Individuals can readily sacrifice themselves for a group in obedience to orders. How many people here have actually been in combat? I don't think I've ever asked that question. But only one, really? Let me see. Let me just ask, since it's only one, where was that? In Vietnam? When and where, just for interest? Right. That was a big battle, then, if that's the one. I'm sure you'll agree, but if you don't, tell me, that one observation, which is very profound, that you make in combat is that courage is very widely available among very ordinary people that you're with. And extreme courage, that the kinds of things that you hear of as meriting medals are almost... Routine. They just don't happen to get medals. And people will risk their lives to save a comrade who's lying wounded, can't move, will die for it.

[01:05]

Or to bring back bodies, even, of others. Many will die readily to do that. I remember in my Marine Division, I was there as a civilian, but I used my Marine training to walk in combat quite a bit. But I always remember the statement of O.P. Smith, the general at Terawa, who said at Terawa, uncommon valor was a common virtue. But it's a common virtue in battle on both sides. Would you agree? And so you're impressed with the people around you, that they would die for you. You're aware you would die for them. Whether it's really a good cause or not, all this occurs, obviously, on both sides. And it's very rare that they're both good causes, if that ever happens. At least one is a bad cause, and very often both are bad causes. But the courage is there. In obedience to orders, in group feeling, in wanting the respect of your colleagues, and caring about them, and the group, and the traditions, widely humanly available.

[02:11]

But that's not what we need to get out of this situation. The courage of our troops in Iraq is real, but that's not going to end the war or get us out of there. It's not going to avert an attack on Iran. What is needed is something that, of all people, again, Bismarck remarked over a century ago. He said, courage in combat is a common property of our people. He said, but courage What is very unusual is for even very respectable people to show civil courage. And what does that mean? Well, it's courage by civilians, in the first instance, courage like that of combat, rarely involving, let's even put aside, involving physical death, you know, saving someone from a burning building or something, which we know firemen do and others do, saving a child in a road. I'm not sure that's

[03:15]

That's your regular variety of courage that people think about, physical courage. The courage to go, to take an action for the good of the group or for principle or to avert great catastrophe or danger, to go against orders, to expose secrets of the group, to disobey higher authority, to do anything in general which has the likelihood of of separating you from your group. These generals who are speaking out now, and now that they have their pensions and their retirement, and who evidently said nothing to Congress for years while they were in about Rumsfeld and about the war, possibly exemplify something I read recently that's very striking, that many military officers will readily risk their lives and their bodies. but will not risk their careers.

[04:17]

Well, that's true of civilians, obviously. And the fact is that telling truths that your boss doesn't want told in civilian life, as many of you know, I'm sure, have encountered this directly, has risks. If it's not the Pentagon or CIA, or I was in the Pentagon or the State Department, I was also in the State Department, For such people, the classification aspect involves a possibility of prosecution, though actually not yet a high probability of prosecution. I was the first person ever prosecuted for a leak, for an unauthorized disclosure. I won't even ask. Anybody here know that? How many people knew that, that this was the first? Really? A remarkable audience. If you were journalists, I wouldn't expect a single person to know that. Or lawyers. judges, and I've talked to a lot of them. They really don't know that bit of our history. Because of our First Amendment, we don't have yet an explicit Official Secrets Act that criminalizes all release of classified information.

[05:29]

There are some narrow Official Secrets Act that criminalize certain narrow types of classified information. The identities of covert agents, like Valerie Plain. You notice that I'm mentioning, well, the NSA wiretaps, in fact, which clearly should have been revealed because the secrecy concealed clearly illegal activity, activity clearly illegalized by the FISA Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Clearly illegal, unconstitutional. The secrecy, however, is regarded as an absolute requirement, and the people who gave that to the New York Times, which was what they should have done, would, on the letter of it, clearly be violating that act and subject to prison. I thought I was in that situation when I put out the 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers, which were only top secret.

[06:34]

The NSA wiretaps are much higher than top secret. But even the top secret, I thought, all right, it's only top secret, but still, I'll probably go to prison forever for this. And as they say, they did hit me with 115-year possible sentence. And it really took a year of research, legal research, this being the very first case that had ever been done. There was no zero, zero literature. There were no precedents. But my lawyers didn't know that, nor did anybody else. So they were looking for precedents and searching unrecorded cases and all kinds of things to see what the precedent was. And finally, after a year, my lawyer, Leonard Boudin, said, well, Dan, as far as we can tell, you haven't violated any law. So I said, well, great. I'm home free here then, right? He said, well, it's not as simple as that. if the government says U.S. versus Daniel Ellsberg and Russo and goes in front of the jury with 12 felony counts that you're alleged to have violated, you can't be sure that she'll walk out of there free.

