 The most dangerous man in America, that's how Henry Kissinger described Daniel Ellsberg, who died recently of pancreatic cancer at the age of 92. Now Daniel Ellsberg was many things, he was a whistleblower, he was an activist, he fought for a variety of causes throughout his life. But to understand Daniel Ellsberg in the context of today's developments is very important because we are at a time when whistleblowers are being persecuted, when we are closer to nuclear war than we have ever been, when war seems normalized by so many of our leaders. So to talk more about Daniel Ellsberg's life and his legacy, we have with us Prabir Pulkai sir. Prabir, so it's very difficult to condense the life of someone like Daniel Ellsberg because he's been involved in so many causes, so many inspiring moves. But maybe first let's talk about the Pentagon Papers which is how his name first came into prominence. We know that he released the Pentagon Papers in 1971, they contain details about the disastrous U.S. war in Vietnam and it led to a lot of changes both in terms of U.S. foreign policy and domestic policy. But as someone who was part of the anti-war movement at that time, who was involved in political causes, how do you recall Daniel Ellsberg's contribution and what he meant at that time? Well, as you put it, Daniel Ellsberg was an inspiration for our generation, also other generation but particularly for our generation because of what he was and what he did. So he was one of the persons with very high security clearance. In fact, the security clearance was in his book as he says was between that of a lieutenant and a major general. He was in his early 40s. So he would have been at the top of U.S. security establishment, at least a civilian side later on. There's no question about that. He was already well on the way to becoming that. He had participated, gone on tours with the military and he had gone as a security consultant, ran corporations and so on, looking at both nuclear installations as well as in South Vietnam. So he was somebody who started describing himself as a U.S. patriot and believing in the Cold War, looking at how the Vietnam War was developing, how the nuclear forces were being raid on both sides and then slowly coming to the position that this was a war which was completely not in the interest of the people of either the United States and obviously not with the Vietnamese people and also getting more and more afraid for the end of civilization as we know it in case of a nuclear exchange. So these are his two major things that he was really concerned about. Pentagon papers had also another fallout that it led to Nixon and Kissinger, your quoted Kissinger on his being called the most dangerous man in the world, that they thought that they also knew about nuclear weapons and the possible use of nuclear weapons as had been planned by the United States against Vietnam. In fact, Nixon had threatened a number of times using nuclear weapons against Vietnam in the war in order to bring them to the table as a threat but also as a real possibility. So they were worried that that might leak out and that could explain the kind of paranoid reaction that Nixon had against him because it led to a forming of a group of people, a bunch of people who actually barred, burgled his psychiatrist's office because they didn't discover anything they could blacken him with but they left the trail and this is the one which later on is the group which also does the Watergate break-in and that's where all this came to light. It finally led as a fallout, unexpected fallout of the Pentagon papers to actually Nixon's Watergate scandal and his having to resign. So in some sense it was Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon papers which led to the train of events which leads to Nixon being disgraced as a president and having to go. The Vietnam issue of course is very important because the Pentagon papers and this is a Rand Corporation study I think of 46 volumes that had made clear that Vietnam war is something that the US could not win, they could lose and therefore the number of years it continued after the Rand Corporation study was the moral part of it as far as Ellsberg was concerned. Every year the US was there in Vietnam, people were getting killed, Mila Massacre had already been exposed by Seymour Hirsch. All of that meant that every year the Vietnamese were paying a price and American soldiers were paying a price which was just for saving face, nothing else was involved because it was foregone as a conclusion that the United States was going to lose and as we did see finally that they had to evacuate from the US embassy in Saigon, hanging from helicopters and so on. So this was already there, so his anger was on this. But you know the bigger issue for which he had also prepared himself for releasing the papers, he didn't think after Pentagon papers he would be out. In fact it is only because of the watergate breaking that his case was thrown out by the judge. In fact the judge was also sought to be bribed at the time with a much higher position which the judge fortunately turned out. But his main thing was he was going to expose the nuclear noomsday machine as he calls it and that he was very sure that he was never going to get out of jail after that but he was willing to take that risk. He was willing to do that because he said nothing you know nothing is above saving humankind. So yes this is small sacrifice if I need to make, I need to make. And as you have said he's joining the peace movement, he gives a very you know his emotive account of how he changed and he changed because he heard those who are opposing the Vietnam War were willing to go to jail if necessary but not go to war and that that conscientious objectors as they were called that proved him and that's what he then he said okay I if I believe in what I'm thinking then I need to do something. If this person can give up their lives and go to jail for their belief I should be able to also take the risk and that sets him on to the path as you called it being first a whistleblower then an activist all his life. Right absolutely. Praveen it's interesting because we are Pentagon Papers were released in 71 but some of these patterns have continued over the decades. We saw the same thing happening in Iraq. We saw the same thing happening with for instance in Syria in Libya and but we've also seen resistance say Julian Assange, we've seen Edward Snowden, we've seen many people following in Ellsberg's footsteps and one of the inspiring things about Ellsberg was also the fact that he stood by all of these whistleblowers. He was an ardent champion with Snowden for instance Chelsea Manning. He very recently spoke in favor of Julian Assange during his very horrid trial. So could you also maybe talk about what Ellsberg meant for whistleblowing and how you see whistleblowing itself, how has it changed since those times? You know I must