Snow job

[wesw]

well, yeah..., me too. but I would ve just gone camping for a couple of years.....

[Big RR]

Maybe that could work, but I don't know.

[Gob]

Now the EU are thinking he may be allowed to live there.

[Lord Jim]

Now the EU are thinking he may be allowed to live there.

That would be excellent...

A lot easier to carry out a commando extraction in Brussels then in Moscow....

[rubato]

He is the Daniel Ellsberg of this generation.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg

"... Disaffection with Vietnam War

By 1969 Ellsberg began attending anti-war events while still remaining in his position at RAND. He experienced an epiphany attending a War Resisters League conference at Haverford College in August 1969, listening to a speech given by a draft resister named Randy Kehler, who said he was "very excited" that he would soon be able to join his friends in prison.[9]

Ellsberg described his reaction:

And he said this very calmly. I hadn't known that he was about to be sentenced for draft resistance. It hit me as a total surprise and shock, because I heard his words in the midst of actually feeling proud of my country listening to him. And then I heard he was going to prison. It wasn't what he said exactly that changed my worldview. It was the example he was setting with his life. How his words in general showed that he was a stellar American, and that he was going to jail as a very deliberate choice—because he thought it was the right thing to do. There was no question in my mind that my government was involved in an unjust war that was going to continue and get larger. Thousands of young men were dying each year. I left the auditorium and found a deserted men's room. I sat on the floor and cried for over an hour, just sobbing. The only time in my life I've reacted to something like that.[9]

Decades later, reflecting on Kehler's decision, Ellsberg said:

Randy Kehler never thought his going to prison would end the war. If I hadn't met Randy Kehler it wouldn't have occurred to me to copy [the Pentagon Papers]. His actions spoke to me as no mere words would have done. He put the right question in my mind at the right time.[9]

The Pentagon Papers
Main article: Pentagon Papers

In late 1969—with the assistance of his former RAND Corporation colleague Anthony Russo—Ellsberg secretly made several sets of photocopies of the classified documents to which he had access; these later became known as the Pentagon Papers. They revealed that, early on, the government had knowledge that the war as then resourced could most likely not be won. Further, as an editor of the New York Times was to write much later, these documents "demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance".[10]

Shortly after Ellsberg copied the documents, he resolved to meet some of the people who had influenced both his change of heart on the war and his decision to act. One of them was Randy Kehler. Another was the poet Gary Snyder, whom he had met in Kyoto in 1960, and with whom he had argued about U.S. foreign policy; Ellsberg was finally prepared to concede that Gary Snyder had been right, about both the situation and the need for action against it.[11]

Throughout 1970, Ellsberg covertly attempted to persuade a few sympathetic U.S. Senators—among them J. William Fulbright, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and George McGovern, a leading opponent of the war—to release the papers on the Senate floor, because a Senator could not be prosecuted for anything he said on the record before the Senate.[12]

Ellsberg allowed some copies of the documents to circulate privately, including among scholars at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). Ellsberg also shared the documents with New York Times correspondent Neil Sheehan who wrote a story based on what he'd received both directly from Ellsberg and from contacts at IPS.[13]

On Sunday, June 13, 1971, the Times published the first of nine excerpts and commentaries on the 7,000 page collection. For 15 days, the Times was prevented from publishing its articles by court order requested by the Nixon administration. Meanwhile, while eluding an FBI manhunt for thirteen days, Ellsberg leaked the documents to The Washington Post and 17 other newspapers.[14] On June 30, the Supreme Court ordered publication of the Times to resume freely (New York Times Co. v. United States).[15]

On June 29, 1971, U.S. Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska entered 4,100 pages of the Papers into the record of his Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds—pages which he had received from Ellsberg via Ben Bagdikian—then an editor at the Washington Post.
Fallout

The release of these papers was politically embarrassing not only to those involved in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations but also to the incumbent Nixon administration. Nixon's Oval Office tape from June 14, 1971, shows H. R. Haldeman describing the situation to Nixon:

Rumsfeld was making this point this morning... To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing.... It shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it's wrong, and the president can be wrong.[16]

John Mitchell, Nixon's Attorney General, almost immediately issued a telegram to the Times ordering that it halt publication. The Times refused, and the government brought suit against it.

