Comments
ACCORDING TO LIZ - Daniel Ellsberg died on June 16, 2023. He never pursued fame or fortune but for many Americans he was the real hero of the Vietnam War, changing the course of human history in ways few private citizens have done before or since.
Ellsberg is best known for copying the American military’s secret 7,000-page justification for the war in Indochina, commissioned in 1967 by Defense Secretary and quintessential hawk Robert McNamara.
Its publication as a series of articles in the New York Times in 1971 rocked the nation, revealing in excruciating detail the hubris of the United States government, its deceit about the war as evidenced in its ongoing lies to all Americans, and that the ongoing U.S. conflict in Southeast Asia was not to save the Vietnamese from the domino effect of Communism but to maintain “the power, influence and prestige of the United States.”
And that one American administration after another continued spinning the same web of lies while knowing the war was a lost cause.
Nixon’s Justice Department initially persuaded a federal judge to order the newspaper to stop publishing the articles, claiming a breach of national security. But the Supreme Court quickly ruled the government had not met a high enough standard of irreparable harm, and publication resumed.
Nixon then authorized G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt to prevent future leaks. The president’s “plumbers” were caught burglarizing Ellsberg’s Beverly Hills psychiatrist’s office before their notorious 1972 break-in of the Democratic Party’s national headquarters at the Watergate Hotel led to Nixon’s downfall and disgrace.
The publicizing of the Pentagon Papers helped shorten the war and, for the next 50 years, Ellsberg – as a lobbyist, lecturer, writer and participant in acts of peaceful protest and resistance – continued advocating for free speech while battling the existential danger of nuclear weapons and mutually-assured destruction.
With Putin’s threats of nuclear weapons during Russia’s attempted suppression of Ukraine and the more recent Middle East menace of the misadventures of the current administration, one unable to comprehend nuance and negotiations, Ellsberg’s work is vitally relevant today.
And now, Trump is doing a victory lap for reopening the Strait of Hormuz… while leaving the nuclear issue nightmare in limbo.
The culmination of the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT), renamed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START), between the United States and the Soviet Union’s successor states of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, went into effect on December 5, 1994, and barred its signatories from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads and 1,600 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Upon its expiration in 2009, the New START extended reductions through February 2026. Although Russia officially suspended its participation a year following its invasion of Ukraine, it continued to adhere to the numerical terms of the treaty.
On February 5, 2026, New START officially expired, leaving no constraints on Russian or American nukes.
Intersecting crises of economic injustice, environmental catastrophe, technology inequalities, racism, and rampant white nationalism feeding into further geopolitical and energy upheavals with the sociopathic leaderships of Putin and Trump, Iran’s Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei and Netanyahu, Kim Jung Un and Mohammed bin Salman and more pose a major threat to humanity’s survival.
These are further aggravated by the advent of unregulated A.I. data-collection and escalating crackdowns on free speech and the press in the name of improved corporate and national security.
At the end, Ellsberg may have despaired, feeling his work fighting nuclear arms proliferation had little impact “leaving a world in terrible shape and terrible in all ways that I’ve tried to help make better,” but he resolutely tossed the baton of bringing about radical change to other investigative journalists.
A crucial calling given mainstream media has become a tool of their corporate owners kowtowing to the government in keeping its dirty secrets hidden.
This includes cultivating an ordinary sanity among Americans through education, especially of the new generation of live-streaming amateur journalists who have been on the forefront of bringing real news to people everywhere since the Arab Spring.
This means working as individuals at the local level and joining like-minded people and groups both nationally and internationally.
If we want peace, we must prepare for peace, we must pave the way for peace, no matter the personal cost. We must hold all elected officials accountable.
As Ellsberg once told Walter Cronkite, “I think we cannot let the officials of the Executive Branch determine for us what it is that the public needs to know about how well and how they are discharging their functions.”
David Halberstam, acclaimed writer of modern history, described Ellsberg as a man who saw political actions as demanding a moral assessment with consequences for abuses of power, someone who embodied the individual of conscience, answering only to his personal sense of right and wrong, even at the cost of his own freedom.
NOTE: Check out “An Ordinary Insanity”, the free half-hour documentary with Daniel Ellsberg.
And, if you don’t want to stand by and watch the two nuclear powers with crazier leaders than Iran, i.e. Israel and the United States, double dare each other to strike the first blow for Armageddon as the doomsday clock counts down to midnight, visit Back from the Brink, a website committed to averting nuclear war.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at LizAmsden@hotmail.com. )
