Why Daniel Ellsberg Tried to Get Prosecuted Near His Life’s End
In examining his legacy, the scrutiny he tried to bring to the Espionage Act in making that disclosure also deserves attention.
“I will, if indicted, be asserting my belief that what I am doing — like what I’ve done in the past — is not criminal,” he told me, arguing that using the act “to criminalize classified truth-telling in the public interest” should be deemed unconstitutional.
The government has various tools to deter and punish unauthorized disclosures to reporters and the public, and for most of American history, it did not try to send leakers to prison. The Espionage Act has been on the books since World War I, but it was not until the second half the 20th century that the government began trying to use it to charge leakers instead of spies — initially, to little success.
In 1957, the military included Espionage Act charges in the court-martial of an Army colonel for giving reporters information about a disputed missile program, but prosecutors dropped the charges. In 1971, the Justice Department obtained its first such indictment in the case against Ellsberg and a colleague who had helped him, Anthony Russo. But a judge threw out the charges, citing government misconduct and illegal evidence gathering.
A decade later, the Justice Department under the Reagan administration tried again, bringing Espionage Act charges against a defense analyst who had provided classified satellite photographs of a Soviet shipyard to Jane’s Defence Weekly. He was convicted. But it was so odd and unfair that only one person had been sent to prison for an act that had happened routinely for decades that President Bill Clinton pardoned him in 2001.
Source: The New York Times
