[captioning made possible by democracy now!] >> from pacifica, this is democracy now! >> with respect to senator udall, i would be prepared to go to washington and help him physically do that. i have no problems with that. this is fundamental to a democracy. if the people are not informed as to what their government is doing, then you do not have an operational democracy.

rebel1971, senator mike entered 4000 pages of the classified pentagon papers into the congressional records and now he is urging outgoing senator mark udall do something similar -- make the full intelligence committee torture report public. we will speak to senator gravelle, then a discussion about how he came to have the papers published. we will hear from senator gravelle, robert west, former president of the association that owned beacon press, about how the government almost brought down his church, and the pentagon papers whistleblower. >> they were all over washington, not only in the pentagon, but in the cia and the state department. >> it was the government that is lawless, not the press.

unanimousnd ask consent to put these papers and the record automatically. that is how it officially got into the record of the united states of america. >> all of that and more coming up. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. graphic new details of the post-9/11 u.s. torture program came to light earlier this month when the senate intelligence a 500-pageeleased summary of its investigation into the cia. the senate report details a list of torture methods used on prisoners -- waterboarding, sexual threats with broomsticks, medically unnecessary recto had theirnd one

entire lunch tray fed by enema. some prisoners were deprived of sleep about two 180 hours and at times had their hand shackled. outgoing senator mark udall called for a purge of top cia officials implicated in the torture program and cover-up including current cia director john brennan. in stark language, mark udall accused the cia of lighting. >> the cia has lied to its overseers in public, held back evidence, spied on the senate, made false charges against our staff, and lied about torture and the results of torture, and no one has been held into account. they are, right now, people serving in high-level positions of the agency who approved acts related to the interrogation

program. it is bad enough not to prosecute these officials, but promote them and risk the integrity of the u.s. government to protect them is incomprehensible. the president needs to purge his administration of high-level officials that were instrumental to the development and running of this program. >> as outgoing senator mark udall urges president obama to fire john brennan, udall himself to act on his own. the white house has blocked release of the full report so far, backing the cia's wishes, and that sparked demands that used invoke a rarely privilege and make the report public.

readolorado center could the congressional -- torture report into the congressional record, and with his term about senator udall has not ruled that out. there is a precedent. in 1971, after the new york times published portions of the pentagon papers, the secret history of u.s. involvement in the vietnam war, the nixon administration tried to block the release of further details, but a junior senator from alaska named mike gravelle insisted the public had a right to know the truth and put 4000 pages of the document into the senate record. he spoke to the media at the time in 1971 about his decision. >> when i came into possession of these papers, i looked around, and nobody in government

had done anything. the only thing that had been done in government was an effort to stifle and hide this stuff, and it dawned on me that someone, if we're going to have , theyin our institution have to have the same result, the same feelings for stopping ellsberg did, as , andnew york times" did the people who raised this was -- were bureaucrats. they were not elected officials. they had much less risk than i have. >> today, four decades later, former said today -- senator and presidential candidate mike --grave is calling onl --

calling on you to -- senator udall. gravelrviewed senator and we began by asking him what he is urging senator udall to do. note has the opportunity, just to read it into the senate record -- it is already in the senate record because it is the record of the committee. he does not have to duplicate that. what he has to do is exercise speech and debate clause, take the record of 6000 pages, put a press release describing why he is doing it, and release it to the public. it is that simple. most members of congress, unfortunately, do not fully understand there are three functions representatives have to perform -- one is to inform the public, two is to legislate, and three is to have oversight. what we have with the release of

this document, the summary, was oversight. they conducted oversight, and they released it to the public. madison, jefferson, george washington, all felt the most important function of representation was to inform the people as to what the gomememevt was doing, so this is all the feinstein committee has done thus far, but we need to see the entire record. >> senator, have you spoken to mark udall? >> know, i have not. i had a situation earlier -- no, i have not. i had a situation earlier this year where senator wyden was going to call me, and of course, he did not, and it was on this subject. >> in fact, it is not just have to be udall. you are saying udall because he is the outgoing senator.

