The Conscience of Daniel Ellsberg

In 2010, POV, a popular PBS program, produced a documentary on the reasons for and the impact of Daniel Ellsberg’s leaking of the Pentagon Papers – a thirty year study on U.S. involvement in Viet Nam. As published by The New York Times, it would prove a damning indictment of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson on the grounds of the justification and progress of the war. Depending largely on interviews with Mr. Ellsberg himself, as well as many of his former colleagues and supporters, it tells of the transformation of the former foreign policy maker and colors the event through that paradigm.

As a historian, I’m left to wonder how to classify Mr. Ellsberg. From a purely objective point of view, he belongs in the category of Benedict Arnold, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Klaus Fuch. However, Mr. Ellsberg's crime cannot, in the strictest sense, be placed with those mentioned. The former Pentagon advisor revealed secret documents as an act of conscience and willing to deal with the consequences of his actions. On a certain level, he is nothing else if not admirable. However, as I hear the elderly man speak of his actions as a young man, I’m left with two overriding impressions.

One, he seems to suffer from an overactive sense of hubris. The notion that his ideas, in a democracy, should override the decision of an entire country is perplexing. He felt that his documentation as to the lies of past presidents with regards to Viet Nam invalidated them as leaders and should force the American people to rethink all future decisions. He placed himself as judge, juror and executor, as it were, in releasing the papers.

However, what strikes me most about his story is the sheer amount of naiveté that colors his rationale. Since the time of James Madison, who argued the necessity for governments to have secrets, there has been subterfuge and misdirection in the course of foreign policy. Such policy making cannot be made out in the open with the questionable characters that exist in the world today. Even more surprisingly naïve was Mr. Ellsberg's assertion that his turn in thinking during the mid-1960s occurred when he spent time in Viet Nam and saw the horrors of war itself. I’m left wondering how the former foreign policy advisor and Marine did not know what war was like and how horribly simple was his world view?

William F. Buckley challenged Mr. Ellsberg once on the idea that the pursuit of diplomacy and foreign policy was inherently in need of lies and by drawing out the latter’s sense of what is right or wrong with regards to lying, displayed the former policy advisor of having the moral view of a child and one incongruent with the more devious designs of dictators and strongmen around the world. Mr. Ellsberg is the standard bearer for the infantile belief that if we are just nice and transparent to the world powers, everyone else will follow suit. How can someone like him with his experience hold such an idea?

As an historian, how do I classify Mr. Ellsberg? He is a person whose actions went against the opinion of a majority of Americans at the time. It is easy to assume that the vast majority of Americans were against the war because those who opposed the conflict were also the loudest. He violated the trust that many people had in him to hold up his word, to perform his duty. The release of secret documents has consequences, not only for the goals of a country but for those who are tasked with carrying it out. Let’s hope that too many did not suffer for the vainglorious and naïve Mr. Ellsberg.