It was a very different time back then. The NYT was willing to expose government lies, not regurgitate them. Elected officials were willing to call bullshit on abuses of power -and act accordingly (Gravel not only made the Pentagon Papers impossible to censor, but he led the move to cut off military aid to South Vietnam, finally ending the war). And liberals used to treat whistleblowers like heroes instead of cheering like frat boys at a wet T-shirt contest when leakers are arrested, abused and imprisoned. It wasn't just a long time ago, but a galaxy far, far away.
Glenn Greenwald has a moving piece about Daniel Ellsberg in Rolling Stone:
He was great man and a good human being.We’re Told Never to Meet Our Childhood Heroes. Knowing Daniel Ellsberg Proved That Wrong
Glenn Greenwald remembers the Pentagon Papers whistleblower and ceaseless anti-war activist
Ellsberg was aggressively generous with the use of his hero status to defend others whom he viewed as motivated by the same values and objectives that caused him to disclose the Pentagon Papers. I vividly recall how viscerally happy and moved he was when the next generation of courageous whistleblowers began appearing: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange; U.S. Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, who leaked to WikiLeaks; NSA whistleblowers Snowden, Tom Drake, William Binney, and others. He would never take credit for them or their bravery, but it was clear that he saw them as his progeny.
He often said in private what he ended up saying in the media about all of them: that he had waited decades for people like them to appear; those who had access to secrets that would both expose the lies and corruption of the U.S. security state but also end their careers and reputations, if not land them in prison, for disclosing. Ellsberg’s tireless commitment to the FPF, even while he was already in his eighties, was motivated by his sense of obligation to use his credibility to defend what Assange and Manning had done. He viewed his battle with the secrecy abuses and systemic deceit of the military and intelligence communities as his life mission, and he never stopped pursuing it with a vigor and commitment to study that would tire most people half his age.