.> there is no political risk he stated on the floor and privately that he would like to spend a major portion of his time out of office going after this secrecy problem and going after torture, and revealing that. the best way to do that right now is to reveal the entire study before january, and that way he can mine that, and so can scholars and reporters. keep in mind, snowden made moot the issue of members of the intelligence committee releasing with the nsa was doing, but they knew it. they talked about it internally, but they never said anything about it publicly. the only thing that binds them is pair pressure. when the republican say they are going to stop them -- -- p pressure. when the republican say they are going to stop them -- unless you

physically assault them, you cannot stop them, but the key is to get the documents out into the public. he has the right to do this under the constitution of the united states. that action has been sustained by the certain unanimous agreement of the supreme court of the united states. that is the constitution, case law of the supreme court. there is no risk in doing this, there is so much to be gained from it because then we can begin to hold elements of our government accountable for the unbelievable debasement of our morality. mikeat is former senator gravel speaking on democracy now. 2007rn to an historic event, a discussion on how the pentagon papers came to be published. lost a, beacon press

supreme court case brought against it by the u.s. government for publishing the pentagon papers. it is well-known how "the new york times" first published exits of the secret document -- exerts of the secret documents, but less well-known is how the beacon press, a small nonprofit publisher, came t to publish the pages that exposed the history of the u.s. involvement in vietnam. the publication led the press into a spiral of two and a half years of fbi arrested, intimidation, near bankruptcy, and the possibility of criminal prosecution. this is a story that has really been told in its entirety. back in 2007, i moderated this historic event at the annual meeting of the unitarian universalist conference in portland, oregon, in front of

about 5000 people, commemorating the publication of the pentagon papers and its relevance today. we hear the story from the three men at the center of the storm. grand rentagon and executive, and we also hear from mike gravel, who will tell the dramatic story of how we entered the pentagon papers into the congressional record and finally, robert west. we begin with daniel ellsberg, who henry kissinger once called the most dangerous man in america. >> there were 7000 pages of top-secret documents that demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath, and the violation of the other every one of their subordinates.

i, for one, would participated in that terrible, indecent -- i, for one, who had dissipated in the terrible, indecent fraud in vietnam, a wrongful war that has been reproduced and is being reproduced right now and may occur again in iran. the history of that, i thought, might help us get out of that particular war. let me skip over the intervening 22 months that passed after i first copied the pentagon papers when i was trying to get them out, at the senators and others who were not up to the task of putting them out -- people that were admirable and credible in their antiwar activities, senator fulbright, senator mcgovern, senator gaylord nelson , and others.

fulbright, mcgovern, and senator mathias, some of the best people in the senate, had, contrary to how it is always reported, not refuse to bring up the papers it with them.ed each one agreed to bring them out, and then thought better of it over a period of time, so they just could not do it, take the risk, in effect. in other words, you take the risk, but i have an important position here and i cannot run for the waters here. i read -- i did give them to "the new york times," but with no assurance that they would come out in "the times," and for reasons not clear to me, neil acted admirably, and did not tell me they were bringing them out. it was not clear to this day why that was. continued, while they were

working to get the papers for publication, in the spring of 1971i was still worrying and trying to see where i could get them out. mccloskey, whote agreed to do it, but then took efforts to keep them from the defense department. he was very supportive of me in my trial. i also thought, then -- i had read in the paper about a who ir mike gravel, really did not know much about from alaska, who was conducting a filibuster against the draft, which is exactly why should have been done. litmusway, i raised as a test -- i probably never told mike about this -- i raise the idea of a filibuster with a number of senators as to see where it would go one step beyond that and maybe put out the papers. in every case i got serious answers. they were not frivolous, but as

senator mike gravel put it to me, dan, in my business, you cannot afford to look ridiculous. you cannot afford to be laughed at. if i could find other people that would join me, i would do it. each name that i am mentioning here -- the top people in the senate. senator -- oh, darn. at my age, i forget some of these names. said muchher senators the same -- if i could find someone is to go with me, i would do it, but i cannot do it by myself. i would look foolish. cannot afford that. he was a senator who was not afraid to look foolish, basically, and that is the fear that keeps people in line all of their lives. [applause] don't get out of line -- it is the kind of thing you learn at ee, do not stick