[07:45]

So I said, hmm, well, what are my odds? He said, 50-50, 115 years. I said, 50-50, and I haven't violated any law? He said, well, Dan, let's face it. Copying 7,000 pages of top-secret documents and giving them to the New York Times has a bad ring to it. And, well, we did, because of the crimes against me, that didn't come to a decision. But the reason that I had at least a 50-50 chance... was that there was no law. And what they were doing was experimenting by using the espionage laws, which were not intended for leaks, for disclosures to the public, against a leak, as if it were an official secret site. And they had never done that before because they feared the law would be found unconstitutional, on appeal. But they took a chance on this one. Now their odds are much better. AIPAC, specifically, people are being tried on the same charges that I was brought up on.

[08:48]

The interpretation of the law has shifted. The likelihood that they could be found guilty is much greater. But meanwhile, Chairman Pat Roberts of the Intelligence Committee says, is saying, we should have an official Secrets Act, which makes this clearly illegal, which is intended by Congress to criminalize these leaks. If they get that, and Bush will not veto such a law. Well, I mention that because again, let's see, if you know this, I'll really be surprised. How many people know that after 200 years, Congress did pass an Official Secrets Act in October of 2000 and Clinton vetoed it a week later? How many knew that? Okay, I see two, three, more like it. Journalists who don't know that, and that's all of them essentially, don't realize what difference it will make to have an Official Secrets Act, which will not be vetoed by Bush. And the difference it will make, it won't be just Judith Miller, who was brought up to a grand jury and put in jail if she won't talk.

[09:54]

She was involved in a case involving an intelligence covert agent's identity. Or the NSA wiretaps. They probably will bring people up, because there is a clear-cut law there. With an official Secrets Act, every person who leaks anything, orally or in document, and that's every day, will not only be subject to prosecution and conviction, but every journalist who publishes such a leak can be brought in, like Judith Miller or Matthew Cooper, and said, who did it? Has a crime been committed here? You tell us who the criminal is, and if you don't tell us, you go to jail. That'll cut off the leaks pretty much and make it less likely than now even that we can avoid an aggressive, catastrophically reckless war like Iran or Iraq, Iran being the one that lies ahead. So that's serious.

[10:54]

What does it take then to get people to tell us the truth now or then And of course, I thought I was violating an Official Secrets Act, so some people will violate it, I hope. I think they will. How to get more of them to do it, and what's at stake? There's a number of reasons that it isn't more. First of all, unlike the whistleblowers for, say, nuclear safety or tobacco or asbestos, all of whom paid a heavy price, I'll come back to that, nearly all, but not prosecution. In the case of the national security stuff, the lies that we need and told, you also face the prosecution. But even that is not, in the end, the main disincentive. First of all, there is a feeling that perhaps you have made a promise, or clearly that in the tobacco companies, not to tell this. It means breaking a promise, an oath in some cases, a contract, all of those. It means breaking a part of your identity, breaking from it.

[11:59]

which is as a reliable, trustworthy person who deserves a clearance and is trusted with secrets. To depart from that is a personal matter that really goes against them. But on career terms, it's also... I say the career isn't the whole thing. But careerism is enough to keep most people quiet. No matter what it is they are concealing, they'll lose their clearance if they're discovered. That means losing their job, but more than that, losing their career. working for the government. They could perhaps switch to some place like HUD or something that doesn't require clearance. But these are people who've worked in the national security field all their life, and it's a very great change for them to switch that. Losing their job and their clearance normally means a very great drop in income, because it's hard to get, especially at an older age, to get hired elsewhere. That means in turn that your children's college education is put in significant jeopardy. are cut off.

[13:00]

And in most cases, it means the marriage collapses. Most cases. Not because the spouse, who could be a man or a woman, is cowardly or greedy or something, but they just didn't sign up for this. And the pressures of prosecution, the pressures of losing all their friends, moving out of the area, in general, are just too much. That's a very heavy price. In fact, in fact, the man I was talking to last night, two nights ago, the ambassador, Craig Murray, lost his marriage. And I told him what he didn't know, that that was standard. Most people don't quite appreciate that's what they're getting into. In fact, his wife had backed him very much in his fight with the officialdom. But when they struck back with personal information of a slanderous kind, that it was too much for it, too humiliating. Very common. These are heavy, heavy personal costs.

[14:02]

I was told just the other night, because I'm encouraging people to be whistleblowers, that I shouldn't talk about this so much. A man, very shrewd, worldly wise man, and dedicated man also, said, look, Dan, you want people to be whistleblowers. You tell them, look, I'm still married. Write a book saying I'm married. I'm doing fine. I lecture for a living. You know, happy with my children and everything. You make it look good. You know, you wrote a memoir, you know, a movie about us. They didn't tell us they were doing the movie, but it's all wrong, but still.

[14:39]

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