Although Daniel Ellsberg is an icon of the Left, there is
abundant evidence that he was and is a CIA stalwart who was used to topple a
president who had outlived his usefulness and to protect an agency on the verge
of serious exposure as a criminal enterprise. Indeed, the Pentagon Papers leaks
of Ellsberg are simply the opening act of Watergate.
The background for this blog post is 2 online interviews and 1
article by Douglas Valentine who studied extensively Ellsberg, especially his
rise to prominence by way of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Ellsberg (b. 1931) was educated at Harvard, joined the
Marines, and subsequently found himself stationed in Vietnam where he met key
figures in America’s intelligence community. He had an audiographic ability to
remember conversations which made him an ideal spy, a talent which ingratiated
him to CIA Saigon station chief John Hart because it allowed the agency to
better track the opinions of leading intelligentsia in the country.
During 1965-67 he was assigned to the Revolutionary
Development Program in South Vietnam, a CIA program which was designed to “pacify”
the country especially against the Viet Cong. It is during this time that he
came under the influence and direction of men like Edward Lansdale, Lucien
Conein, and Frank Scotton, the latter 2 of whom became his close friends. As
for Lansdale, to this day Ellsberg reveres him.
Although the operations of the RDP were diverse, they involved
a huge element of drug dealing, especially with the Corsican drug dealers,
particularly Michel Seguin who enters the story as one of the men from whom Ellsberg
took a fiancé in one of his many Lothario escapades.
The CIA was heavily engaged in the drug trade in Vietnam, a
leading factor for driving the US into the war. While there are many reasons
for the war, communism was not really one of them. That was the branding which
made the war acceptable to a majority of Americans for a while. The CIA
realized that the drug industry yielded enormous profits, thus it collaborated
with the mob and banks to erect a drug empire which involved drug revenues,
money laundering, and plenty of murder. The Golden Triangle was the fount of
much illicit wealth.
While researching Ellsberg, Valentine was told by Frank
Scotton that he authorized Ellsberg to release what became known as the Pentagon
Papers. Scotton was a CIA officer who formed assassination squads around Saigon
in what was the forerunner of Operation Phoenix, a program led by future CIA
Director William Colby, which murdered in cold blood at least 40-60,000 people,
most of whom were civilians. It made the My Lai Massacre look like an ice cream
social.
But if Scotton and Conein were close friends of Ellsberg,
why would they hang him out to dry – though quite mildly – by saying that
Ellberg’s actions were not the result of conscience but of intrigue? Valentine
then struggles with the epistemological problem of knowing truth among campaigns
of whispers, innuendo, and deceit – the ingredients of a perfect CIA stew.
Valentine proceeds to document that not only had the main
stream press caught on to the drug dealing of the CIA in 1970, but Congress was
beginning to investigate the atrocities of the Phoenix Program, and other CIA
war crimes the following year.
In addition, Nixon launched his War on Drugs in 1971 which
unleashed a series of attacks on operations near and dear to the CIA’s heart.
At this point the left hand was fighting against the right hand, and order had
to be brought from chaos.
In order to divert attention from the CIA, Ellsberg released
the Pentagon Papers which had the dual effect of diverting attention from the
CIA to the military, and also undermining Nixon. Many say that Hunt bungled the
Watergate break in; we say that he succeeded masterfully.
The Rockefeller cabal used Nixon while he was useful, but
threw him away like so much used toilet paper when he stood in the way or
caused it troubles. The primary problem was that Vietnam was in large measure
about getting control of the drug trade and its great lucre, about which the
plutocrats brooked no opposition. In any event, unraveling the drug business
would expose the CIA for all of its sordid crimes and subject it to manifold publicity
problems.
By reacting to the Pentagon Papers leaks as he did, Nixon
exposed himself as an easy target of the war protesters and those defending
civil liberties. This was the segue to Watergate which finished off Nixon by
the Rockefeller –Bush alliance which worked so effectively to murder Kennedy.
This foray of Nixon into the drug war set back the CIA which
then had to spend several years suborning the DEA into supporting its drug
operations. But by the 1980s, they were back in full swing with the Mena drug
connection, Iran Contra drug running, and BCCI drug money laundering operations.
Valentine reports that Ellsberg protested adamantly that
Scotton or Conein were the source of the Pentagon Papers leaks, a protestation
which we think is too much. As noted above, Ellsberg idolizes Edward Lansdale,
the man who was ground supervisor of Dealey Plaza, and one of the leading
planners and executives of the Kennedy assassination. How can a man who
idolizes the psychopathic Lansdale be believed about having a conscience which
led him to leak the otherwise useless Pentagon Papers?
The CIA got what it wanted out of Vietnam, and by 1970-71
was ready to evacuate Southeast Asia. It was time to move on to bigger projects
in world conquest and imperial aggression. The plutocratic paymasters needed to
turn its attention to the USSR, which they ruled, and the Middle East oil, for
which they lusted.
Reference
Douglas Valentine, Will the Real Daniel Ellsberg Please
Stand Up! Counter Punch, March 8-10, 2003Copyright 2013 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.
1 comment:
The single most severe internet problem confronting casual readers and historians is that erroneous information has something like an atomic half-life and spreads like poison ivy.
Douglas Valentine and I have some differences with respect to his interviews with me, he did take notes but I did not and had no opportunity to review his and make clarifications; but I do believe that he would claim that in any way I induced friend Dan Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers. And, I did not. frank scotton sends.
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