The massive obituaries to Daniel Ellsberg at the weekend in both New York Times and Washington Post were proof of the status he held in the United States.
Only Presidents get that size of obituary.
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Dan Ellsberg maintained until the last his “respectability” in society as the “good whistleblower”.
Yet the publication of papers from Chelsea Manning and others, similar in so many ways to Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers, became demonised, then criminalised, and Julian became the “bad whistleblower”, or more accurately publisher of whistleblowers.
Now Dan Ellsberg totally rejected this characterisation. It infuriated him and he actively fought against it, including at Julian’s extradition hearing, on which see below.
But how did this process of characterisation happen?
To me, the fundamental point is that the United States achieved consensus that the Vietnam War had been a terrible mistake. It was fought in the interests of colonialism, for the suppression of a nation, and was ultimately unwinnable.
Thomas Drake: The Edward Snowden revelations broke when I was serving as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. I experienced firsthand the reality that secrecy in the service of national security is sometimes necessary in our nation’s surveillance programs. Unfortunately, I also saw that claims of secrecy can be used by our intelligence agencies to spy on Americans without warrants and in violation of the Constitution.
"the government argues that upstream surveillance is too secret for Wikimedia’s case to go forward, invoking the “state secrets privilege” and claiming that any use of sensitive evidence to defend the case could hurt national security. In a split decision, a federal appeals court threw out the case citing state secrets."