Full, Unedited Tribute to Dan Ellsberg
Whistleblower Summit, National Whistleblower Day, July 30 .
I am deeply grateful to Marcel Reid and Michael McCray, organizers of the annual Whistleblower Summit, for hosting this Tribute to Dan Ellsberg at the National Press Club on National Whistleblower Day, July 30, 2023.
I organized the tribute and co-directed with Todd E. Pierce, military historian, retired U.S. Army officer and Guantanamo Bay detainee defense attorney, see https://americanmilitarism.org, with help from John Henry of the Committee for the Republic, https://www.committeefortherepublic.us, and Max Mohr for technical support.
The recording on my previous post of this event, contained tributes, recorded by Todd E. Pierce, that had to be edited down to 20 minutes to fit into the schedule. This video contains the full unedited tributes which are deeply personal and revealing. It opens with a touching recording of a voice message that Dan left on John Henry’s phone, knowing that he was dying. It offers a glimpse into the quality of Dan’s true friendship.
Here is a video with the complete, original interviews, produced by Todd E. Pierce.
Life of Courage Daniel Ellsberg, an American Hero Tribute
Honoring Dan Ellsberg’s Legacy
July 30, 2023, National Press Club
Full, unedited, tributes
Caitlyn Johnstone, Tribute, Thank You for Your Service
Patricia Ellsberg, Dan’s wife
Professor Richard Falk, international law and human rights scholar, friend of 65 years
Professor Chris Appy, University of Massachusetts, Ellsberg Archive Project
Coleen Rowley, FBI Whistleblower, 2002 Time Person of the Year
Professor Gar Alperovitz, "Mr. Boston", who strategized prolonged revelation of Pentagon Papers
Ray McGovern, retired CIA analyst, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Helen Caldicott, MD, revived Physicians for Social Responsibility, devoted to nuclear awareness
Margaret Anna Alice, Poem, Ode to a Whistleblower
This was followed by a live panel. Note that our arrangement with theNational Press Club did not permit us to bring in a professional videographer. Gratitude to Todd E. Pierce for recording the panel on his phone. Otherwise it would not exist.
Diane Perlman, clinical, political and nuclear psychologist, inspired by Dan to study the psychology of moral heroism and the courageous personality
John Henry, businessman and founder of the Committee for the Republic
Peter Kuznick, history professor, American University and Nuclear Studies Institute
Ann Wright, retired US Army Reserve Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the US war on Iraq.
Medea Benjamin, author, activist, founder of Code Pink
John Kiriakou, former CIA analyst and whistleblower
The panel was followed by a recording of Dan’s 2021 keynote address to the Whistleblower Summit and a screening of the documentary about Dan, “The Most Dangerous Man in America.”
Thank you putting this together, the photos, the list of all those people who spoke, and the full tribute.
McCoy claims that Conein arranged a” truce” with the Corsican gangsters over drug smuggling in South Vietnam; Conein denied the allegation and said the meeting concerned Ellsberg’s affair with Germaine; and Ellsberg denies (1) that Conein and Scotton intervened on his behalf, and (2) that Conein, Lansdale and Scotton were involved with drug smugglers.
Who is telling the truth? Could a CIA officer with a photographic memory not be aware that his colleagues were involved with drug smugglers? Or is McCoy’s research fatally flawed? Did the alleged “truce” occur? Was the good professor, who has prompted so many people to question the CIA’s role in international drug smuggling, misled by dirty trickster Conein. Was the ulterior motive to move McCoy toward the Corsicans and away from the CIA’s unilateral drug smuggling operation? Thinking the Unthinkable
It was 1970 when the mainstream American press first reported the CIA’s involvement in international drug trafficking, and it was 1970 when the U.S. Senate launched a potentially explosive investigation into the CIA’s Phoenix “assassination” Program, a special unit of which was providing security for the CIA’s unilateral drug smuggling operation.
The House of Representatives launched deeper probes into CIA drug smuggling and the CIA’s Phoenix Program in early 1971, and, naturally, the CIA at this critical time took extensive countermeasures in a concerted effort to conceal these facts. What is relevant to the discrepancy is the that in June 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the aptly named Pentagon Papers, shifting blame for the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War from the CIA to the military, while distracting public attention from the investigations of the CIA’s Phoenix Program and the CIA’s involvement in drug smuggling.
Ellsberg is aware of the rumor that Conein and Scotton asked him to leak the Pentagon Papers as part of the CIA’s disinformation campaign. But he shrugs off the insidious rumor as yet another instance of ? CIA disinformation designed to cast doubt on his motives for leaking The Pentagon Papers. https://www.counterpunch.org/2003/03/08/will-the-real-daniel-ellsberg-please-stand-up/
While it is definitely politically incorrect within what passes nowadays for the New Left to even make the suggestion, is it unthinkable that Ellsberg might have suffered such a whisper campaign in order to prevent his CIA friends from being indicted for drug smuggling and mass murder?