Attacking the Deep State
Daniel Ellsberg died in June2023, aged 92 years. Daniel who? Perhaps not many of today’s generation have heard of him. He made the papers in 2019, at age 87, because he won a prestigious international award.
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a former US military analyst who exposed Washington's secret war plans for Vietnam in 1971, won the 2018 Olof Palme human rights prize on Wednesday.
Ellsberg, 87, was honoured for his "profound humanism and exceptional moral courage," the jury said in a statement.
He famously leaked thousands of documents nearly half a century ago revealing that successive US administrations had lied to the public about the Vietnam war.
"He was well aware of risking a long time in prison and a spoiled career," the jury said.
"Regardless of such consequences, his decision led to the removal of a mendacious government, a shortening of an illegal war, and an untold number of saved lives."
His actions have been featured in several Hollywood films, including "The Pentagon Papers" in 2003 in which he was played by James Spader, and 2017's "The Post" featuring Matthew Rhys.
The Olof Palme Prize is an annual prize worth $75,000 (65,500 euros) awarded by the Swedish labour movement.
The Swedes haven’t been quite so sympathetic to an equally noble, whistleblowing successor to Ellsberg, an Australian, no less. More on the reasons for this, below.
More people will have heard of The Pentagon Papers, though probably still not that many. They were written by a special research unit within the defense establishment as what amounted to a secret record of the Vietnam War, and Ellsberg, then an employee of the Rand Corporation (an embedded part of the defense establishment), leaked them to the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Hence, Ellsberg was an integral actor in the internal research investigation into Vietnam:
At RAND, Daniel Ellsberg was given access to the entire study, and he was one of very few people to read it all. He was staggered by what he learned. President after president had lied to the American people about the war, from fake rationales for escalating U.S. involvement to false claims that the Communist-led insurgency was being defeated by the American and South Vietnamese military.
https://www.umass.edu/ellsberg/featured-documents/pentagon-papers-watergate-and-trials/
The Guardian’s obituary stated succinctly:
Daniel Ellsberg, who has died aged 92, was the most important whistleblower of our times. His 1971 leaking of what became known as the Pentagon Papers showed conclusively that virtually everything the American public had been told by its leaders about the Vietnam war, from its origins to its current conduct, was false.
The leak itself did not end the war, and Ellsberg regretted not having come forward years earlier. He spent the rest of his life as a peace activist, encouraging others on the inside to reveal government malfeasance, and supporting those who did …
… It is not unreasonable to set Ellsberg’s leak alongside President John F Kennedy’s assassination as the ground zero of today’s distrust of politics.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/17/daniel-ellsberg-obituary
The last point is a big and important call, with lasting implications. In relation to Vietnam itself, the leaked papers showed that the Yanks knew the war was unwinnable, a long, long way out from the finish line. Kissinger knew, as his official biographer (and regular Bilderberg meeting attendee) Niall Ferguson has said.
This knowledge was, no doubt, a core part of the late Christopher Hitchens’ jihad against Kissinger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_of_Henry_Kissinger
Daniel Ellsberg elicited the divergent kinds of reactions back in the 1970s similar to a certain other whistleblower, more recently, and closer to home. To the establishment, Ellsberg was a traitor. To others, a hero. It probably depended on your views about the Vietnam War, at least partly. Back then, the deep state probably garnered more public loyalty than it does today. It probably wasn’t even called by that name back then.
The Nixon Administration went after him, even though the most political damage of the leak was done to LBJ, Nixon’s immediate predecessor. It was a Democrat war, after all. The notorious Plumber’s Unit, consisting mainly of a gang of Cuban buffoons led by G Gordon Liddy, the same clowns who later stormed the Watergate Building, broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s offices to get dirt on Ellsberg. It was this ham-fisted operation that caused the judge to let Ellsberg off at his subsequent trial. On a technicality.
https://www.umass.edu/ellsberg/featured-documents/pentagon-papers-watergate-and-trials/
Why is Daniel Ellsberg suddenly of interest? Most readers will obviously have heard of Julian Assange, though fewer will know exactly who he is and what he has done. And why he is important.