out, do not make yourself look -- do not raise your head and look ridiculous. he was not afraid to look -- do that on a transcendent issue like the draft in the middle of this war, so i thought ok, maybe this is a guy -- i have not met him. i said ok, he is doing a filibuster. so, at some point, and we were just discussing this, it is not even clear in my mind when i had a discussion that i will mention in a moment, but i do remember very clearly that not knowing that the pentagon papers were about to be published by "the new york times," on june 13, the night of june 12, they came out. i was in boston at the time. nobody had told me this was happening. so, i had them in my apartment for the first time ever. i never allow them to be in my

apartment unless the fbi swooped down and got them. that was my nightmare. i had a number of copies stashed with different people so i can say even from jail get this one out or that one out with my 10% call that -- $.10 call that i was allowed. but iould not stop it, never allowed it to be in my apartment. for once i had it there, because, in mike did not know this, because i intended to communicate with his office on , noty to go to washington knowing they were coming out in "the times," and offer this thing to the man who is offering the filibuster, so i was quite shocked to learn that the building was locked down. they were worried about an fbi raid, an injunction, because they were putting out this big study, which i had not been told. so, now, that is very interesting.

meantime, i had these papers in my apartment and the fbi could come any minute. i had a scheduled meeting with night, myn that family and his family, to go see "butch cassidy and the sundance kid." i called howard and i said we would go from his apartment, and i came them with -- came there with the papers and asked if i could dump them in his apartment , which he said fine. he was one of two people. i had shown him. --ad shown norm chomsky and noam chomsky and howard zinn. there was not a lot of attention. the tv did not pick it up and so forth, but on monday it got attention, and the key thing was john mitchell, the attorney

asked a request of "the new york times," that they cease publication of this criminal act -- stop this. number, they had lost their law firm already, lord and day, on the grounds that the lawyers told them this was treason and a criminal act, and they would not represent them. mitchell was confirming that and telling them they must stop. they went ahead. they did not obey the request, so the next day, tuesday, they joined the new york times for the first time in our history -- in joined the new york times for the first time in our history. the day before, mitchell wanted to put "the times" on notice, and president nixon says have you ever done this before, and mitchell said yes, many times. advice from the

bond lawyer that it never been done in our history, which led to a constitutional battle that nixon lost. they did enjoin it, and the question was what to do next. i had not been identified yet, but i decided based on what another person suggested to me, that i would give it to "the washington post." meanwhile, i had called up mike gravel's office. i was still able to use a phone -- not my own home phone, but i went to a pay phone and said to the person there, is your boss interested in putting out -- i did not say the pentagon papers -- "is your boss intending to keep up this filibuster, is he going to stay there?" they said absolutely, and i said i have some material that could keep him reading until the end of the year, if he is interested in it. [laughter]

that being the number one story at the moment, a sort of guest what it was, and he went on and informed mike of this possibility, and the question was how to get it to them as i can no longer travel. mike can pick up the story from here. the question was how to get it to him, and i was not in a position to travel at this point, so i did a range from a , ther colleague at rand editor of "the washington post" or two. spent a year arrangedhim up, and i to have him come to boston. it is a colorful story. he came to boston, cambridge, ink a room at the treadway

near harvard square, and my wife and in bought these boxes of papers to him, and he spent the collating and putting them in order that he could take back with him, and in the morning he had this big box. andeeded a cord for the box the motel owner said well, somebody has been tethering a dog outside, i could give you the box cord, so he tied my wife and i looked at the television -- box. my wife and i looked at the television, and there was our home with some fbi agents knocking on the door on live television. they were knocking on the door,

so we thought maybe this is not the best time to go back home, actually. zion,ad happened was sid who was mad at "the times" for having fire them, found out who their source was, and had thealed it on the radio night before. the fbi was at my door, and having seen it on television, i was now in a position to not be caught and to put out the other copies. so, we did not go home. cambridgederground in . [laughter] for the next 13 days the fbi conducted with the paper said was the biggest manhunt since .he lindbergh they were all over the world. i have a feeling there was a great deal of junk hitting going on.

