Why Is Assange Being Compared To Ellsberg?

I'm puzzled by the analogies between Daniel Ellsberg and Julian Assange / Wikileaks.

Assange and Wikileaks are the New York Times in that analogy.


(on edit: It seems my question is not clear. Ellsberg was a DoD employee who had access to restricted documents and made a principled decision to release them to the New York Times for publication, at substantial personal peril. Assange/Wikileaks is not the SOURCE of these documents. If you want to make a comparison to Ellsberg, then shouldn't you be talking about the guy who actually had the documents and released them?)

I think the guy is on an ego trip.

Did you see the video posted in the Political Video forum in which someone sitting in for Rachel Maddow talks about WikiLeaks as a revolutionary force in journalism? It's a bit ironic-- a TeeVee "journalist" describing WikiLeaks as revolutionizing journalism by making the simple, unvarnished truth available to everyone. He was likely using the same words that Deans of journalism schools once used to welcome new students.

better than anyone on this board.

What Ellsberg said was:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8819619

Daniel Ellsberg says first leak in forty years "of the scale of the Pentagon Papers"

He's talking about the information, not Assange. Do you see the difference?

Doesn't anyone get that?

There was no internet when I was in Vietnam.

The difference is that Americans respected the truth back then. Now we are weak pathetic creatures who turn on those that expose the truth. Hitler would have loved our kowtowing asses. A bunch of fucking blind followers with yellow ribbons on our cars.

Ellsburg was subjected to tremendous public approbation, aided and abetted by the Wise Old Men of Washington, many of the Very Serious Men in the commentariat, and even targeted by the White House, which wanted to break into the offices of Ellsburg's psychiatrist in an effort to discredit him.

It will be, as ever, up to those of us who love our country's ideals and the truth more than we love what our country does in our name, to vindicate the publication of these documents. Ellsburg is indeed now respected and admired for his courage, much as the recently-deceased Daniel Schorr achieved vindication. But it was a long, hard road to that destination, pitted with many traps looking to make the story about the fallible human being who exposed the corruption, rather than about the corruption itself.

And, given the fact that we're making many of the exact same mistakes we made in the 1960s, and hearing many of the exact same arguments against release of this evidence as were aired in the 1960s, I suppose the argument could be made that we haven't learned a goddam thing. Or that we really don't like or trust our Constitution and would rather place blind trust in the military and the shadowy figures, organizations and agencies that manipulate these events.

I was around at the time.

Assange is not Ellsberg.

Assange is the publisher, not the leaker.

Do you really not grasp that?

Now that you've gone back and reedited the post I see where your coming from. Once again. I apologize.

lol

to all the stuffed shirts in the foreign policy establishment keeping an utterly futile war going without putting any troops in danger.

That's the parallel. It's a good one. That our corporate mainstream press is too cowardly to publish the equivalent of Ellsberg's papers today is irrelevant.

I'm floored by the credit he is getting for being "a new Ellsberg" when he is not the person who had access to and released the documents.

I think you're quibbling.

Yah, sure... quibbling... who shivs a git about the person who is actually going to deal with consequences.

Assange is not a US citizen and is located in Australia. He has very little legal exposure of consequence.

You haven't been paying attention. Moreover, he's not in Australia the last time I looked; he's moving around ahead of the hit squad.

Yes, I had seen his previous writings about how he is being "covertly followed" not very covertly.

I also saw his previous writings about going after a rock band who was a MySpace friend of someone who worked at a company that mishandled a court order in the UBS case.

But it seems here that he is getting all of the credit for a risk that someone else took.

Americans have very short memories, and depend upon symbols to understand things. Obviously, Assange's role is different than Ellsberg's was, you and I understand that. But for the average American, saying it conjures up the image of someone speaking truth to power, and trying to fight against the war-mongers.

Assange is not Ellsberg, and Wikileaks is not the Pentagon Papers. But if it means that more Americans will pay attention, I don't mind the false analogies.

The REAL whistleblowers are the ones who provided the reports.

However, Assange is still heroic. He's wanted by many governments and STILL refuses to divulge a single source.

Thought I read that here, that he compared Assange's leak to his own leak.

Ellsberg was talking about the information content - i.e. the Pentagon Papers and these intelligence reports.

But the OP is in denial.

He said the disclosure is similar to the Pentagon Papers.

Ellsberg is correct. I posted a link to his quote above in the thread.

Wikileaks in this situation is like the NYT - PUBLISHING the material which was leaked by Bradley Manning.

But I await your quote.

This thread is typical:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8820086

"Thank you, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks!"

Zero credit to Manning.

Also important are the effects -- already a chance that the war-spending bill might not pass.