Although the Times eventually won the trial before the Supreme Court, prior to that, an appellate court ordered that the Times temporarily halt further publication. This was the first time the federal government was able to restrain the publication of a major newspaper since the presidency of Abraham Lincoln during the U.S. Civil War. Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to seventeen other newspapers in rapid succession.[17] The right of the press to publish the papers was upheld in New York Times Co. v. United States. The Supreme Court ruling has been called one of the "modern pillars" of First Amendment rights with respect to freedom of the press.[18]

As a response to the leaks, the Nixon white house staffers began a campaign against further leaks and against Ellsberg personally.[19] Aides Egil Krogh and David Young, under the supervision of John Ehrlichman, created the "White House Plumbers", which would later lead to the Watergate burglaries.
Fielding break-in
Fielding's filing cabinet, with break-in marks, on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History

In August 1971, Krogh and Young met with G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt in a basement office in the Old Executive Office Building. Hunt and Liddy recommended a "covert operation" to get a "mother lode" of information about Ellsberg's mental state in order to discredit him. Krogh and Young sent a memo to Ehrlichman seeking his approval for a "covert operation [to] be undertaken to examine all of the medical files still held by Ellsberg's psychiatrist." Ehrlichman approved under the condition that it be "done under your assurance that it is not traceable."[20]

On September 3, 1971, the burglary of Lewis Fielding's office – titled "Hunt/Liddy Special Project No. 1" in Ehrlichman's notes—was carried out by Hunt, Liddy and CIA officers Eugenio Martínez, Felipe de Diego and Bernard Barker. The "Plumbers" found Ellsberg's file[citation needed] but it did not contain the potentially embarrassing information they sought. Hunt and Liddy subsequently planned to break into Fielding's home, but Ehrlichman did not approve the second burglary. The break-in was not known to Ellsberg or to the public until it came to light during Ellsberg and Russo's trial in April 1973. ... "

Like Ellsberg he is a man of great courage and seriousness. Democracy cannot exist without openness and honesty. Any government that thinks they can do things and hide it forever is inherently corrupted by that fact,


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

He is the Daniel Ellsberg of this generation.

That comparison is stunning in its ignorance, but on the other hand, considering the source, not at all surprising...

Now see if you can follow the math on this rube...(it may be a little complicated for you, but give it your best shot.)

The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers were discovered and released by Daniel Ellsberg, and first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers

Now see if you can follow this rube...

1967, (the last year covered by the Pentagon Papers) was four years before 1971, when they were published in the NY Times...(you do understand the four year difference...or do I have to go over that again?)

The Pentagon Papers, covering 1945-1967, when they were published in 1971, were essentially back office historical documents...

Not one single active source or method was compromised; not one single life was jeopardized, not one single ongoing intelligence operation or intelligence gathering operation was revealed...

On top of that, Daniel Ellsberg himself was tasked with compiling "The Pentagon Papers" and he reviewed every single document himself...

Contrast that with the actions of The Traitor Snowden:

A data dump that no one reviewed prior to release, enormously compromising on-going operations, and devastating existing sources and methods...

Now, I certainly don't expect that you're going to have the wit to comprehend these glaring differences, but I have confidence that most everyone else here will...

Even folks who might have some badly misguided view that The Traitor Snowden somehow did something positive, surely must see that a comparison between what he did and what Ellsberg did (btw, Ellsberg also had the cajones to remain in the US and face the legal consequences of his actions; he didn't go running off to Moscow) is a ridiculously false comparison...

For anyone who cares about facts...

[Guinevere]

Regardless of your analysis, many are comparing Snowden with Ellsberg. Big RR already did above, and there are plenty of articles on that point.

You may disagree, but that does not make the opposite opinion "stunningly ignorant."

I also note, as did BigRR, the legal landscape has shifted tremendously since Ellsberg's case. From what I understand, the Feds would not guarantee Snowden any kind of fair and open judicial proceeding, at most they would only guarantee they would not subject him to torture. Snowden has repeatedly said he would come back if he could participate in an open judicial proceeding, not a secret trial. He repeated that statement at the Arendt conference the other week.

[Lord Jim]

Regardless of your analysis, many are comparing Snowden with Ellsberg.

Oh, I'm aware of that Guin...

People make completely inappropriate and/or incorrect analogies all the time. My purpose was to provide the details and context of the Ellsberg case to illustrate how completely inappropriate the analogy is. My assumption is that most people who make this analogy have either forgotten or were unaware of the facts which show how totally dissimilar these case are. You might as well call Justin Beieber the "Pavarotti of his generation."

A far more appropriate analogy would be to say that The Traitor Snowden is the Julius Rosenberg or Aldrich Ames of his generation. He deserves a place in the pantheon of other infamous traitors.

they would only guarantee they would not subject him to torture.

