are talking about bradley manning in his confinement did you know the government's case against daniel ellsberg where they tried to charge him with espionage conspiracy and all that fell apart because of government misconduct because they tap his phone illegally and they broke into his psychiatry's office to steal his records and yes all of that was wrong but all that pales in comparison to keeping a man locked up in solitary confinement for ten months and then forcing him to strip naked and not allowing him to sleep well mention of that in the press no mention of the fact that the information that daniel ellsberg leaked was classified as top secret that's a higher classification level than everything that we can fix put out there you can't possibly tell me that we're reporting on daniel ellsberg and the legacy of the pentagon papers you can at least think for one second of the parallels between that history between the present the questions that it should raise above the about the government's conduct so maybe the mainstream media is just you know putting that one off for a slow news day but y

everything that we keep leaks put out there you can't possibly tell me that when reporting on daniel ellsberg and the legacy of the pentagon papers you didn't at least think for one second of the parallels between that history between the present the questions that it should raise above the gov about the government's conduct so maybe the mainstream media is just putting that one off for a slow news day but you're right that something of they don't want to touch it's something that they are content to completely miss. now here is another story of the media isn't covering today according to the u.n. may of two thousand and eleven was the deadliest month for afghan civilians since the war there began and summer when fighting and the resulting casualties take up is just beginning it's not the message the pentagon why. to be sending as they try to sell success before withdrawal process begins in july but is it one thing for our military commanders to simply not mention any bad news and another for them to feed the media lies a new investigation looks at claims by general david petraeus made last y

well daniel ellsberg phones and broke into his psychiatrist office let's go back take it's twenty eleven and people like david house are following in ellsberg footsteps to show that there's a grand jury is just using scare tactics to keep citizens silent. and i feel that is trying to use investigation that we could meet to establish policies which will give the government broad censorship powers in determining how source information actually makes it to the head of the media i think every american citizen who hears about this we can be stranger you know xandra should be concerned because i for one don't want to wake up every morning and read only how glorious the u.s. government is i want to media in this country that is a free press it is healthy for the state and this nixonian grand jury behind me is chilling that prospect every day it's going to be. you know i couldn't have said it better myself while the government has worked hard to keep this grand jury secret there are those individuals like david house who will continue to exercise their first amendment rights to tell the rest of

whistleblower who wants to expose the mishandling of a war for the greater good of this country and today daniel ellsberg is revered by many as a hero but those who follow in his footsteps the modern whistleblowers more likely than ever it seems to face prosecution now there's a case of thomas drake the n.s.a. official who exposed waste and corruption in his agency all in the wake of nine eleven in return he was labeled as an enemy of the state charged under the espionage act with a threat of thirty five years behind bars now his trial to get the irony in all this his trial was set to begin on this very same day that the pentagon papers came out or decades ago now until the justice department's case against him unraveled suddenly last week but that's the great case seems to be falling apart the obama administration seems to be ramping up its espionage investigation of wiki leaks namely bradley manning and julian assange and just a few hours ago a blogger named david house testified before a grand jury just a few miles away here in virginia about his ties to bradley manning and wiki leaks all part of a la

last time we spoke about my interview with the man who is famous for leaking the pentagon papers daniel ellsberg now despite the fact that ellsberg was called a traitor at that point that is later he's considered a national hero when comparing him to bradley manning we asked if twenty years from now we'll be calling manning a hero let's get some responses from our viewers from producer richardson assent to . events surrounding bradley manning in the documents he's suspected of leaking cannot be ignored by history it's become a complicated mix of national security morality personal tragedy and human freedom and a national and global scale when it's over and it's far from being over just yet how do you think history will look back a man exactions believe be remembered as a hero a traitor or a victim and facebook beyond believe he's already a hero bill martin told us being a soldier you give up certain rights when you raise your right hand and take your oath of service and making secret documents is not whistleblowing it's treason on you tube varian said bradley manning will be forgotten as an indi

press a little bit ironic don't you think well now a number of prominent whistleblowers including daniel ellsberg and tony shaffer asking for those organizations to take it back join me to discuss this is lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer a senior fellow at the center for advanced defense studies and who still serving as a reserve lieutenant colonel tony thanks so much for joining us tonight now like i said we covered this on the show when it first happened when he was awarded this transparency award and we made a lot of fun of it because of course of the irony of them to him behind closed doors not allowing any press in and basically for the fact that he just doesn't deserve it so i want you and i to do an exercise right i'm going to start with some of the reasons why obama has become probably one of the least transparent presidents maybe you can just follow on an add on from there right we have this time of year he's a waging a war against against whistleblowers including thomas drake of course including whistle excuse me. let's see extraordinary rendition those are cases that he's thrown out

government that was spawned by mainly by watergate but also by the vietnam war you know we there daniel ellsberg was on a just just before here a man from from that era who could told you think you know about this. the the that's where the cynicism cynicism began and what's really creepy about it is that cynicism first chased nixon out of office then elected this sort of massive democratic wave in one nine hundred seventy four and then it sort of congealed into this you know the into the conservatism that we know it is today and then elected ronald reagan and it's just gone on from there cynicism pays massive dividends to conservatives and what's creepy about this is that it's sort of self-fulfilling so conservatives tend to deal in very bad government the government very poorly well not everything they don't i mean they tend to run the military very well ok they do certain things well i would argue would even challenge that the audience seems there are certain things where there where there are outsourcing right if you think outsourcing is a good idea they do it really really well but if the bu

. >>> 40 years to the day after daniel ellsberg leaped into "the new york times" the pentagon papers declassified, opened to the public. they were a secret 7,000-page study of the vietnam war. they revealed that the government lied to congress and the american people about how the war was going and until today, only edited and redacted versions of the pentagon papers have been published. at the time the entire report is online. go to the national archives website. >>> you can buy an extra souvenir on your summer vacation. gas prices, yes, they are down. they are expected to continue to fall. the lundberg survey finds the average price has dropped 17 cents in the last three weeks. it is now sitting at $3.74 a gallon and survey publisher trilby lundberg says three things that will keep pushing gas prices down, number one, an oversupply of gasoline. two, weak demand. and, three, an expected production increase by saudi arabia. >>> coming up next, the roller coaster ride that is this huge arizona wildfire. look at that smoke. it still continues to burn. just 10% contained. they got a bre

caller: it is similar to what daniel ellsberg did, but this person is not under house arrest or anythingt: it is difficult for me or for any historian to say in an authoritative way what to make of the wikileaks and the assange operation. if there is material there which demonstrates that the united states government or any government has done untoward things, has committed criminal acts, then one can look back and say, great that this was revealed. if, in fact, it is more benign and it is difficult to show anything that can be described as criminal, then i think you can have more ambivalent feelings about it. host: floyd abrams didn't op-ed on the topic of wikileaks -- did an op-ed on the topic of wikileaks. here is what he says. guest: there has to be a certain amount of secrecy when you are conducting diplomatic relations. if everything worked out in the open -- it is a nice idea and pretty idealistic, but it is somewhat pie-in-the-sky. you do not have conversations in which participants feel they can speak frankly, and notthat can make it more did little to conduct negotiations. thin