get back to what he talks about in his doomsday machine. If you read the preface of that it says why he became a whistleblower. He becomes a whistleblower when he understands that there's a question he had asked the military on behalf of the president. In fact he was allowed to formulate such questions because he was very close to the top of the security establishment which was in the United States. So he said how many people will die if a nuclear exchange takes place particularly in Soviet Union and other socialist countries in China and the answer which is what shocked him to his core was from 325 I think to 650 million people that is the amount of deaths which the US military was saying. It wasn't talking about what we later called you know that the consequence of this would be a global winter, a nuclear winter and all of that. It was purely from the secondary and tertiary effects of the bomb apart from the primary effects and because it was it was planned that if such an exchange takes place then we should just take out Soviet Union completely and its allies and its allies included all these countries. In fact they also plan to take out other countries as well that they should not become competitors after the war but leaving that out this is the this is the doomsday machine as it is called by him and that's what we if you remember the famous film that was made Doctor Strange Love and How I Started Loving the Bomb that in fact talks about the doomsday machine and that was people thought it was basically a strategy for the filmmaker to scare us but that was really what the military had planned. All these convinced Ellsberg once of course the Pentagon papers and the doomsday machine convinced him that he needs to go public and his not being out for the rest of his life was a risk he was willing to take. It's purely an accident actually that the doomsday machine papers got destroyed because at the time he had decided to release the Pentagon papers first and all these papers were with his brother if I remember correctly and due to an accident the papers got destroyed. So this is why he could not release a doomsday machine but his as he written in his book there have been enough documents which have come out since then which whatever the doomsday machine was supposed to disclose that's now in public domain and the risk is as great as ever. Now all of this is what also convinced him that he has to stand by people who are willing to become whistleblowers because the secrecy that he saw and the secrecy that still shrouds big power policies which threaten the entire globe still exists and every generation needs to be convinced fresh that these things are there. The only thing that's happened and I think it's an interesting aside to the whistleblowing part of it if you remember when the Pentagon papers were released this was 7000 pages which were photocopied by Ellsberg. He did it all by himself and he had the requisite clearance to be able to photocopy 7000 pages. Now here is the anomaly shall we say the contradiction involved as the security status expanded the amount of information it collects it has also made it more porous. So here you have Chelsea Manning a corporal not the kind of security clearance which Ellsberg had but has the possibility of accessing the whole trail of documents exchanged between the embassies and the United States head office the State Department head office as well as material like what was what was famously shown by Assange collateral murder which is the action that in certain helicopters do over Baghdad and the shooting down of innocent people. So those kind of material now are available because the embassies need it whole number of people need it so even a large corporal level access is enough to get all of this and Chelsea Manning can put it on CDs which appears to be music CDs and take these things out. Similarly when Stodian leaves again he has access as somebody who's an administrator who has administrative access to the most secret documents NASA's NSA's secret spy programs and all the material they have collected that he can walk out with it because the whole infrastructure that has been created now remember 7000 pages and you have that level of security clearance between that of a major general and left in general. Now you have Snowden who is an assets admin not a very senior security clearance and Chelsea Manning with a much lower level of access can access information which is so damaging to the security state. So here is the contradiction that the more you collect the more also porous your systems are and that's what the security state is learning that it is all right to collect everything and then we'll sort it out later which is what the principle is when you hover everything under the sun you can access but the question is then how do you maintain the security of the system and the answer is from elsewhere time to now that more is being collected far more than was collected in this time and made into supposedly security files and system has become even more porous than it was during his time and that's what we are seeing therefore the threat of action against the science to make him an example that okay people can get the information out but they should not be able to publish it. So that is what is at the moment the key issue and it is not against other states because other states would have this information it is against it becoming public. So the issue of the whistleblowers and Daliel Ellsberg therefore becomes far more important today if you do the whistleblowing which he did he expected to go to jail after that and the whistleblowing that Assange Snowden have done all of them know the risks they have and it is for us as citizens to fight along with them to see that the security state does not able to hide what it is doing what it is threatening to do from its own citizens and I think that is the key issue. We owe it to our people to be able to give information and take the risks that Ellsberg did that's why we all remember Ellsberg not only remain committed to the last but he started as somebody who believed in the security state and then based on what he saw and his larger love for humanity moved away from the secrecy of the security state and the threat it poses to the people of the world and moves to a position of an activist and he remains one to the last. Absolutely that's exactly what is a very inspiring story like you said and I think the point you made which is that we need activists like this today also to keep continuing spreading that message so that there can be more whistleblowers as well. Thank you so much for talking to us and giving us I think the larger picture about Daniel Ellsberg's life and also his relevance today because he is really very relevant today as well thank you so much that's all we have time for today we'll be covering more such issues in the future as well until then keep watching NewsClick and People's Dispatch