No. of Recommendations: 2
Good interview just published by Politico... may well be the final interview of Pentagon Papers leaker, Daniel Ellsberg.
Ellsberg is 93 and has pancreatic cancer.
Fascinating interview as he compares leaking vs whistleblowing, leakers vs whistleblowers, and the potential impact on one's life should he/she decide to leak/blow.
'Looking back, the chance that I would get out of 12 felony counts from [President] Richard Nixon was close to zero. It was a miracle,' he says in a Zoom interview from his home near Berkeley, Calif. on May 8. 'There was no way to predict that.
What did happen is that Nixon erupted in outrage over the leak and created the 'Plumbers' unit to discredit Ellsberg. The Plumbers' first break-in was to the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, but that led later to the Watergate burglary, Nixon's resignation and the dismissal of all charges against Ellsberg on grounds of 'improper government conduct.' Thus, indirectly, Watergate may well have prevented further escalation and shortened the war because it 'undermined Nixon's authority,' as Nixon's secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, wrote in the first volume of his memoirs, White House Years. Congress cut off aid to South Vietnam in 1975, and the war ended in April of that year with total victory by North Vietnam.'politico.com - Daniel ellsberg final advice 