Nimrod Yaffle

Twitter / WikiLeaks: WikiLeaks to release CIA p ...

Should be interesting!

And thank god, something else besides Emerald to talk about!

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jacqueline trudeau

Personally, I'm waiting for WikiLeaks to release the Emerald documents!

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Wildefire Walcott

What is it about this guy that rubs me the wrong way? I consider Daniel Ellsberg a national hero for exposing the Vietnam War for the criminal hoax that it was... but something just doesn't sit right with Asange. What is it?

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Richie Waves

He looks like the Albino Pete white in Venture Brothers?

Jahar Aabye

I think it's because the central point of Ellsberg's documents was to highlight direct actions that the US government was covering up. Ellsberg also released them directly to reputable newspapers that took care in redacting sensitive information. The idea was to let the American people know that our government was expanding its military presence in Vietnam and moving into Laos and Cambodia, at a time when the President was saying that he was doing the opposite.

To that extent, the Pentagon papers were exposing strategy (overall goal), but not focused on tactics (mission-specific sensitive info). The central point was to highlight important information that the President was hiding from the American people.


By contrast, the WikiLeaks documents aren't (as far as I know) exposing anything strategic that wasn't previously known. Pashtun Pakistanis may be giving assistance to the Taliban, the Taliban is trying to gain strength in the Waziristan region along the Pakistan/Afghan border, the people who helped us kick the Taliban out of Afghanistan grow poppies and sell them to heroin traffickers, and Hamid Karzai is essentially the mayor of Kabul and has no real power over much of the country, and his government is corrupt even compared to most other US puppet states.

None of this was news. Much of what was in the WikiLeaks seems to be tactical, and while it is not good that there were military actions in which civilians were killed, that's also kinda what happens in war, which is why it should be avoided at all costs. But the benefits in terms of knowledge gained from leaking this material is really not that big, especially compared with the very real risk that it poses in terms of identifying Afghans who have cooperated with the American government and exposing intelligence assets, as well as exposing effective tactics that will now leave American soldiers vulnerable.

The final difference was in how it was leaked. Ellsberg sent the Pentagon Papers to the NYT and Washington Post, newspapers whose editors published the important exerpts with sensitive information redacted. In this case, an American soldier sent classified information to a foreign national (Assange), who published the entire documents first, before reading through and redacting them. He then sent the documents to newspapers, including foreign newspapers, and while those newspapers did apparently exercise caution in what they published, Assange simply dumped the entire contents out on the internet.


Then again, who knows, maybe there really will be something of significant importance in this release, but I doubt it.

Marx Dudek

Perceptions change over time. I'm sure there are people who respect Ellsberg now who thought he was a traitor then.

I kind of appreciate Asange's moxie.

Cincia Singh

I put them both in the same category. Admittedly I wasn't around when Ellsberg did what he did so I had to read up on what transpired back in the olden days, but frankly it's never alright to disclose such materials. There is ALWAYS someone who thinks every action by a government is criminal and deserving of being exposed, but there is no way to tell how things would have turned out if classified materials has not been released. Hind-sight is always 20/20, especially for anyone with a preference for an interpretation that suits their own ideology.

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