Julian Assange, too, attracts a wide range of views. The “deeply idiosyncratic” Assange, as he has been described by The Australian.
It took the irrepressible and irreverent cricket commentator Kerry O’Keeffe to link Julian Assange to a controversial stumping in a recent Ashes series. The Poms were whinging about their batsman, Johnny Bairstow, being given out stumped by Australia’s wicketkeeper in a Test in England in 2023, after he wandered out of his batting crease (a cricket no-no).
You treat the popping crease like Julian Assange treated the Ecuadorian Embassy. You just don’t leave it.
With apologies to non-cricket fans. But you get the point. I hope.
Barnacle Albo naturally has attached himself to the Wikileaks founder. The PM is one of the world’s best at linking up with what he takes to be popular public causes with ample photo opps.
As scripted political dramas go, Julian Assange's (welcome) arrival in Canberra on Wednesday night would be hard to beat.
Even before Assange exited the plane, Anthony Albanese was on the phone in a pre-arranged call. Immediately afterwards the prime minister, often reluctant to disclose the content of phone calls, happily shared details of their conversation with the media at a mid-evening news conference in Parliament House.
"I was quite pleased to be the first person here who he spoke with, [it] was mutually worked out that that would occur," Albanese said.
Of course you were. When it comes to Albo … it is all about ME! The political class, the establishment, isn’t so sure.
The Australian, always leaning in towards the establishment, and in the tank for Ben Roberts-Smith, intoned:
Ask our Diggers what they think of Assange, Mr Albanese.
Source: The Australian, 29 June 2024, paywalled.
Righto. Point taken. Then there is ASIO:
‘Hero’ homecoming for Julian Assange was political grandstanding, former Asio boss says
Ex-US ambassador Dennis Richardson says Albanese government’s reception for WikiLeaks founder minimises legitimate concerns about his activities.
We have this from the once sane James Delingpole, now, seemingly, a victim of a conspiracy theory cult. Or, perhaps, he is leading it.
So it sounds like the ultimate litmus test [of whether you are awake] isn’t Israel. It’s whether or not you realise that Assange was an intelligence asset.
An intelligence asset? Oh dear. Perhaps Dennis Richardson is playing a double bluff. If you follow the conspiracy theorists’ basic rule – never believe anything you are told – you (wisely) won’t believe half the stuff they say as well.
Many feminists and me-tooists will have other issues with Assange, which have nothing to do with Wikileaks. With the alleged “stealthing” by Assange in Sweden in 2010. Aka, rape.
Assange, who was released on bail on Thursday [ in 2010], denies the Swedish allegations and has not formally been charged with any offence. The two Swedish women behind the charges have been accused by his supporters of making malicious complaints or being "honeytraps" in a wider conspiracy to discredit him.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange-sweden
I won’t go there. Too much Bruce Lehrmann angst already in the building. But the points made at the time by Assange’s Swedish lawyers suggest dubious charges at best.
George Christensen not only visited Assange, but introduced a private member’s bill into parliament in 2020 to have the Australian authorities seek his release. He has been a key part of the “quiet diplomacy” referred to by Assange’s mother that got his release over the line. George states:
I want to make it clear: I have read this case thoroughly, and Assange is not guilty of anything.
George is still angry, despite the release:
The claims of conspiracy boiled down to the fact that Assange’s news outlet Wikileaks solicited for secret information from whistleblowers and that the leaker (Bradley Manning) was advised how they could get the information to Wikileaks.
This is akin to a newspaper reporter asking publicly for tip-offs and then telling someone how they can email or post the information to their newspaper.
That Assange is now being charged with mishandling classified information is an affront to national sovereignty.
He is not a US citizen, nor was he in the United States when the alleged crime was being committed, and thus, he shouldn’t be subject to US laws.
Indeed, he shouldn’t. Why he should be caught up in the toilet that is America’s law enforcement and judicial system is not even a question.
