By WALNICE NOGUEIRA GALVÃO*
Only those who are actually very lazy remain uninformed about secrets and inconfidence.
1.
A robust tradition of civil disobedience consists of leaking confidential (and illegal) information that the modern state stores to use against its citizens. The aim is to deceive them, manipulate them, force them to do what harms them, drive them to suicide if necessary. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have worthy precursors in their country.
As the United States is the most powerful nation on the planet, it is only natural that it makes sense to operate such leaks there. One of the most notorious cases is that of Daniel Ellsberg, whose credentials are impeccable: an economist from Harvard and Navy with internship in Vietnam. He was at the center of the serious incident that became known as “The Pentagon Papers”.
This military analyst from Rand Corporation He did work at the Pentagon in 1971, during the Vietnam War, and began to be first amazed and then outraged by the discrepancy between what the government said and the statistics that came into his hands. While the government claimed to slow down the war effort to conclude the war despite the victories, the data showed that, on the contrary, it was committed to an escalation, investing ever greater resources to camouflage the defeats. Instead of putting an end to the conflict, therefore, a growing hecatomb was being prepared.
He hesitated, anticipating what would come next. No one would believe him; no one would support the publication of secret papers that risked putting everyone in jail; No one would attribute reliability to the sources – because who could guarantee that they were not frauds? And, hovering over everything, the fear of reprisals from security agencies, always causing suspicious accidents and underhanded executions.
Even so, Daniel Ellsberg clandestinely copied seven thousand documents, sought contact with one of the most important and most serious newspapers in the country, the New York Times and devoted himself to telling the story. Earlier, he harassed senators who were notoriously anti-war, like Fulbright, but was rebuffed. The papers compromised the previous administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as the current administration of Richard Nixon.
O New York Times began publishing the documents serially. The government suspended publication. The newspaper appealed to the Supreme Court, which won the case.
Discovered, Daniel Ellsberg was charged with treason under the Espionage Act and tried as a defendant with a sentence of 115 years. But, as the trial continued, the government's abuses, with dirty evidence obtained even through illegal wiretapping by the FBI, emerged. And he ended up being acquitted, to the delight of his fans around the world, at this point constituting a fan base attentive to the justice of the process. In his own country, his allies included progressives and critics in general, students, religious people, Black Power, hippies.
He never denied his activist drive. To this day, over the age of 80, he lives protesting and being arrested – for speaking out against nuclear weapons, against the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, against the foreign policy that criminalizes Iran.
Therefore, even in the midst of a vast national and international protest movement, we owe mainly to Daniel Ellsberg the end of the Vietnam War – which, without any weighty reasons, on the other side of the world, killed three million Vietnamese, the largest part civilians, against the loss of 25 thousand American soldiers.
At the time, it became bestseller planetarium apart from a documentary against this war, Hearts and minds, which features interviews with Daniel Ellsberg. The film did a lot for the anti-war effort and was awarded an Oscar. However, and interestingly, apart from the book The Pentagon Papers, didn’t produce anything else in the cinema. Only several decades later would two films appear, one fiction, called The Pentagon papers (2003), and a documentary, The most dangerous man in America (2009)
Both come in handy to remove from oblivion such a portentous feat of this precursor of Assange and Snowden.
And what did Julian Assange do that was so serious? He just founded the Wikileaks, the largest forum for reporting crimes committed by States and security agencies. As here in Brazil we were victims of the terror of the dictatorship, we should be sensitive to the defense of democratic freedoms. And information is one of them. Were it not for the Wikileaks, there would never have been Vaza Jato, which demoralizes the Lava Jato scams.
2.
Just as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are linked to the leaks that show how American security agencies spy on citizens, Daniel Ellsberg became known as the one who revealed the Pentagon's secret papers, putting an end to the Vietnam War. The three are representatives of a libertarian undercurrent that flows almost invisibly beneath the shell of a dubious democracy. The lineage of civil disobedience is extraordinary and deserves respect, dating back to Underground railroad who smuggled slaves to freedom, an estimated total of 100 thousand.
The gallows awaited these worthy citizens, who risked everything, including the accusation of treason to the country, in the name of higher loyalties. This was the case of John Brown and his group in Virginia, all of whom were hanged after a trial, despite protests from around the world. Even Victor Hugo sent a letter to the president, asking for clemency. In vain.
In this chapter, it is always worth remembering that there was an outbreak of self-immolations by incineration, carried out by Buddhist monks as a sign of protest, in the conflagration of Vietnam. In solidarity, Norman Morrison, a young American pacifist, copied the gesture, immolating himself on the steps of the Pentagon. To honor him, the Vietnamese created a stamp with his effigy and named a street in Hanoi after him. To this day he is venerated there, and school children compose poems praising his martyrdom. After the armistice, Vietnam officially received the widow and three children as guests of the state, showering them with honors.
Like Buddhist monks, several North American religious people – Catholic priests and Protestant pastors – were on the front line of the resistance. Two of them stood out, two Jesuit priest brothers, the Berrigans. They feared nothing and faced any risk, maintaining records for arrests: they were included on the FBI's list of the ten most dangerous people in the country. After the war ended, they would protest against nuclear weapons and continue to go to prison.