Good. That means they haven't taken the death penalty off the table.

Snowden has repeatedly said he would come back if he could participate in an open judicial proceeding, not a secret trial.

TTS knows full well that much of the evidence in any legal proceeding against him is by the nature of his crimes going to be classified and can not be revealed in an open court. He can hardly expect the government to be complicit in compounding the damage already done by his crimes. This does not mean he can't receive a trial that will meet SC requirements for fairness, and that's all he deserves.

Moreover, who gives two shits what this little weasel wants to set as conditions for his treatment? This attitude of his is just another illustration of the profound arrogance and narcissism of the man. The fact is he's just a yellow belly who's putting out conditions that he knows can't be met.

Snowden praised Venezuela, as well as Russia, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador for "being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless" and for "refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation".

Russia has one of the world's poorest reputations for human rights. In the past week alone, it brought in two big decisions against its main whistleblowers: the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was found posthumously guilty [Yeah, a lot of folks wind up getting found guilty "posthumously" in the Russia. Funny how frequent that is]of committing tax fraud, and a judge announced he would soon issue a verdict against corruption activist Alexei Navalny.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/j ... l-campaign

I guess that means he'd be happy to have a trial that meets Russian standards of fairness. I'd be delighted to guarantee him that...

BTW, can anyone find a comparable quote from Ellsberg praising human rights in the Soviet Union?

I'm betting no....

[Big RR]

Moreover, who gives two shits what this little weasel wants to set as conditions for his treatment? This attitude of his is just another illustration of the profound arrogance and narcissism of the man

Jim--I am astounded; a person insisting on his rights under the US Constitution amounts to narcissism and arrogance? Please, don't embarrass yourself any further. I understand you think what he revealed seriously compromised the US war on terrorism (although I really don't have any idea on what you base that conclusion on other than unsupported statements of political hacks; and face it, you don't believe everything those hacks say, just this apparently), but these are rights people shed their blood in defense of; for you to reduce them to narcissism is unbelievable.

BTW, can anyone find a comparable quote from Ellsberg praising human rights in the Soviet Union

No, but then I can't find a quote from Snowden praising that either; all I can find is a statement (that you posted) commending Russia for standing against the US abuses of human rights, something quite different. Or would you similarly condemn Paul Robeson for daring to compare Moscow to the Jim Crow south and saying "At least in Moscow I could walk down the streets and be treated as a man"? Everything the US does is not right, and anyone exposing the abuses (for whatever reason) is commendable.

You remind me of my father when I said (during Vietnam) that the draft was unfair; he'd always say something like "You think you couldn't be drafted in Russia? And you better not complain there".. So what; that somehow makes my original statement wrong? Everything is not "if you're not with us, you are an agent of our enemies".

As for Ellsberg; who knows what he might have done/said if he hd to face the current US policies of arrest/detention with out charge or trial, rendition, even torture for saying something the government states compromises the war effort. The again, luckily for Ellsberg, even under Nixon and with massive political unrest we never descended to the level we are at now with granting the government the ability to suspend rights upon the whim of the executive.

[Lord Jim]

a person insisting on his rights under the US Constitution Please, don't embarrass yourself any further.

I don't feel the slightest bit embarassed...

Trials take place all the time that involve classified information that is not publicly revealed. The Court has determined that is perfectly Constitutional, as are military tribunals.

Once TTS is apprehended, it will be up to the courts to decide what rights he is entitled to under the Constitution; not scumbag...

And his prosecution and trial will be structured accordingly.

To give just one of many possible examples, any prosecution of TTS is going to involve evidence relating to the specifics of how he was able to do what he did. The national interest imperative of keeping that information out of the public sphere I assume is obvious even to you.

ETA:

"being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless"

I'm sorry, I'm missing the part in there that specifically references the US...

Looks to me like he's saying that Russia stands up against human rights violations carried out by the "powerful", because, well, that's what he said....

I'm assuming that you would agree that Vladimir Putin and his henchmen would fall into the category of the "powerful"....

[Big RR]

The powerful? In their countries, perhaps, but not in the international sphere; ditto for Chavez, etc. But the US government s much more powerful worldwide.

and Jim--you seem to think it's a given he would be getting a trial of some sort; that's not necessarily true in this brave new world after 2001.

[rubato]

A government which never has to answer to the electorate for its actions is fascist.

Some accept fascism more readily than others.


It has been two years since his revelations so according to LJ in two more years he will be perfectly legitimate.


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

You really are a sad, misinformed, and disoriented little man...