Ellsberg to Feds: Start Leaking

Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame wants federal employees in national security agencies to start leaking information about potential plans for war against Iraq. In the October edition of Harpers magazine, Ellsberg tells people "who have safes in their office" to start spilling their contents to reporters in the hopes of derailing plans for an American attack on Iran. (The article isn't online, but Daily Kos has a summary here.) In a Sept. 22 interview with Brooke Gladstone of National Public Radio's On the Media, Ellsberg said federal employees with access to sensitive national security documents make a contractual agreement to maintain required levels of secrecy, but the oath they take to uphold the Constitution is more important. Ellsberg argues that going to war with Iran would be unconstitutional, and he's convinced that leaked documents about a possible invasion "would show it to be crazy, just as the Iraq war was a crazy decision and the Vietnam war, of which I was part, was a crazy decision in terms of the legality but also the disparity of costs and consequences and any possible benefits. So I'm saying, yes, an individual could have enormous effect, and I hope one or more of them will do that."--Daniel Pulliam