Daniel ellsberg. they failed. and today he is still warning the american people about the dangers of unchecked military power. but are they listening? daniel ellsberg, welcome to hardtalk. glad to be with you. it s a great pleasure to be at your home. now, you have lived a long and a very full life. and i guess the truth is, you know that you will always be associated with one extraordinary decision you took to leak the pentagon papers. does it bother you that that is the thing that people think about you? no.
Coming back who d been involved in combat extent, because we were not going to win. we were not going to get these guys to quit. they were not going to quit. some of your critics, i m going to quote one of them. he s an academic called gabriel schoenfeld. he has written about your decision. and he said, there is a fundamental arrogance about what daniel ellsberg did because, he said, and i m going to quote him, he said, you know, we have a system for controlling critical national security secrets. very, very well controlled. yes. and he said, you know, this is established by the congress, by the executive branch, both of which are elected by the people. congress had nothing to do with it. congress has nothing to do with the classification system. it is an executive system ruled by regulations from the defense department. ultimately, the president. ultimately the president who is elected by the people. what? who is elected by the people, the president. two people.
Brazil, have reached the quarterfinals with a convincing 4 1 win over south korea. earlier croatia made it through againstjapan by winning the tournament s first penalty shootout. croatia will now play brazil for a place in the semifinals. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur and today i m in beautiful northern california to meet the man once described by henry kissinger as the most dangerous in america. in 1971, that man, my guest daniel ellsberg, leaked the so called pentagon papers. he exposed decades of us government lies about the war in vietnam. the nixon administration was enraged. they tried to destroy daniel ellsberg. they failed.
And today he is still warning the american people about the dangers of unchecked military power. but are they listening? daniel ellsberg, welcome to hardtalk. glad to be with you. it s a great pleasure to be at your home. now, you have lived a long and a very full life. and i guess the truth is, you know that you will always be associated with one extraordinary decision you took to leak the pentagon papers. does it bother you that that is the thing that people think about you? no. well, i know that it is, but i ve lived with that for a long time. my intent at the time was to put out more important papers.
But i just want to get inside your head a little bit. the young daniel ellsberg, because it seems to me. i wasn t that young. i was a0. 0k. well, pretty young. from my current perspective. very young. but the point is, you in some ways were trained to be a security hawk. you were working in america s sort of nuclear strategy. that was one of your key concerns. you clearly believed in america s position on the cold war. in fact, i think it s fair to say that you supported intervention in vietnam. yes and no. i d been in vietnam on a research group for the defense department in 1961. it was actually looking into limited war research and development. because previously under eisenhower, all the work and all the r&d had gone into nuclear weapons. and kennedy said, no, we should have some research and development on non nuclear. so, i was in vietnam