And George added:
I sincerely doubt that this deal would have even eventuated if it were not for the fact that, about a month ago, President Donald J. Trump indicated he would be willing to pardon Julian Assange if he won the next election (and it wasn’t stolen from him).
As an aside, that statement may not have eventuated if it weren’t for the intervention of Senator Alex Antic who met with Trump late last year (during the aforementioned Washington D.C. tour by Australian parliamentarians) and who spoke about Assange’s case with the President.
Alex Antic! Another of the Coalition’s warriors with a deep commitment to freedom and an instinctive distrust of the deep state.
The indispensable Tucker Carlson, now creating havoc among all sorts of po-faced progressives down under, visited Julian Assange in prison in November 2023.
Carlson highlighted the relief among Australians familiar with the case, denouncing those who still believe Assange should be imprisoned as "the enemy of human freedom and flourishing." He added, "It was monstrous that he spent 12 years locked away for exposing other people's crimes."
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2474598/tucker-carlson-reacts-to-julian-assanges-release
Always to the point.
The Liberal wet, Republican stalwart and Tasmanian legal eagle, Greg Barns, refers to a “rainbow coalition” of Assange supporters, including Bob Carr, Adam Bandt, Matt Canavan, George Christensen, Barnaby Joyce and Andrew Wilkie. He is right about that. Some, like Christensen and Wilkie, visited Assange in prison in London. Barns states:
The Australian political environment has changed enormously since I began campaigning for Assange 11 years ago. Then, the Labor government of Julia Gillard not only showed no sympathy for Assange but ordered an investigation into whether he had broken any Australian laws in publishing the material. It was an absurd proposition and one that was quickly dismissed by commonwealth law officers. There seemed to be little interest on the part of the Coalition parties, and many in the Australian media saw Assange as a dangerous impostor.
Barns, to his eternal credit, was in the Assange camp from the get-go. These accidental co-advocates were doing noble work here, whatever the other political deformities of some of them.
Julian Assange’s wife has alleged that the former Central Intelligence Agency Director, Mike Pompeo, approved plans for an assassination.
No surprises there. They killed their own president in the autumn of 1963, after all.
Assange and Ellsberg have much in common. For one, they were both concerned with the prosecution of controversial foreign military entanglements. In the case of Wikileaks, it all started with American military atrocities in Middle Eastern wars. But more importantly, each has, in his own ways, blown the lid on the practices and decisions of elected governments that do, or sanction, or cover up, things for which they were not mandated.
The above quotations (and the Barns article) show that there have been a number of reasons for taking up the case in support of Julian Assange. Here are my arguments for cheering him on:
· The modern state, including the modern “democratic” state, has ceded all rights to claiming the allegiance of its citizens;
· Citizens have a moral obligation to oppose evil regimes and evil laws;
· Anyone who pushes back against the deep state is a hero;
· Anyone who exposes the American military-industrial complex in any or all of its dimensions is a hero;
To claim that those who aggressively expose the crimes and generally malodorous malfeasance of the deep state are somehow traitors is risible.
The work of the whistleblowers, always important, is, in our times, indispensable.
For we live in an era where governments are routinely elected with little over one third of the primary vote, and, hence, where most people do not want them to be the government. Certainly this is the case in first-past-the-post systems, and arguably, in preferential systems as well. Where parties cheat their way into office. See under Joe Biden, 2020. Where governments break promises. Where governments do things for which they have no mandate. See under mass immigration. Where they lie through their teeth. Where they sneer at their voters. Where they waste our money every day. Papua New Guinea footy teams, anyone? See also under ScoMo’s Covid trillion. Where they cancel democratic institutions on a whim. Covid, anyone? Where they abrogate citizens’ rights on the say-so of compromised, at best, and corrupt, at worst, unelected officials. Where they trample on human rights to protest. Where they cancel free speech. The British targets of the Boston Tea Partiers have nothing on our lot.
