Leak against this war - US and British officials must expose their leaders lies about Iraq - as I did over Vietnam



Daniel Ellsberg                           Tuesday January 27, 2004

The Guardian

After 17 months observing pacification efforts in Vietnam as a state department official, I laid
eyes upon an unmistakable enemy for the first time on New Year's Day in 1967. I was walking
point with three members of a company from the US army's 25th Division, moving
through tall rice, the water over our ankles, when we heard firing close behind us. We spun
around, ready to fire. I saw a boy of about 15, wearing nothing but ragged black shorts,
crouching and firing an AK-47 at the troops behind us. I could see two others, heads just
above the top of the rice, firing as well.


They had lain there, letting us four pass so as to get a better shot at the main body of troops.
We couldn't fire at them, because we would have been firing into our own platoon. But a lot
of its fire came back right at us. Dropping to the ground, I watched this kid firing away for 10
seconds, till he disappeared with his buddies into the rice. After a minute the platoon ceased
fire in our direction and we got up and moved on.
About an hour later, the same thing happened again; this time I only saw a glimpse of a black
jersey through the rice. I was very impressed, not only by their tactics but by their performance.
One thing was clear: these were local boys. They had the advantage of knowing every ditch
and dyke, every tree and blade of rice and piece of cover, like it was their own backyard. Because
it was their backyard. No doubt (I thought later) that was why they had the nerve to
pop up in the midst of a reinforced battalion and fire away with American troops on all sides.
They thought they were shooting at trespassers, occupiers, that they had a right to be there
and we didn't. This would have been a good moment to ask myself if they were wrong, and if
we had a good enough reason to be in their backyard to be fired at.
Later that afternoon, I turned to the radio man, a wiry African American kid who looked too
thin to be lugging his 75lb radio, and asked: "By any chance, do you ever feel like the redcoats?"
Without missing a beat he said, in a drawl: "I've been thinking that ... all ... day." You couldn't
miss the comparison if you'd gone to grade school in America. Foreign troops far from home,
wearing helmets and uniforms and carrying heavy equipment, getting shot at every half-hour
by non-uniformed irregulars near their own homes, blending into the local population after
each attack.
I can't help but remember that afternoon as I read about US and British patrols meeting rockets
and mines without warning in the cities of Iraq. As we faced ambush after ambush in the
countryside, we passed villagers who could have told us we were about to be attacked. Why
didn't they? First, there was a good chance their friends and family members were the ones
doing the attacking. Second, we were widely seen by the local population not as allies or protectors
- as we preferred to imagine - but as foreign occupiers. Helping us would have been
seen as collaboration, unpatriotic. Third, they knew that to collaborate was to be in danger
from the resistance, and that the foreigners' ability to protect them was negligible.
There could not be a more exact parallel between this situation and Iraq. Our troops in Iraq
keep walking into attacks in the course of patrols apparently designed to provide "security"
for civilians who, mysteriously, do not appear the slightest bit inclined to warn us of these attacks.
This situation - as in Vietnam - is a harbinger of endless bloodletting. I believe American
and British soldiers will be dying, and killing, in that country as long as they remain there.
As more and more US and British families lose loved ones in Iraq - killed while ostensibly
protecting a population that does not appear to want them there - they will begin to ask: "How
did we get into this mess, and why are we still in it?" And the answers they find will be disturbingly
similar to those the American public found for Vietnam.
I served three US presidents - Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon - who lied repeatedly and blatantly
about our reasons for entering Vietnam, and the risks in our staying there. For the past
year, I have found myself in the horrifying position of watching history repeat itself. I believe
that George Bush and Tony Blair lied - and continue to lie - as blatantly about their reasons
for entering Iraq and the prospects for the invasion and occupation as the presidents I served
did about Vietnam.
By the time I released to the press in 1971 what became known as the Pentagon Papers -
7,000 pages of top-secret documents demonstrating that virtually everything four American
presidents had told the public about our involvement in Vietnam was false - I had known that
pattern as an insider for years, and I knew that a fifth president, Richard Nixon, was following
in their footsteps. In the fall of 2002, I hoped that officials in Washington and London who
knew that our countries were being lied into an illegal, bloody war and occupation would consider
doing what I wish I had done in 1964 or 1965, years before I did, before the bombs
started to fall: expose these lies, with documents.
I can only admire the more timely, courageous action of Katherine Gun, the GCHQ translator
who risked her career and freedom to expose an illegal plan to win official and public support
for an illegal war, before that war had started. Her revelation of a classified document urging
British intelligence to help the US bug the phones of all the members of the UN security
council to manipulate their votes on the war may have been critical in denying the invasion a
false cloak of legitimacy. That did not prevent the aggression, but it was reasonable for her to
hope that her country would not choose to act as an outlaw, thereby saving lives. She did
what she could, in time for it to make a difference, as indeed others should have done, and
still can.
I have no doubt that there are thousands of pages of documents in safes in London and
Washington right now - the Pentagon Papers of Iraq - whose unauthorised revelation would
drastically alter the public discourse on whether we should continue sending our children to
die in Iraq. That's clear from what has already come out through unauthorised disclosures
from many anonymous sources and from officials and former officials such as David Kelly
and US ambassador Joseph Wilson, who revealed the falsity of reports that Iraq had pursued
uranium from Niger, which President Bush none the less cited as endorsed by British intelligence
in his state of the union address before the war. Both Downing Street and the White
House organised covert pressure to punish these leakers and to deter others, in Dr Kelly's
case with tragic results.
Those who reveal documents on the scale necessary to return foreign policy to democratic
control risk prosecution and prison sentences, as Katherine Gun is now facing. I faced 12
felony counts and a possible sentence of 115 years; the charges were dismissed when it was
discovered that White House actions aimed at stopping further revelations of administration
lying had included criminal actions against me.
Exposing governmental lies carries a heavy personal risk, even in our democracies. But that
risk can be worthwhile when a war's-worth of lives is at stake.