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Watergate and Vietnam — A Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg and Peter Dale Scott
🕑 Added 2022-08-08 21:42:39 +0000 UTCAaron speaks with Daniel Ellsberg and Peter Dale Scott about key issues on the 50th anniversary of the Watergate arrests. Specifically, they discuss Nixon’s Vietnam strategy, the way these plans were threatened by the leak of the Pentagon Papers, and the mysteries around Watergate which collectively suggest that Nixon’s resignation was effected by forces to the right of Nixon himself.
Daniel Ellsberg was an analyst for the Pentagon and RAND before he made the fateful decision to leak the Pentagon Papers—a top secret study on the US involvement in Vietnam from Truman to LBJ. Ellsberg is the author of two memoirs—Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, and The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. He is also the subject of The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, an Oscar-nominated documentary that Edward Snowden credited for inspiring his own act of whistleblowing.
Peter Dale Scott is a former Canadian diplomat and retired UC Berkeley Professor of English. He is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, including The War Conspiracy, Coming to Jakarta, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Cocaine Politics (with Jonathan Marshall), Drugs, Oil, and War, The Road to 9/11, American War Machine, and The American Deep State.
Special thanks to Casey Moore for the episode art and Dana Chavarria for the sound engineering!
Also thanks to Seamus McGuinness for producing this video version of the episode!
Music: "This Nation" by Mock Orange
Comments
Aaron Good
Well, I know Dan pretty well and he's Peter's best friend, so until someone comes along with something definitive rather than just hearsay and innuendo, I have to surmise that he is not hiding some dark secret about his leaking of the Pentagon Papers. Peter himself initially had some suspicions about the Pentagon Papers and Ellsberg before he knew Dan. But after befriending Dan and getting to know him, he realized that Dan was sincere. Dan almost ended up like Brian Wilson, a story Peter recounts witnessing in our earlier Ellsberg tribute episode. Phonies don't nearly get killed practicing civil disobedience. Put a question about Ellsberg in the next Monthly Zoom thread and I will elaborate on this.
Cultus Daemon
I am, frankly, suspicious of celebrity whistle-blowers like Daniel Ellsberg. He was clearly used by the deep state to help unseat Nixon. Also, real whistle-blowers like Philip Agee, who do real damage to American Imperial interests don't become celebrities, if they even survive.
