Deja Fucking Vu

Dubya follows in the foul footsteps of Nixon.

White House Trains Efforts on Media Leaks

The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources. The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws.

Let's review a bit of supremely relevant American history, courtesy of Wikipedia:

...Finally, Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. On June 13, 1971, the Times began publishing the first installment of the 7000 page document. For 15 days, NYT was prevented from publishing its articles on the orders of the Nixon administration. However, the Supreme Court soon ordered publication to resume freely. Although the Times did not reveal Ellsberg as their source, he knew that the FBI would soon determine that he was the source of the leak. Ellsberg went underground, living secretly among like-minded people. He was not caught by the FBI, even though they were under enormous pressure from the Nixon Administration to find him.

[snip]

On June 28, Ellsberg publicly surrendered to the US Attorney's Office in Boston, Massachusetts. He was taken into custody believing he would spend the rest of his life in prison; he was charged with theft, conspiracy, and espionage.

In one of Nixon's actions against Ellsberg, G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt broke into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in September 1971, hoping to find information they could use to discredit him. The revelation of the break-in became part of the Watergate scandal. On May 3, 1972, the White House secretly flew a dozen Cuban CIA "assets" to Washington DC with orders to "totally incapacitate" Ellsberg. (They backed out because the crowd was too large.) Because of the gross governmental misconduct, all charges against Ellsberg were eventually dropped.

Ellsberg risked his future for the sake of his country, and his release of the Pentagon Papers is now seen as pivotal in turning the American public against a war the government had long before given up all hope of winning. In other words, this ex-Marine was and is a true American hero. Now the political heirs of Richard Nixon seek to criminalize the kind of heroism he exemplified, heroism that was vindicated by the Supreme Court and Ellsberg's eventual exoneration. Don't we ever fucking learn anything?

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