Few individuals have understood and described the insidious corrosiveness of presidency secrecy as clearly as Daniel Ellsberg.
Ellsberg, who died Friday at age 92 at his house in Kensington, is known for offering the Pentagon Papers — a top-secret historical past of the Vietnam Warfare — to the New York Instances in 1971. Whereas nobody was clearer than Dan about how secrecy threatens democracy by stopping the general public from making knowledgeable choices, he additionally taught me how entry to secret info really causes authorities officers to make what he known as “good dumb” choices.
I first met Dan once I was serving to to create the Freedom of the Press Basis, co-launched in 2012 by a number of Digital Frontier Basis staffers, together with others. EFF is a nonprofit defending digital privateness, free speech and innovation. Our co-founder and board member, John Perry Barlow, who was additionally deeply concerned, introduced Dan into the planning. EFF served as authorized counsel for the fledgling group.
When Dan unceremoniously walked into one of many first organizing conferences we held at EFF’s red-brick Mission District places of work, I used to be each tongue-tied and star-struck, as had been most of us within the room, however he didn’t appear to note.
He sat down and shortly helped us assume via what the brand new group needs to be and the way it ought to operate. At the start, he insisted that it arise unapologetically for Chelsea Manning, the U.S. Military intelligence analyst who in 2010 had revealed American battle crimes in Iraq by offering leaked paperwork to Wikileaks. Dan would later attend Manning’s trial.
He was additionally strongly in settlement that “Freedom of the Press” embody Wikileaks itself, the nonprofit launched in 2006 by Australian editor and activist Julian Assange, which was publishing these governmental secrets and techniques.
Dan later spoke at a public EFF occasion in Berkeley discussing the Nationwide Safety Company’s spying, which EFF had been suing over since 2006. I listened intently as he defined how these given entry to governmental secrets and techniques all too usually develop into satisfied that they’re smarter and extra succesful than those that lack that info. He described a suggestions loop wherein officers inside a secrecy bubble begin believing they’re invincible, develop into topic to groupthink and so develop into more and more unwilling to acknowledge reputable criticism or considerations from outdoors the bubble.
He known as them “good dumb” individuals, conned by their very own proximity to energy and entry to secrets and techniques into doing silly issues — resembling, for instance, persevering with a battle that was clearly misplaced or mendacity about weapons of mass destruction. Dan stated such errors had been as inevitable as they’re insidious. He made clear that this was one thing he himself had skilled.
EFF helped facilitate Dan’s first actual dialog with Manning at our November 2018 Pioneer Awards ceremony. Dan was exuberant that night time: “I waited 39 years for her to seem on this world,” he stated earlier than detailing the importance of the paperwork she leaked. He praised each Manning and Edward Snowden — the Nationwide Safety Company subcontractor who leaked paperwork in 2013 revealing intensive world surveillance packages — saying, “I’ve usually stated that I determine extra with them as ‘revelationaries’ than with every other individuals on the planet.”
The world won’t ever see one other Dan Ellsberg, however all of us profit from his legacy — together with the opposite whistleblowers and truth-tellers on the market at present who’ve been impressed by him, and those that will bravely step ahead within the years forward. Might his reminiscence be a blessing.
Cindy Cohn is government director of the Digital Frontier Basis, a nonprofit digital civil liberties group based mostly in San Francisco.
