We Are Only As Sick As Our Secrets/U.S. Citizens Have to Know the Truth Or We Will Never Get Our Democracy Back

Daniel Ellsberg risked everything to protect our democracy and expose a false war in Vietnam. Now Bradley Manning is locked in a prison suffering who knows what considering the conditions in the prisons in the United States (solitary confinement at the least) and Julian Assange is in hiding from a U.S. and European manhunt for him.

Alaska Senator Mike Gravel risked his career to get the Pentagon Papers to the people of this country and expose the covered up history of the Vietnam War.



From 1971, unedited tape of Mike Gravel who read the Pentagon Papers into the record on the senate floor.



Keep in mind Senator Gravel had not slept for several days.

“When I came into possession of theses papers I looked around and nobody in government had done anything. The only thing that was being done in government was an effort to stifle and hide this stuff and it just dawned on me that somebody...if we are gona` have any faith at all in our institutions somebody in government has got to be, gotta have the same resolve, the same feelings for stopping the killing as Ellsberg did, as the Post did, as the New York Times did, as the St. Louis Post Dispatch…”

When Gravel was asked by a reporter why he release the Pentagon Papers the way he did:

“Because…as I view the situation what happened…somebody released this information…I don’t know who, I read the newspapers like the rest of you and watch TV and they say it’s Daniel Ellsberg and he apparently is confessed. I think he’s done a service to this country. He’s all alone out there and I think he’s gona` have an effect in ending this war. And I think the courage of the newspapers to print what they did in the face of the dangers that they face, economically and personally, the executives of these newspapers.”



In the White House during the Nixon administration, about Daniel Ellsberg:

Nixon: "Let's get the son of a bitch into jail."
Kissenger: " We've got to get him."
Nixon: "We've got to get him. Don't worry about his trial just get everything out, try him in the press, try him in the press. Everything John that there is on the investigation, get it out, leak it out. We want to destroy him in the press. Is that clear."
Kissenger: "Yes."
John Mitchel: "Yes."

I guess they never thought of making up a false rape accusation back then.

This is very similar to what is going on right now with the documents released by Wikileaks. We have deteriorated to the point that whistleblowers have no way to report problems. I know, I have tried to report problems myself and was blocked on several levels. The only option they have is exposing the information themselves. The people of this country can not effect positive changes if they do not know the truth. Classification of documents is a tool used to protect the empire from being exposed, not for real security. In fact with the false information disseminated a large number of people will think exactly the way those in power want them to think. Manning is imprisoned and Julian Ossange has an obviously fabricated charge with a very unusual warrant issued without him being charged with a crime. That invalidates the warrant. I am familiar with that kind of warrant. They issued one of them here in Alaska against me without charging me with a crime. It was done to simply have me imprisoned to throw a scare into me and try to control me. They want to get at Ossange and try to scare him into stopping his document leaking activities. If he is arrested I can guarantee he will be put in solitary confinement and moved around to different prisons to prevent contact with anyone on the outside. That is what they do. If an official in the United States wants someone locked up they will do it, legal or not. As we have all seen lawyers manipulate the law and lie, justice is thwarted.

Today leaked documentation revealed that President Obama worked with the GOP to keep the Bush Six from being prosecuted in the Spanish court system. We all knew this in our hearts already, especially after Obama, a constitutional lawyer had intervened in cases where victims of torture were trying to get some justice with civil litigation. Progressive--->centrist--->corpratist--->Republican. The truth has been revealed. Or perhaps there are some kind of threats to get Obama to cooperate. I can't remember where I read this earlier today, "Maybe they showed him a picture of the Grassy Knoll."