Podcast #87

Daniel Ellsberg: Obama has "pissed on" our hopes. Co-hosted with Sibel Edmonds, this is the next chapter of the Boiling Frogs interview series. Dan Ellsberg provides us with his analysis of Barack Obama's presidency, shares with us what led him to cast his vote for Obama, and how and why he's been let down and betrayed by our current president. He discusses the stark similarities between the previous administration and Obama's White House on issues and abuses related to civil liberties, and questions the possibility of 'hoping' again. Ellsberg talks about his experience as a whistleblower, the futility of disclosure to Congress then and today, the current sorry state of the US media, and how he met Sibel Edmonds--and why he admires her. Ellsberg graduated from Harvard in economics in 1952, served in the US Marine Corps from 1954-57, and obtained a PhD in economics from Harvard while working for the Rand Corporation in 1962. In 1964 he joined the Defense Department to work principally on decision-making in the Vietnam War. Ellsberg precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a Top-Secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to the New York Times and other publications. Ellsberg has ever since campaigned for peace and encouraged others to speak truth to power.