There is no longer something recognisably called democratic legitimacy. Voting is utterly pointless for many. But the culture, upstream from politics, is thoroughly diseased too. There is no longer a “naked public square”, a neutral space where competing ideas and visions of the good life can take their place without cancellation, censorship, threats and violent opposition. As the American, alt-conservative scholar Patrick Deneen notes:
An Alabama proposal to install the Ten Commandments in public classrooms in the state has generated controversy, with opponents predictably accusing proponents of trying to impose a theocracy on Alabama’s children. In response, a popular cartoon circulating on social media perfectly crystalizes the new reality: Moses has brought the tablets of divine law to a contemporary American classroom, only to be told by the teacher, “Sorry, we don’t permit religion in schools.” This, even as the classroom’s walls are festooned with various “Pride Progress,” Black Lives Matter, and transgender flags and symbols.
It is now clear that the public square wasn’t naked, and nor could it ever be. Written in 1984, amid the first great wave of the “culture wars,” Richard John Neuhaus’s book The Naked Public Square articulated a pervasive anxiety among traditional Christians over what they perceived to be a decidedly secularist tilt of elite culture. Secular elites, even if only a minority at the time, were institutionally fortified through control of the judicial branch and the bureaucracy, both of which advanced an increasingly “separationist” reading of the First Amendment. Even as conservatives were winning elections, they believed this small elite was sowing the seeds of what would someday be a deeply secularist nation.
… Instead of a naked public square, we see one festooned today with every imaginable image of the rainbow and associated symbology: from flags to backlighting, from crosswalks to entire murals on the sides of buildings. The public square went briefly from being a space where one might once have found images of the Ten Commandments or, during the holidays, a Christmas crèche, to one where the White House might be lit up by the rainbow celebrating a judicial fiat declaring a right to marriage of homosexuals in a constitution written in the 1780s, to public libraries where praise of cross-dressing, transexuality, and gay sex would become run-of-the-mill children’s programming.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-clothed-public-square/?ref=compact-newsletter
As Deneen says, there is no naked public square here. And the culture wars are prosecuted, and the new cultural hegemony is imposed and enforced, by … the state. That is, when it is not outsourcing public policy to corporations, non-government organisations (NGOs) and sporting bodies. Not to mention those institutions not even domiciled in Australia, like the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organisation. None of which we elected, but by whose dictates we are governed. To whose fiat we are subjugated.
A whole bunch of us have literally no stake in the modern polity.
As Matt Goodwin says in relation to British politics, up to 80 per cent of the population opposes key aspects of policies that are silently agreed on and duly implemented by the political class and by both branches of the UniParty, while the theatre of imagined party-political warfare goes ever on.
In relation to the impact of the Covid state on political obligation and democracies, Jeffrey Tucker, as is usually the case, is succinct and on the money:
It’s been a painful four years watching the experts, backed by power, dismantle all the foundations of the good life, and yet not be held accountable for the results.
https://brownstone.org/articles/its-darkest-before-dawn/
They took away everything we cherish about liberal democracy, didn’t bother to apologise, and have not been held to account. End of story. We owe the political class NOTHING.
There is no implied social contract of the kind envisioned by the fathers of modern liberal democratic theory such a Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. There is a legitimation crisis, far worse than the one imagined two generations ago by the European leftist Jurgen Habermas.
The whole basis of political obligation is out the window.
So, in response, what is a poor old Western boy or girl to do? Expose the bastards whenever and wherever and however and whyever possible, should be our mantra. No doubt Julian Assange has never heard of Patrick Deneen. I am not sure how good the libraries are at either Belmarsh Prison or the Ecuador Embassy in London.
Raise a glass of something special to the freedom, at, last of Julian Assange, and spare a thought or a prayer for the late (and largely forgotten) free speech, truth-telling pioneer Daniel Ellsberg.
Paul Collits
30 June 2024
Wonderful Paul. One of your best. So true, so clear and so well argued
Thanks Robin. Of all the madnesses, the expectation that we give a rat's about niceties like the official secrets act has to be up there