Daniel Ellsberg Rest in Pride
Hon James Patterson U.S. Diplomat/Commentator
Content Creator @ Freelance | U.S. foreign affairs, politics, culture
James Patterson
?Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers, died during Pride Month 2023. One of Ellsberg’s last political causes was on behalf of transgender U.S. Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who, fifteen years ago, made the largest leak of classified government documents in U.S. history.
San Francisco’s LGBT community largely supported Manning for “exposing war crimes.” In 2013, the San Francisco Pride Board selected Manning as Parade Grand Marshal for its Pride Parade. It was a controversial decision even for the famously liberal City by the Bay.?
At the time, I lived in San Francisco. I occasionally freelanced for print and digital publications. My first big story was accidental. In 2013, I was at a Fillmore District nightclub when the management shut down alt-singer Michelle Shocked’s performance after she went into a vicious anti-LGBT rant. After Shocked, my next big story was Chelsea Manning and Californian Daniel Ellsberg, who lived in nearby Contra Costa County.
In 1971, Ellsberg and fellow whistleblower Anthony Russo realized the government was lying about the war in Vietnam. They manually copied and released The Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, The Washington Post, among other newspapers. ?
The government prosecuted Ellsberg and Russo under the Espionage Act. In the Deep South, where I lived, many people considered Ellsberg and Russo traitors, communists, and q***rs.? Since I was draft age at the time, I reserved judgment. In 1973, a judge dismissed all charges against Ellsberg and Russo due to government misconduct in the case. The Vietnam war soon ended.
Ellsberg became a central figure in the anti-Vietnam war movement. He urged government personnel to blow the whistle to prevent other wars. In 2009, while deployed in Iraq, Manning heard the same call to expose government lies about another war that Ellsberg had heard forty years earlier.
As an intelligence officer in Iraq, Manning used the Tor Network to anonymously leak an estimated 750,000 military and diplomatic documents to the website WikiLeaks, founded by Australian Julian Assange, an Ellsberg admirer. At the time, this was the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history. A 2007 video of a U.S. Apache helicopter attack that killed Iraqi civilians, an event the U.S. had tried to hide, was among the documents Manning released.
Aside from WikiLeaks, the leaked documents were published by The New York Times, The Guardian, and many others. When the government charged Manning with violating the Espionage Age, Ellsberg became a Manning supporter.
In April 2013, the San Francisco Pride Board (SFPB) announced that Manning would be the Grand Marshal of its 2013 Pride Parade. The SFPB’s decision was not popular with some groups. LGBT veterans complained.
When corporate sponsors began to pull out of the Pride parade, the SFPB issued an embarrassing statement cancelling Manning as Grand Marshal. It said Manning was ineligible to be Grand Marshal because she did not reside in San Francisco. It also called her a traitor.
San Francisco’s LGBT community was not happy. Many considered Manning a hero for exposing “U.S. war crimes.” The community wanted to honor Manning. They demanded the SFPB to rescind its decision.
When the SFPB held meetings about replacing Manning, the attendance exceeded maximum capacity. San Francisco Police and Fire Department closed or monitored the meetings. The SFPB held an evening meeting at the Metropolitan Community Church on Eureka Street in the Castro District. This meeting broke down in shouting, name-calling, accusations, and threats. Remarkably, a crazed man walked in off the streets, went directly to a microphone, and shouted the SFPB had blood on its hands! He never knew what the meeting was about!
Ellsberg began quietly attending the SFPB meetings and LGBT rallies supporting Manning. He wanted Manning to be honored for her courage as a government whistleblower.? This was also the sense of San Francisco’s LGBT community. The SFPB’s disrespect for Manning was too much for the LGBT community and Daniel Ellsberg. He helped everyone understand the bigger issue of moral and public support for Manning. ?He called Manning his [whistleblowing] daughter.
?With Ellsberg’s involvement, the meetings and rallies took on a bigger dimension. They were an opportunity for Ellsberg and me to learn about the community’s enthusiastic support for Manning. The rallies were also an opportunity for me to learn more about Ellsberg, at the time in his 80s. He stood out in the crowd of young Manning supporters. He also stood out because he wore a jacket and tie. I got thoughtful quotes from him for my stories.?
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Eventually, the SFPB determined that Manning was ineligible to be Grand Marshal since she did not reside in San Francisco. It was a bureaucratic way out of the mess that the SFPB had created. It was, however, an unpopular decision in the community. A San Francisco drag queen was chosen to replace Manning as a Community Grand Marshal. [The next year, Manning was selected as an Honorary Grand Marshal. Ellsberg, with pink feather boa, marched in the Pride Parade.]
In 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. The ACLU said it was the harshest sentence ever for a whistleblower. While in prison, she sought gender transition surgery. Initially, the military refused treatment.? In 2016, the military allowed Manning’s request for transition. In 2017, President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence. She was released in time for Pride 2017.
News coverage of Manning was controversial. When she announced she was trans, I viewed a display of newspaper frontpages that were posted outside the now closed Newseum. Her photo dressed in drag, was headlined: “Manning case takes a new twist.” It suggested she was mentally ill, or “twisted.” It was outrageous.
Since 2019, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has been in prison in the United Kingdom. The Biden administration wants to prosecute him under the Espionage Act. A U.K. court is determining when Assange is to be extradited to the U.S. [Note in June 2024, Assange was freed. He returned to Australia.]
During Pride Month 2023, Ellsberg died of pancreatic cancer. He was 92 years old. In an editorial, California’s Orange County Register called Ellsberg “a True American Hero.”? The paper said he was “the grandest document-leaker of them all” because, in 1971, he had to manually copy and distribute 7,000 pages about “the shameful, secret history of the Vietnam War.” In the 1970s, Ellsberg was enthusiastically committed to exposing government lies.
In San Francisco during the Chelsea Manning controversy, I saw a still-enthusiastic Daniel Ellsberg. Though he had escaped prison, Ellsberg understood Manning’s predicament. He understood that Manning had few supporters. He understood the loneliness she felt in solitary confinement in military prison. He understood the government’s vicious need to punish her to keep other potential whistleblowers quiet.
Despite the 1970s criticism that Ellsberg was “a traitor, a communist, and a qu**r,” I believe that he was “a true American hero.” I saw heroism in his wrinkled face. I heard heroism in his soft voice.
While covering the Manning rallies in San Francisco, Ellsberg gave me some great and impassioned quotes. He gave me something more. He gave me a lesson in what it means to be an American patriot. I am forever grateful to Daniel Ellsberg for that lesson. May he rest in Pride!
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James Patterson, a former U.S. diplomat and a life member of the American Foreign Service Association, is a member of the California State Society.