“Popular government without popular information is but the prologue to a farce or tragedy.” – James Madison
The world lost an unmistakable voice this week, as Daniel Ellsberg passed away at 92.
Dan will be remembered for many things, of course most prominently providing the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971. Although he hated being called one, he was rightly a hero to anyone who believes that we must be in a position to evaluate our governments and cast our votes based upon truth rather than lies.
The biggest lesson Dan taught me was to see the dangers arising from governmental secrecy from the position of those keeping the secrets. Dan talked about how the government was too often driven by what he called “smart dumb” people. He talked about how governmental officials’ proximity to power and insider knowledge led them to do stupid things—like continuing a war that was clearly lost, or lying about weapons of mass destruction—and how these kinds of terrible misjudgments and mistakes are as inevitable as they are insidious. Dan was as steadfast in debunking the myths surrounding governmental secrecy as he was in giving unwavering public support to others who took courageous steps to tell the truth about illegal, immoral, and improper governmental actions, especially around matters of national security.
I first met Dan when I was helping with the creation of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. FPF was started in 2012 by Trevor Timm with help from Rainey Reitman and Micah Lee, who were all EFF staffers at the time, along with Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and a few others. One of EFF’s founders and Board members, John Perry Barlow, was also a driving force for the creation of FPF. I believe it was Barlow who brought Dan into
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