meanwhile, we were putting them out to other newspapers. and i will mention, it is always "the times" and "the post" mentioned as having had the courage to go along with this. of course we spent 13 days .utting it out actually, there were four injunctions -- also "the boston globe" and "the st. louis post-dispatch." altogether, 17 other newspapers published those papers. [applause] oddly they do not seem to mention it much in their own histories. they do not commemorate this as we are commemorating the beacon press, but they should. that was a wave of civil disobedience across the country by publishers who were being told they were violating the espionage act, committing treason. they read the documents we gave them and decided they did not

agree with that as americans and patriots and publish them, so it was institutional civil disobedience that i'm not know of any other country. it is a freedom of encourage that we need to celebrate and continue. >> pentagon papers whistleblower daniel ellsberg. coming up, former senator mike gravel picks up the story there. first, our break sung by barbra streisand for daniel ellsberg. ♪ [music break]

"ibarbra streisand singing will get by." a live reporting. yoko know, john, and george harrison of the beatles also attended. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we turn now to senator mike gravel from alaska. in 1971, he received the pentagon papers from "the washington post" journalist who

had gotten them from daniel ellsberg. >> let me pick up where he left off. fast, but i want to get the details out because i know what you want to know is the inside skinny. you can read the broad lines, but it is what happened to both of our lives at the time. dan cox to my -- dan talks to my administrative assistant. i was getting a massage. you could not have staff come into the senate. it was hollowed ground. so, he is knocking on the door. he said i have to see the senator, it is an emergency, and he works his way into get to the massage stall, and the masseur pulls back and whispers someone wants to give you the pentagon papers and i said man, where is he is going to

call us back. i get dressed up and i am sitting in my office waiting for the call. and it's a the voice senator, will you read the pentagon papers as part of the filibuster and i said yes, now please hang up. i have a background in intelligence. when i was 23 years old i was a top-secret control officer. i could classify and declassify when i was 23 years old, and here are the papers coming at me. i had a sense of what they were. it was a history. i had read what "the times had published, so lo and behold, dan and i had other conversations. our memories are vague. he informed me about something i did not know, and occasionally i have done that with him when he was doing his memoir. we spent a couple days saying "is that your interpretation of what you think we did?" as human beings, we all have a different need on some of the details. the long and short of it is he

called me in a few days and he is angry -- he is on the phone saying why i -- why the hell haven't you use the papers, and i said why the hell haven't you gone them to me, so he goes back and he been making, contacts my office. back then i did not know who he was, so he wanted to meet with me. we meet secretively on the steps of the capitol in broad daylight during session. we are talking about how we're going to move the papers across, and outcomes bob dole, who was one of my enemies, and he walks up, and he is slipping behind the column. i get rid of dole fairly fast. he had this plan, we will meet out of the country, rock creek more and i said you i have

experience. here is what we're going to do -- at 12:00 at night, under the hotel, i will pop in, and, pop the papers race off, before god and country, and they will not know what happened. what happened was a group of alaska natives walk by and said there is our senator and they all want to talk to me. i am trying to peel them away. so i sped away, and then and i had a coffee. , wherethe papers home , andou going to put them of course the whole world was looking for them.

i said we're going to sleep on them. i am dyslexic, so i could not read all of those papers if it took me a year, so i started calling staff in, and i said bring a toilet kit, do not tell your wife what you are doing. him at the door and i said i have the pentagon papers, you cannot come in and you cannot leave and i will not blame you if you did not come in because there are risks we do not know anything about, so everyone of them said let me have it, so about four or five people were sleeping on the living room floor and we would go to the papers. i was reading my portion of it, the first part of it, the most historic and most interesting part, but the others, i said when you come across a name, show me the name, and i would make a judgment on if it would

be excised or not, and we did not just take a pencil. themok scissors and cut out so there would be no misunderstanding. i have to bring the papers to the capital. i've by two flight bags to honor tags to two flight honor the papers. i am concerned, so i called the vietnam veterans of america, and i said look at you, look -- look, i have a problem. i want the most disabled veterans you can find, and i trudge in with my two big tags, and staff is walking with me. why is thee looking, senator carrying the bags. of theed down to the end hall, and there are 6, 7, soldiers in uniform, ponytails, all in wheelchairs, and they

