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Actually, the Times had one item that I remember back in about September 16th that that's the last time they mentioned it, by the way, which only talked about technical problems, the problem of hearing people and seeing people, nothing on the substance of the case or how it applied to them. It's extremely shortsighted of the press in protecting the First Amendment and in protecting themselves very individually from prosecution. It's rather amazing.
Paul Jay
The charge that was the start of the case against Assange was that he collaborated with Chelsea Manning to hack military computers. But I think it came out during the course of this extradition hearing that this whole thing is ridiculous because Manning had access to all the files. They didn't need to hack anything.
Daniel Ellsberg
There was a piece by Michael Leigh of the Freedom of the Press Foundation as a computer expert recently. I think it's in the intercept of how the hacking charges just been made absurd. And he goes into technical detail on that, but they quickly supplemented that. Then with that, the point of that charge was to show supposedly that he was doing things that weren't journalistic and that The New York Times has not been found to have done in that case. So, you know, to separate him from that.
But that's fallen because they've made charges so far really cover all the material that came out. The prosecutor said to me when I testified on September 16th, actually, that really he's only charged with revelations which involved the names of informants, which he said put them at great risk and great harm.
Well, first of all, the danger of that, whatever it was, has been tested now by, what is it, 10 years of experience where the government had to admit not one individual has been found to have been harmed as a result of this. So no actual harm. Second, the prosecutor was flatly lying when he said that these were the only charges he was being tried on. The other charges are of retaining information, withholding it, you know, possessing it, and so forth, charges that go through the whole range of what he revealed, including the Chelsea Manning revelation of the collateral murder video. Now, that video impressed a lot of people. And by the way, I find that most people haven't yet seen it easy to see on YouTube.
Paul JayWe're going to run some of the footage of what Manning released at the end of this interview.
Daniel Ellsberg People should see it. Its in a couple of forms. See it in the full form of, its about, 30, 31 minutes for the final thing, which shows people being murdered by Americans who are laughing about it at the time, at the time, asking for permission to kill, sounding like boys on a soccer field, asking for the ball or a basketball court or something and pursuing these unarmed. There was one person who was armed, which is not unusual in Iraq, to see somebody on the street with a weapon of any kind. But it included Reuters.
Paul Jay
And they had a camera which the soldiers in the helicopter said they thought was a gun.
Daniel Ellsberg
It was widely seen, but it didn't have the effect of the George Floyd video, which we're seeing now, you know, people in the streets demanding. And that's true in general of Chelsea Manning's revelations, which included an enormous raft of torture as a policy by the United States, specifically handing people over to the Iraqi forces knowing they would be tortured. That's a crime. Internationally, constitutionally, domestically, it's a crime and it's a crime because she showed that it wasn't a case of a few bad apples doing this. It was a policy, hundreds of cases that went up to the White House that went up to Barack Obama. And I think that's why the pursued her so much.
But why so much less effect of that than, let's say, Snowden's revelations three years later?
Difference Chelsea is almost entirely involved harm to foreigners, foreigners being killed, being surveillance, everything. Snowden found that Americans were being surveilled all over the place. Everyone, all of us, all the time, essentially. And now we're seeing, as I say, the new stuff is that a lawyer and defendant talking to his lawyer in the bathroom to avoid surveillance, but to since they knew he was doing that from their visual surveillance, they put microphones in the bathroom, you know, in a plug and underneath a fire extinguisher for when he's because that's where he wanted to talk to his lawyers to avoid it. Hard to get away from them.
I revealed today it happened. I never happened to mention it before, at the end of my trial for the revelation of stuff exactly like this. This is what ended my trial. When we left the apartment we've been living in near the courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. It was found that there were bugs in our living room and our bedroom, and there had been there, obviously, during the whole trial. Well, we didn't discuss with our lawyers in the bedroom and I don't even think in the living room very much. But who knows where else those bugs were entirely. So this isn't entirely new. It's just revealed. And I have to say, I'm talking about it here to you. I haven't been called by The New York Times on this, nor has anybody not a word in the Post or the Times so far.
Paul Jay
But let me ask you another question about the Assange case. First, there's a there's a charge or an accusation that Assange put people at risk. And there's been some but there's been some criticism of The Guardian newspaper and one of its journalists that in a book that came out that it was they, in fact, that leaked the password that led to the release of some of the unredacted documents. And in fact, Assange, there was testimony, was actually very careful about not releasing unredacted information.
Daniel EllsbergWell, it's it's a slightly complicated story. A British journalist named Jonathan Cook, I believe I just saw the other day a long article by him. He was a long term Guardian reporter and was observed. In fact, Julian, in fact, had wanted to be very meticulous in redacting names. In fact, he had a deadline and embargoed for releasing this information from The Guardian with The Guardian another day. And they were pressing him on keeping it. He wanted to he did postpone because he wanted to spend additional time redacting.
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