If the Berrigans came from working-class Irish immigrants, another who stood out was part of the elite WASP New Yorker, Presbyterian Protestant pastor William Sloane Coffin Jr., better known as Bill Coffin. For many years chaplain at Yale University, he led student marches and other anti-war protests. Later, he would be part of the ecumenical group of priests who would hold vigils on the border of Nicaragua, against North American armed interference in that country.
Here too, during the last dictatorship, no one can ignore the unhindered performance of D. Paulo Evaristo Arns, cardinal-archbishop of São Paulo and tireless opponent of uniformed arbitrariness. Together with another Presbyterian Protestant pastor named Jaime Wright and Rabbi Henry Sobel, he performed prominently. The three refused, for example, to legitimize the version of the suicide of Wladimir Herzog, who died under torture on the premises of the Second Army. Denouncing the murder from the pulpit of the Sé Cathedral, D. Paulo launched the Church's anathema on the perpetrators during the specially celebrated mass.
The three religious formed an ecumenical triumvirate that was fundamental in these dark times. They spent years clandestinely collecting documentation and interviewing people who had been tortured, and ended up publishing Brazil: Never again, formidable dossier that forever recorded the crimes of the dictatorship. When they were most needed, the three human rights activists did not shy away from the challenge that History threw at them.
Recently, other North American militants emerged from anonymity. Religious pacifist groups went public to claim responsibility for a raid on the FBI office in Philadelphia in 1971, when they stole a huge amount of files. People of the highest respectability, above any suspicion.
Among other things, they supported the Berrigan brothers. The papers they stole show how J. Edgar Hoover – whose criminal soul no one yet knew – persecuted any opponent, but especially if they were black, whom he hated. The publication of a book, followed by interviews in New York Times added new names to this cast of freedom heroes.
3.
North American militants are at risk since, in an irony of history, they became vulnerable to prosecution due to the new and welcome agreements signed between their country and Cuba. There are several of them in this situation, a legacy of other times when the Black Power was at its peak. Cuba never approved the plane hijackings, which ended up in Havana, and never made life easier for the hijackers.
One of them, William Potts, former Black Panther, currently awaiting trial in his hometown, was arrested, tried and sentenced to eleven years in prison (which he served), as soon as the plane landed in Cuba. Now he complains about fate, because he's already served a long sentence for the same crime, only in another country.
Among secrets and inconfidence, the cases of impeachment stand out: among the most rumored, apart from Collor, is that of Richard Nixon, who ended up resigning.
It was during his administration that the Pentagon Papers were leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, which led to the end of the Vietnam War. As a finishing touch, the Vietcong harassed and invaded Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, and seized the American embassy. The inglorious ending was photographed, filmed and shown far and wide. The entire planet saw the last defenders of the embassy flee through the roof, in a helicopter in which some of them were barely balancing, clinging to the rope ladder.
All of this irreparably shook Richard Nixon's government. The wave of unrest and the erosion of trust would lead to the Watergate scandal, which would eventually lead to the president's downfall. Investigations revealed that he was aware of the invasion of the Democratic Party's national directory, and, even worse, he had covered up the crime, repeatedly denying it, including under oath, lying to the nation.
The detective work that led to the revelation was due to two investigative reporters from the Washington Post – Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward – who received state secrets from a high-ranking member, protected by anonymity and nicknamed “Deep Throat”. Half a century later, the then vice president of the FBI, second in command to the sinister J. Edgar Hoover, would assume the role of that informant. The scandal gave rise to a great book and a great film, both titled All the President's Men, who published these lurid meanderings to the world. Great actors like Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffmann would play the journalist duo.
Richard Nixon, who was very suspicious, had all conversations in his office clandestinely recorded, to protect himself and be able to appeal to the testimonies contained on the tapes. But at a certain point the spell turned against the sorcerer, and the recordings were requested by the courts – and in them Richard Nixon's role could no longer be hidden.
In other circumstances, and on the contrary, it is extreme publicity that can save both Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.
This is what Oscar winner for best documentary, Laura Poitras, director of citizenfour, about the great dissident. The intrepid filmmaker has had her life scrutinized and ravaged for years, followed and detained at airports for interrogation. That's why she moved from the United States to Berlin, where she feels less watched and more at ease.
Laura Poitras debuted a few years ago and has already shown her strength in two other films. In My country, my country films the occupation of Iraq and in The oath records the testimony of a bodyguard of Osama Bin Laden. An independent filmmaker, he risks his life visiting concentration camps, secret prisons, refugee camps, activist training centers. Edward Snowden really needed an artist with that courage. If the movies are hard to get, you can always read Glen Greenwald's book, No place to hide, which describes the Snowden saga. And it is also possible to follow the development of Laura Poitras' online project entitled The Intercept.
Only those who are really lazy will remain uninformed about secrets and inconfidence.
*Walnice Nogueira Galvão Professor Emeritus at FFLCH at USP. She is the author, among other books, of reading and rereading (Sesc\Ouro over Blue). [amzn.to/3ZboOZj]
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