could do wheelies. they did not know what i had. they just said go get them, senator. the commitment of these human beings, one day guarded the office, they would have thrown their bodies anyone that tried to break in. i had the papers. read the filibuster. i wanted to break strom thurmond's record and the draft was going to expire at the end of the month, so i wanted to get close to 48 hours to break the record. how are you going to do that? most people do not know, when they used to debate, if they are drinking a lot of water, they p ee right on the senate floor, make no mistake about it, but i am more cultured. i rigged myself up, go to the doctor's office, and he makes me up with a colostomy bag with

holes down to my ankle, and my administrative assistant's job, he is going to bleed the colostomy bag. [laughter] it is going to get better. i have to get a chair because you cannot control the floor if you do not control the chair, so i go to alan cranston, i said i and i said i have the pentagon papers and he said you need more than help, you have drums. i said you not have to touch the papers. get in the chair. by 5:00, we will turn around, and you stay in the chair as long as i am filibustering. that was the plan and then i said go down to the doctor's office and get a colostomy that. -- bag. [laughter] had a rubber and i mat. it was interesting to go into the dynamics. i come onto the floor, trudging in with the papers, put them next to my desk, and i was a

freshman, so i was off to my side. mike muskie had come up to me and he is talking to me and he says are those the pentagon papers and i look up at him with a blank stare. it was just a joke on his part, but i am looking at him -- my god. [laughter] guy, i know i am going to be talking for a couple of days, so i want to tell the staff you had better call your wife because you are not getting out here shortly, so i lay on a quorum call. if you are familiar with the procedures, they have to start calling the role. there is only one other senator in the chamber, griffin. the democrats had gone to a banquet. the republicans had gone home. there are two senators in the chamber. i lay down a quorum call. within comes up to me and he mes -- griffin comes up to and he says mike, what you going to do? i said i am going to continue my

filibuster on the draft. mind you, i filibustered for five months. it could only happen because he set it up without anyone seeing his velvet hand. >> he said what are you doing at night, and i said the draft is about to expire and i want to make a show. he goes back to its nest, and he is thinking, and then i wait 30 minutes to let the staff know they will be there for a better part of the evening, and then i make anonymous consent to remove the quorum call. he objects. the minute he did that, i knew i had been harpooned, and all i could think was good men do not win. i was angry. he came up to me and he said mike, what are you doing, and i started swearing at him you cannot believe, but by that time he knew something was really a foot, so he went to the republican cloakroom and said stay away from the senate. to thending my troops

loud there and get the democrats to come back from the banquet. 9:30goes on until about p.m., 10:00 p.m., and we could not get a quorum, we are stuck. they come up to me and said our attorneys think they have a plan b. we grabbed the bags, trudge back to the office. by this time, the vietnam veterans are out there and they know something is afoot because there is a lot of media following us. i sit down with the plan. well, senator, it is interesting -- there is not much hope, but we have one precedent we can follow, the house un-american activities committee. for those of you who know what that means -- he says what they were doing is they would go around the country and they would immediately call a hearing so that they could grab someone, hold them up, swear them in, and get them to talk. he said with that precedent, what you could do -- now, mind

you i am a precedent -- i am a freshman. you are the chair of the committee. i said it was the buildings and grounds committee. lo and behold they said you could convene a hearing of this committee, and you would be still in the umbrage of the senate, and i said fine, let's do that, though we have to have someone testify. so, we cut the notice that i'm calling a hearing, flip it under the doors of all of the senators that i am notifying them of the hearing, so that is covered legally, and then the peace group calls up congressman tao from upper new york. they do not know what it is about. all they tell him is senator mike gravel needs you to testify. he gets dressed, comes down, and we convene. by this time, we are upstairs in one of the senate chambers committee rooms, and the media,

and congressman. comes up. i am sitting there with my two black bags and my staff assistant. i gambled the meeting to order -- gavels the meeting to order. i said i would like to get a federal building in my district interrupt you.me i would love to give you a federal building but i have to tell you the government is broke. let me tell you why we are broke -- we are squandering all of this money in southeast asia, any tell you how we got into southeast asia, and i haul out the papers put them on the paper and i start reading them. [laughter] it gets better than that. i read for an hour. here, again, i am dyslexic. keep in mind i had not slept in about three or four days, so i am meeting, and i break out sobbing.

