On the Right

On The Right Ellsberg in the Dock Los Angeles, July 28-Daniel Ellsberg is leading a very public life during his trial for divulging government secrets. It is to say the least unusual to give press conferences, and appear on television, while a jury weighs evidence of your alleged misdeeds. Of course, Los Angeles is a show town, and if Sirhan Sirhan had come in late for his trial one morning on the grounds that he had to tape the Merv Griffin show, the judge would probably have understood. And then too, Dan Ellsberg’s team knows what it’s up to. The concern here is less for law-though they appear to be having quite a legal frolic-than for ideology. Like the Chicago Seven, the point they want to make is extralegal. Dan Ellsberg is concerned to publicize his case against the United States Government and the Vietnam war, and he assumes that the lawyers will take care of the matter of keeping him out of jail. On the face of it, it looks to be a dangerous assignment. Daniel Ellsberg, defendant, has been indicted on fifteen counts for stealing and mishandling government property, improperly receiving and communicating documents relating to the national defense, and conspiring to defraud the United States by obstructing its control over classified documents. If he were found guilty on all counts, and if the judge were to give him the maximum sentence on all counts, he could be sent up for 115 years. This gaudy figure is primarily useful in letters designed to raise money for Ellsberg’s trial. Nobody expects him to go to jail for 115 years. Not many people expect him to go to jail at all. The government has not chosen to go after Ellsberg, at least not this time around, on the Big Count. That one is the section of the Espionage Act that forbids the disclosure of a government secret “with intent or reason to believe that itis tobe used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of a foreign nation.” Everyone knows that Daniel Ellsberg became an antiwar evangelist, and that he undertook to familiarize the American people with what he took to be regular deceptions practiced upon them by government officials, particularly those who surrounded Lyndon Johnson. But in early March of this year, speaking in New Haven, Connecticut, Ellsberg reminisced before an audience most specifically. He said that he remembered the exact moment when he decided to release the secret papers. It was after a Yale-Harvard football game in the fall of 1970, and the report reached him that President Nixon was determined to renew the bombing of Hanoi, and that he was even contemplating an invasion of North Vietnam. Now if one agrees that an invasion of North Vietnam is a disadvantage to North Vietnam, and that Ellsberg intended, by releasing the Pentagon Papers, to diminish the chances of such an invasion, then it follows that Ellsberg’s intent was that the information he released should be used to the advantage of a foreign nation. Sure, he also believed that it was to the advantage of the United States to desist from further military action in South Vietnam, even as Klaus Fuchs thought it to the ultimate advantage of Great Britain to give away our atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. But the people who designed the Espionage Act were not universalists in that sense. What they meant to discourage was the kind of thing Benedict Arnold did. ELLSBERG is n ‘t Benedict Arnold. He is rather one of the new breed of international moralists who discern a great abyss between themselves and the rest of the world. The rest of the world, as far as this breed is concerned, consists of moral cretins, “liars” (one of Ellsberg’s favorite words). Ellsberg likes to introduce himself before college audiences by saying “I come before you as a war criminal.” That sounds awfully humble. But students of rhetoric know the device as self-serving. What he means is: the gang in Washington are war criminals. I was a war criminal because I was one of them-until I saw the light. So that the point he is really stressing is not that he was once a war criminal-a part of his background that no one in the United States is at this point disposed to criticize-but that he no longer is one. The force of the remark is therefore to brand people like John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon,

McGeorge Bundy, Arthur Schlesinger,

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William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

On The Right Ellsberg in the Dock Los Angeles, July 28-Daniel Ellsberg is leading a very public life during his trial for divulging government secrets. It is to say the least unusual to give press conferences, and appear on television, while a jury weighs evidence of your alleged misdeeds. Of course, Los Angeles is a show town, and if Sirhan Sirhan had come in late for his trial one morning on the grounds that he had to tape the Merv Griffin show, the judge would probably have understood. And then too, Dan Ellsberg’s team knows what it’s up to. The concern here is less for law-though they appear to be having quite a legal frolic-than for ideology. Like the Chicago Seven, the point they want to make is extralegal. Dan Ellsberg is concerned to publicize his case against the United States Government and the Vietnam war, and he assumes that the lawyers will take care of the matter of keeping him out of jail. On the face of it, it looks to be a dangerous assignment. Daniel Ellsberg, defendant, has been indicted on fifteen counts for stealing and mishandling government property, improperly receiving and communicating documents relating to the national defense, and conspiring to defraud the United States by obstructing its control over classified documents. If he were found guilty on all counts, and if the judge were to give him the maximum sentence on all counts, he could be sent up for 115 years. This gaudy figure is primarily useful in letters designed to raise money for Ellsberg’s trial. Nobody expects him to go to jail for 115 years. Not many people expect him to go to jail at all. The government has not chosen to go after Ellsberg, at least not this time around, on the Big Count. That one is the section of the Espionage Act that forbids the disclosure of a government secret “with intent or reason to believe that itis tobe used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of a foreign nation.” Everyone knows that Daniel Ellsberg became an antiwar evangelist, and that he undertook to familiarize the American people with what he took to be regular deceptions practiced upon them by government officials, particularly those who surrounded Lyndon Johnson. But in early March of this year, speaking in New Haven, Connecticut, Ellsberg reminisced before an audience most specifically. He said that he remembered the exact moment when he decided to release the secret papers. It was after a Yale-Harvard football game in the fall of 1970, and the report reached him that President Nixon was determined to renew the bombing of Hanoi, and that he was even contemplating an invasion of North Vietnam. Now if one agrees that an invasion of North Vietnam is a disadvantage to North Vietnam, and that Ellsberg intended, by releasing the Pentagon Papers, to diminish the chances of such an invasion, then it follows that Ellsberg’s intent was that the information he released should be used to the advantage of a foreign nation. Sure, he also believed that it was to the advantage of the United States to desist from further military action in South Vietnam, even as Klaus Fuchs thought it to the ultimate advantage of Great Britain to give away our atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. But the people who designed the Espionage Act were not universalists in that sense. What they meant to discourage was the kind of thing Benedict Arnold did. ELLSBERG is n ‘t Benedict Arnold. He is rather one of the new breed of international moralists who discern a great abyss between themselves and the rest of the world. The rest of the world, as far as this breed is concerned, consists of moral cretins, “liars” (one of Ellsberg’s favorite words). Ellsberg likes to introduce himself before college audiences by saying “I come before you as a war criminal.” That sounds awfully humble. But students of rhetoric know the device as self-serving. What he means is: the gang in Washington are war criminals. I was a war criminal because I was one of them-until I saw the light. So that the point he is really stressing is not that he was once a war criminal-a part of his background that no one in the United States is at this point disposed to criticize-but that he no longer is one. The force of the remark is therefore to brand people like John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon,

McGeorge Bundy, Arthur Schlesinger,