In 1972, Stanley K. Sheinbaum, chairman of the Pentagon Papers Fund, wrote with a hot pertinence that remains striking that both Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo had “struck a blow for all of us when they gave the Pentagon Papers to the press and to the Senate: against the war in Vietnam and against new adventures in Cambodia, Laos, or elsewhere.” And more besides, including striking against government secrecy in both domestic and foreign policy and directing a blow “for freedom of the press, freedom of the American people to be informed of what crimes their government might be committing in their name.”
The Nixon administration was mustard keen to bang up Ellsberg for what would have been 115 years, and Russo for 35. The charges, absurd reading then as they are now, were for conspiracy, espionage, and larceny. Central to this particularly vicious effort on the part of President Richard Nixon and his inner circle was the release of the Pentagon Papers, a government document running into 7,000 pages that was much at odds with public statements made by respective presidential administrations on U.S. involvement in the Indo-China War. Both men had been analysts and researchers at the RAND Corporation, with the former tasked with nuclear wargaming scenarios. Russo had aided Ellsberg in the mammoth task of copying the papers.
The treatment dished out by the U.S. national security state was very much the blueprint for what is taking place against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks...
stage at the Ninth Circuit, where pharmaceutical companies say a momentous new ruling "illustrates perfectly" the constitutional concerns of U. S. Supreme Court justices regarding FCA enforcement. ...