‘Pentagon Paper’ author discusses whistleblowers

On Wednesday, the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences’ Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics hosted the latest installment of Students Talk Back, “From the Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks: The Government’s Need for Secrecy and the Public’s Right to Know,” featuring Daniel Ellsberg, a former government official best known for his release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

The Talk Back series is hosted in conjunction with USC College Democrats, USC College Republicans and the Daily Trojan. The panel was moderated by Kerstyn Olson, interim director of the Unruh Institute, and Heidi Greenhalgh, a graduate research assistant at USC CREATE, the National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events.

Other panelists included Stan Stahl, president of the Information Systems Security Association of Los Angeles and students Kevin Driscoll, a Ph.D. candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and Annalise Mantz, the former Editor-in-Chief and current special projects editor of the Daily Trojan.

Olson began the event with a question about the differences between Ellsberg and Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee who revealed classified documents showing the existence of a top-secret government surveillance program.

Ellsberg also spoke about the contrasts between him and             current-day whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning, a military whistleblower who revealed classified information about the human cost of U.S. violence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ellsberg questioned Manning’s decision to reveal documents that she was not personally familiar with.

“But now, with digital technology, [Manning] was able to put out hundreds of thousands of documents, a questionable aspect I’ve been doubting from the beginning,” Ellsberg said. “Obviously, [she] put out more than [she] could have read personally. I didn’t do that, and I don’t think I would have done that. That was a problematic thing to do.”

Ellsberg also stated that he, like Edward Snowden, wanted to make sure that people would know who was revealing the information. He believes that he, Manning and Snowden shared a common goal of wanting the public to know what they saw as deceptive government actions.

“None of us joined the military, in Chelsea’s case, or the government, with any thought of being a whistleblower or breaking the promise we made not to reveal any information,” Ellsberg, who worked at Rand Corporation, said. “We had come to realize that to keep that promise was to break our oath, more conscious in their minds, especially Snowden’s, than it was in mine, that we had all taken to support and defend the Constitution, which was very blatantly being violated by the governments we were serving.”

Stahl spoke to the audience about the connections between Ellsberg and current-day whistleblowers.

“We had a very strong belief in the 1960s that, in fact, our government was lying to us,” Stahl said. “It wasn’t just the war in Vietnam, it was also the Civil Rights Movement — that whole time of ferment when, in fact, people were dying for the Constitution and going to jail because of their strong, strong belief that we had to defend the Constitution.”

In response to the issue of how to draw the line between the public’s right to know and classified information, Stahl emphasized that the answer should come from the wider public.

“It’s not ‘Snowden belongs in jail’ versus ‘Snowden’s a hero,’” Stahl said. “It’s, ‘How do we collect the information? How do we put limits on that collection? How do we get a court to approve it?’ And we’re not going to solve that here. We’re going to solve that collectively, all of us, but it means it needs to be in all of your consciousnesses.”

The moderators also asked the students on the panel how they, as journalists, would deal with disseminating classified information to the public.

“What it comes down to for me is the central principle, and one of the reasons I got into journalism is the need to inform people and let our readers know what’s going on,” Mantz said. “That being said, I would want to make sure that I knew exactly what I was publishing and that I have the legal backing-up to do so.”

Driscoll explained that the scope of the general public has become much wider over the past several decades and that its meaning has changed, including people across the globe who might not be considered citizens.

“In the case of Chelsea Manning, I think she imagined a global audience for the documents that she released,” Driscoll said. “And not everybody in that public shares the same rights and access to structures of participatory democracy as other folks do.”

Shayla McMurray, a freshman majoring in gender studies, law, history, and culture and political science, said that she was inspired by the patriotism of the speakers. 

“Overall, the event was really inspiring,” McMurray said. “I thought it was really touching how [Ellsberg] talked about how the word ‘traitor’ might be tossed around colloquially, but the type of impact it has on someone who firmly believes that they’re a patriot like he did.”

Ben Shiroma, a sophomore majoring in electrical engineering, said that the topic was an issue of great importance but that he wished there were more diverse viewpoints regarding whistleblowers on the panel.

“It was an important conversation that needed to be had,” Shiroma said. “However, it would have been nice to have more conflicting views on the panel. Everyone more or less felt the same way, but I feel like there is a need to censor or not release documents that have a potential to harm people.”