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. i felt top secret papers on nuclear war planning and the prospects of nuclear strategy, supposedly, which i had in my safe. top secret safe at rand. and i copied them at the same time. and as a friend of mine who went to prison, and was a model for me, really, randy keeler. told me at the time he was one of the very few people i told i was going
president lula is expected to attend the wake on tuesday before the funeral procession. pele died on thursday aged 82. now on bbc news, it s hardtalk with stephen sackur. 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 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 peop
Stephen Sackur speaks to Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower. He has warned Americans of the dangers of unchecked military power ever since, but.
Warning the american 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.
Then i was in vietnam, but then i read the pentagon papers. i knew, coming back from vietnam, as everyone knew 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 pres