Snowden made the right call when he fled the U.S.
Daniel Ellsberg is the author of “Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and
the Pentagon Papers.” He was charged in 1971 under the Espionage Act as
well as for theft and conspiracy for copying the Pentagon Papers. The
trial was dismissed in 1973 after evidence of government misconduct,
including illegal wiretapping, was introduced in court.
After the New York Times had been enjoined from publishing the Pentagon Papers — on June 15, 1971, the first prior restraint on a newspaper in U.S. history — and I had given another copy to The Post (which would also be enjoined), I went underground with my wife, Patricia, for 13 days. My purpose (quite like Snowden’s in flying to Hong Kong) was to elude surveillance while I was arranging — with the crucial help of a number of others, still unknown to the FBI — to distribute the Pentagon Papers sequentially to 17 other newspapers, in the face of two more injunctions. The last three days of that period was in defiance of an arrest order: I was, like Snowden now, a “fugitive from justice.”
Yet when I surrendered to arrest in Boston, having given out my
last copies of the papers the night before, I was released on personal
recognizance bond the same day. Later, when my charges were increased
from the original three counts to 12, carrying a possible 115-year sentence,
my bond was increased to $50,000. But for the whole two years I was
under indictment, I was free to speak to the media and at rallies and
public lectures. I was, after all, part of a movement against an ongoing
war. Helping to end that war was my preeminent concern. I couldn’t have
done that abroad, and leaving the country never entered my mind.
There
is no chance that experience could be reproduced today, let alone that a
trial could be terminated by the revelation of White House actions
against a defendant that were clearly criminal in Richard Nixon’s era —
and figured in his resignation in the face of impeachment — but are
today all regarded as legal (including an attempt to “incapacitate me
totally”).
I hope Snowden’s revelations will spark a movement to
rescue our democracy, but he could not be part of that movement had he
stayed here. There is zero chance that he would be allowed out on bail
if he returned now and close to no chance that, had he not left the
country, he would have been granted bail. Instead, he would be in a
prison cell like Bradley Manning, incommunicado.
He would almost certainly be confined in total isolation, even longer than the more than eight months Manning suffered during his three years of imprisonment before his trial began recently. The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture
described Manning’s conditions as “cruel, inhuman and degrading.” (That
realistic prospect, by itself, is grounds for most countries granting
Snowden asylum, if they could withstand bullying and bribery from the
United States.)
Snowden believes that he has done nothing wrong. I
agree wholeheartedly. More than 40 years after my unauthorized
disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, such leaks remain the lifeblood of a
free press and our republic. One lesson of the Pentagon Papers and
Snowden’s leaks is simple: secrecy corrupts, just as power corrupts.In my case, my
authorized access in the Pentagon and the Rand Corp. to top-secret
documents — which became known as the Pentagon Papers after I disclosed
them — taught me that Congress and the American people had been lied to
by successive presidentsand dragged into a hopelessly stalemated war
that was illegitimate from the start.
Snowden’s dismay came through access to even more highly
classified documents — some of which he has now selected to make public —
originating in the National Security Agency (NSA). He found that he was
working for a surveillance organization whose all-consuming intent, he told the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, was “on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them.”
As Snowden told the Guardian, “This country is worth dying for.” And, if necessary, going to prison for — for life.
But Snowden’s contribution to the noble cause of restoring the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments to the Constitution is in his documents. It depends in no way on his reputation or estimates of his character or motives — still less, on his presence in a courtroom arguing the current charges, or his living the rest of his life in prison. Nothing worthwhile would be served, in my opinion, by Snowden voluntarily surrendering to U.S. authorities given the current state of the law.
I hope that he finds a haven, as safe as possible from kidnapping or assassination by U.S. Special Operations forces, preferably where he can speak freely.
What he has given us is our best chance — if we respond to his information and his challenge — to rescue ourselves from out-of-control surveillance that shifts all practical power to the executive branch and its intelligence agencies: a United Stasi of America.