it is 12:00 at night, and i cannot get control of myself. here is what was going through my head. a journalist, one of the networks the next morning -- "this is a bizarre occurrence the night before." what i had sobbed over, i had been to walter reed a month or more before and i could not take it emotionally to look at the wounded. i can handle macro problems, but not micro. so, lo and behold, i kept saying country, mylove my country is committing immoral acts. we are committing -- killing human beings, and i am sobbing. i could follow the words in front of me. me and sayss up to senator, i think you have lost it. i keep sobbing, and he goes back and i tried to get a hold of

myself, and he says senator, why don't you put it in the record? power, and i have use unanimous consent to put all of these papers in the record automatically. they are in the record. that is how they officially got into the record of the united states of america. [applause] media, byusly, the that point, they are out there going really -- i put the papers back in, we are trudging back into the office, and the media is following us, we want the papers. we have a copy because they want to hang onto the set, and as we copy them, we will to them to copy andyou set up a that is what happened all night long and that is what made the supreme court decision moot which was at 11:00 or 12:00 that very day.

what they said is you could not restraint, but if you published, you would be at risk, and that is what happened. those that published took the risks, but they were not prepared to take the risk after that. we scour the country. find one major or minor, or anybody that would touch the pentagon papers. we had some inkling that may be mit press would. with my staff and one other attorney, we go to boston. whoever was handling it, and i do not recall at the time, says senator, i have bad news. it press will not touch it with a 10-foot pole, but that he says i have some good news, beacon press has the money, and they will publish it. [applause]

west are downtown in boston, waiting for you, if you want to come down and make the deal with them. they had a press conference shortly thereafter and that is when they announced they were going to do this. i was a unitarian even before all of this happened in alaska, but i cannot tell you what i feel for the beacon press, the unitarians, and daniel ellsberg. quoted to say when i was in service i was going to be a spy but i was not getting action, so leader,n to be a combat and on the patch on my shoulder said follow me. did,i saw dan do what he all i can think of is here is a guy walking up the hill, taking his life into his own hand and the least i could do is follow daniel ellsberg.

>> former alaska senator mike gravel, who put the pentagon papers into the public record. when we come back, the man who allowed the beacon press to take the risk of publishing the secret document, an act that almost brought down the unitarian church. this is democracy now! back in a minute. ♪ [music break]

singing "with a friends,"p from my sung at a fundraiser for daniel ellsberg. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we pick up the story with robert west, former president of the unitarian universalist association and beacon press. while every other publishing house senator mike gravel approached had refused to publish the pentagon papers, west agreed despite the considerable financial risks involved. >> my first involvement with the pentagon papers was on a midsummer day in 1971 when the

director of beacon press came into my office. he told me about the 35 publishers who had refused to publish them, and he requested my approval for beacon press to do it. , ande my approval that day we started down a path that led through two and a half years of government intimidation, harassment, and the threat of criminal punishment. beacon press published the pentagon papers that october, after having publicly announced its intention in august. september, goldman was visited by two intelligence agents from the defense

department, oh, in a meeting discussed -- who, in a meeting described to me as intimidating, trying to dissuade him from publishing the papers. he also received a phone call from president nixon, who after saying what a decent fellow he was, pointedly suggested that he was sure he would not want to get into trouble by proceeding to publish them. early-november, a vice president of our bank called our treasurer to advise us that fbi agents had secretly been working with the bank for the last seven days. they were there with a subpoena from the federal grand jury that aalled for copies of all uu every check written, and every

check deposited, in a uua account over a period of four and a half months, amounting to thousands of checks, including those of all individuals who contributed to our denominations. mike gravel immediately brought contempt for feelings against the government and succeeded in investigationi and examination of our bank months, buttwo agents were authorized to resume their scrutiny on january 10. filed suity, the uua against the fbi, the justice department, and the grand jury, seeking to stop the investigation.

