would leak top-secret information that was embarrassing to our military and quite possibly contained information that would prove useful to our enemies. The Pentagon Papers turbocharged anti-war Americans, too many of whom lashed out with cruelty at our own troops—fellow Americans who were dying by the thousands in a man-made hell in Indochina.
By contrast, to other Americans—both the anti-war, and too-often anti-American, left, as well as patriotic Americans who felt that our government had made the mistake of waging the wrong war with the wrong strategies—Ellsberg was a hero for having had the courage to rip off the veil of secrecy from deadly lies. Those Americans believed in the principle that, in a democratic system, the people deserve transparency and honesty from their government. Certainly, the aggressive way that every illiberal, authoritarian government tries to mutilate, pervert, and hide truth confirms how inextricably related truth and liberty are. To say that government secrets must always be kept implies that the people should always trust and accept whatever their government tells them, even if it’s killing some of society’s best young people. But government officials are not always trustworthy. Sometimes, they flat-out lie to the people, as the Pentagon Papers made so painfully clear.
But can we always trust the motives of some former unknown when he or she decides to disclose classified information? Can we rely on the wisdom and honor of a lone wolf who reveals sensitive information about what the government is doing in secret? The belief that every individual should follow his or her conscience in regard to the confidentiality of government information is problematical, even anarchistic. Sometimes revealing classified information can jeopardize the lives of Americans who are risking their lives gathering intelligence or serving in our military forces to carry out American policy. Do not those who endanger their fellow Americans deserve our disapprobation? But what if, in the long run, the exposure of truth leads to a change of policy that ultimately results in net lives saved? What if the lone wolf is right and the powers that be are wrong?
You can see the moral complexities that cases like the Pentagon Papers stir up. Even today, more than 50 years after the publication of the Pentagon Papers, it can be difficult to decide whether Ellsberg was on the “more right” (or “less wrong”) side of the sometimes-competing American values of truth and being a dutiful, obedient, trustworthy team player.
A word about Daniel Ellsberg, the person. I met him at a fund-raising open-house given for him in a private home in a wealthy neighborhood of Las Vegas in 1973 or ’74. Being an impecunious graduate student, I wasn’t there to give him money. I just happened to be in Vegas to visit my first college roommate, who had a teaching assistantship at UNLV. Steve had a student who invited him to the party, and he took me along.
When Ellsberg found out that he and I had graduated from the same prep school, he took me off to a side where we could talk privately. I was struck by his earnestness. Of course, earnestness shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all, one doesn’t rebel against the Pentagon, give up a secure career, and risk jail time unless one is super-earnest about the cause one believes in. He seemed like a sensitive individual. It must have been eating him alive to see his superiors in the Pentagon distorting and lying month after month, year after year. And there was something very human about Ellsberg: He wanted to be liked. I think he was enjoying his celebrity. What that implies, I won’t venture to speculate about.
The ghosts of Vietnam, Daniel Ellsberg, and the Pentagon Papers are still with us today. Did he help to save American lives by blowing the whistle on Pentagon incompetency and dishonesty? Quite possibly, but who knows for sure? We do know that the resulting cynicism caused long-term damage, but was that cynicism primarily Ellsberg’s fault or that of lying government officials?
Sadly, too many Americans in the ’70s were unable to understand that although there had been serious wrongs and mistakes committed in Vietnam, it didn’t follow that our country was bad. In the ill-fated attempt to shield the South Vietnamese from communism, we were definitely on the right side, not the “wrong side of history” as so many leftist American politicians have grotesquely affirmed in the decades since. Think about it: Can communism, with its mass murders, concentration camps, and enslavement of the masses ever be deemed “the right side of history” by any moral person?
Daniel Ellsberg forced us to confront some difficult questions when he leaked the Pentagon Papers more than 50 years ago. Whether he was ethically justified in doing so can still be vigorously debated today. One thing that is clear, though, is that the same vexing lack of clarity in Washington officialdom exists today. What constitutes “victory” for the United States in our support of Ukraine needs to be more clearly defined and repeatedly explained to the American people. President Joe Biden needs to level with us more honestly about Ukraine than Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon did in regard to Vietnam.
Let us hope that history doesn’t repeat itself—that widespread lies emanating from those in positions of leadership in the 2020s don’t supply the raw material for a new Daniel Ellsberg to burst onto the scene.
