Ellsberg Calls on Insiders to Leak Critiques Of Possible War on Iran

NEW YORK CLARIFICATION: The original title of this article suggested that Ellsberg might have been calling for actual war plans to be released. Nothing in the body of the story supported this, so we have changed the headline. Ellsberg in his Harper's story refers to leaking internal dissent, critiques, and "secret estimates of costs and prospects and dangers of the military plans being considered."

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When Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst, leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971, it created one of the most significant newspaper stories -- and battles -- of the century. One thing it did not do was prevent the Vietnam War, although it may have shortened it. Now he is calling on officials within the government to leak "the Pentagon Papers of the Middle East" to modern reporters, to short-circuit another possible war.

Ellsberg's challenge is found in the October issue of Harper's magazine, to appear next week. E&P has obtained an advance copy.

The article is titled, "The Next War," with the conflict in question a possible face-off between the U.S. and Iran. Ellsberg, based on unconfirmed reporting by Seymour Hersh and others, believes there is a "hidden crisis," with government insiders aware of "serious plans for war with Iran" while "congress and the public remain largely in the dark."

His remedy: "Conscientious insiders" need to leak hard evidence to the press and public, while risking their current and future employment, as he did in the early 1970s.

Typed almost the whole thing in: Duty

happened in one of the other segments:

Gershom Gorenberg on Christian Zionism

Journalist Gershom Gorenberg is former associate editor and columnist for The Jerusalem Report.

He is the author of the book, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount. His new book is The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977

Max Blumenthal on Christian Zionism

Max Blumenthal is a Puffin Foundation writing fellow at the Nation Institute, based in Washington, D.C. His work has appeared in various publications, and he is a research fellow at Media Matters for America. He has written extensively about the conservative movement, and the Christian right. His recent article in The Nation is "Birth Pangs of a New Christian Zionism."

Over the past months, the White House has convened a series of off-the-record meetings about its policies in the Middle East with leaders of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a newly formed political organization that tells its members that supporting Israel's expansionist policies is "a biblical imperative." CUFI's Washington lobbyist, David Brog, told me that during the meetings, CUFI representatives pressed White House officials to adopt a more confrontational posture toward Iran, refuse aid to the Palestinians and give Israel a free hand as it ramped up its military conflict with Hezbollah.

The White House instructed Brog not to reveal the names of officials he met with, Brog said.

CUFI's advice to the Bush Administration reflects the Armageddon-based foreign-policy views of its founder, John Hagee. Hagee is a fire-and-brimstone preacher from San Antonio who commands the nearly 18,000-member Cornerstone Church and hosts a major TV ministry where he explains to millions of viewers how the end times will unfold. He is also the author of numerous bestselling pulp-prophecy books, like his recent Jerusalem Countdown, in which he cites various unnamed Israeli intelligence sources to claim that Iran is producing nuclear "suitcase bombs." The only way to defeat the Iranian evildoers, he says, is a full-scale military assault.

"The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty," Hagee wrote this year in the Pentecostal magazine Charisma. "Israel and America must confront Iran's nuclear ability and willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. For Israel to wait is to risk committing national suicide."