we emphasized the grounds of religious freedom, and freedom of association, as well as freedom of the press. we succeeded in halting it on a temporary basis. but before all of the events had we their course in 1974, worry and federal courts on numerous occasions, including the supreme court. fbi agents served grand jury abpoenas and -- on our uu treasurer and withdrew them. a memorandum was filed in court that indicated a strong likelihood that beacon press officials would be prosecuted for criminal act committee, and golden stairway subpoenaed to

trial in the california with me next in line. ultimately, the mistrial that was declared in the daniel ellsberg case meant we did not have to appear -- up here at the federal trial in california. the federal court in boston never allowed the fbi investigation of our bank records to continue. no one associated with beacon prosecutede uu a was .or criminal activity [applause] what the government did to us was unprecedented in the history of our nation.

the justice department investigated our entire denomination's financial affairs and threatened our association staff members because one of our ,epartments, beacon press published one book that was controversy all, a text that was .lready in the public domain the relevance of our experience those 35 years ago to secrecy and deception in government today is patently obvious. for example, three of the issues and principles that were involved in our court actions were misuse of power of the justice department, invasion of privacy, and misuse of secrecy by the government. all of those clearly applied to

what is -- clearly apply to what is happening today. [applause] his 1972 dissenting opinion in the mike gravel case, supreme court senator, supreme court justice douglas said the story of the pentagon papers is a chronicle of the suppression of vital decisions to protect the reputations and political hides of men who worked an amazingly successful scheme of deception on the american people. [applause] and he went on to say in that decision that he had no choice but to hold that it was a government that is lawless, not press.

[applause] in 1971, senator mike gravel wrote "the pentagon papers show that we have created a new culture, protected from the influence of american life by the shields of secrecy," and in that same year beacon press the editor and chief spoke of the pentagon papers aiding those who try to unravel exactly how a well-meaning nation could have committed such a colossal blunder in its foreign affairs. thesesing, i would say words from my annual report to general assembly,

words that could be spoken just as appropriately in this general "we in thisay, denomination have confidence in the democratic process. ourant to make known determination to resist every government intrusion of constitutional liberties, and to encourage others also to resist. a week, as a religious movement, are qualified by our nature, by our heritage, and, indeed, by our recent experience, to play a significant role at this time in andhistory to help resist reversed the ominous trend affecting constitutional liberties.

we can, and we will. [applause] >> daniel ellsberg, in the last few years, you have been calling you, 35le who like years ago, were inside of the step outside, and to release any equivalent of the pentagon papers. do you think they exist, the papers and these people who could step forward? exist,ourse the papers the equivalent of them exist all over washington, not only in the pentagon papers -- the pentagon, but in the cia, the state department, and elsewhere. are there people who realize the full meaning of those papers in their safe? yes.

we know from many leaks and memoirs that have come up that there were people in the white house and the cia and the pentagon who realize that we were being lied into war. we realize that as early as 2001, so my message, amy, over the last two years, has been to officials in that position, of whom there are hundreds, not only in 2001 and 2002, hundreds right now that could prevent a war with iran that is on the tracks right now, that they know would be disastrous. they could put that out with the authority of their position, but especially documents, at the risk, the certainty of losing their clearances, which would mean losing their career with the executive branch, possibly, very likely subjecting them to prosecution, possibly to conviction, possibly to prison.

by taking that risk, they would have a high chance of averting a catastrophe that would lead to of deaths of tens, hundreds thousands of people, and drastically reduce our security. they know that, so by taking their own personal risks like the 5000 people that went to prison as draft resisters in vietnam, and by the people here who took risks with their institution, taking that risk we could avert this. >> pentagon papers whistle ,lower daniel ellsberg unitarian leader robert west, ,nd former senator mike gravel all speaking in 2007 in front of a crowd of 5000 in portland, oregon. to get a copy of the two are website at democracynow.org. democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. e-mail your comments to

outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693 new york, new york 10013.

♪ >> this week on "quadriga," religious conflict. no peace on earth? it's christmastime but once again, the holiday season is marred by the threat of religious violence. most religions claim to strive for peace but faith is a growing factor in conflicts around the globe. religious conflict is no longer confined to the division between major religions. more and more fundamentalist groups