“Leaks do not invalidate government secrecy; they depend upon it.”
December 14, 2016 6:34 PM   Subscribe

What’s striking… is that the man who defined the modern category of whistle-blower was the sort who gave career advice to Henry Kissinger. Ellsberg was an insider—and that fact puts him in stark contrast with the man who has come to be seen as his heir, Edward Snowden.
Writing for The New Yorker and heavily referencing David E. Pozen’s HBR paper “The Leaky Leviathan”, Malcolm Gladwell compares and contrasts the “leaker” and “hacker” attitudes of these two activists and how their choices fit the politics of their moments: “Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, and the Modern Whistle-Blower”
posted by Going To Maine (25 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Does Gladwell even get around to mentioning that Daniel Ellsberg seems think Edward Snowden does belong in the same room as Daniel Ellsberg? He has even defended Snowden's decision to remain in exile rather than facing prosecution in the U.S. Did Gladwell mention that Snowden, despite his apparent libertarian leanings, comes from a family with strong ties to the military and federal government, grew up by Fort Meade, joined the Army during the Iraq War? (He mentions the last of these but only to mention that he "washed out" of training.) The framing of the supposed dissimilarity of the leakers' backgrounds seems rather dishonestly set up. I couldn't argue that times haven't changed, and I'm not sure that Snowden and Ellsberg have identical political visions but I'm really not sure Ellsberg now - as opposed to Ellsberg in 1967 - would have much time for Gladwell's tribute to the self-regulating nature of the secret state.
posted by atoxyl at 7:29 PM on December 14, 2016 [14 favorites]


Does Gladwell even get around to mentioning that Daniel Ellsberg seems think Edward Snowden does belong in the same room as Daniel Ellsberg?

To put it mildly. Not all that long ago I went to HOPE X and watched Ellsberg and Snowden talk at length. Ellsberg said, pretty much: I have been waiting so long for this.

(transcript)

Anyway, I'll RTFA now.
posted by brennen at 7:52 PM on December 14, 2016 [8 favorites]


Does Gladwell even get around to mentioning that Daniel Ellsberg seems think Edward Snowden does belong in the same room as Daniel Ellsberg?

Oh, absolutely not, and I think that’s a badly missing element; it gives the piece a tilt. That said, the piece isn’t about exonerating Snowden or damning him as a whole. People said plenty of bad things about Ellsberg at the time, and I took the criticism of Snowden in that light - less “here’s why what he did was bad” and more “here’s what the intelligence establishment of the present says about Snowden”.

Did Gladwell mention that Snowden, despite his apparent libertarian leanings, comes from a family with strong ties to the military and federal government, grew up by Fort Meade, joined the Army during the Iraq War? (He mentions the last of these but only to mention that he "washed out" of training.)

He also mentions that Snowden was denied admission to the NSA proper, which naturally implies that he also thought it would be cool to work for the NSA in the first place - just as his washing out of the army implies that he wanted to be in the army. It’s not that Snowden doesn’t have gut patriotic leanings (though I wouldn’t concede that libertarians aren’t patriotic) so much as but that he wasn’t particularly qualified for the higher echelons of service. Snowden isn’t elite, and failed to qualify as a member.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:56 PM on December 14, 2016


he wasn’t particularly qualified for the higher echelons of service. Snowden isn’t elite, and failed to qualify as a member.

That depends on how you define "higher" and "service."
posted by rhizome at 8:36 PM on December 14, 2016 [5 favorites]


Bizarre piece.

Pozen's article is interesting and the most interesting thing about the Gladwell piece.

But the main contrast Gladwell is setting up is simply wrong.

His use of the Pozen argument is twisted, too. Pozen shows that the executive apparatus has a strategic interest in allowing unauthorized leaks to occur sometimes. Gladwell implicitly assumes that this strategic interest of the executive is the only legitimate interest served by leaking. Since this interest is served by a very measured pace of leaking, it doesn't justify Snowden's leaks.

But it's insane to think that the Pozen rationale is the actual good reason for leaks. It is a self-interested reason why the government may allow leaks. But the actual good reason for leaks is the public interest. Ellsberg, "insider" or not, didn't leak the Pentagon Papers in order to add credibility to authorized leaks by the executive, which is the Pozen rationale. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers because he felt that the public needed to know about the secret war being carried on in their name in Southeast Asia.

Ellsberg's thinking in this respect is exactly the same as Snowden's. The Pozen argument, while interesting in its own right, supplies no contrast at all between the cases of Ellsberg and Snowden and really has no place in Gladwell's argument, such as it is.

Almost everything Gladwell says about Ellsberg distorts his purpose. He withheld 4 volumes of the Papers, but he published the whole remaining 43 -- this is a dump, not a "carefully curated set of course materials." He approached members of Congress with the papers before he gave them to the press -- but he didn't do this because as an "insider" he was trying to "work within the system" or whatever. He did it because he thought the members of Congress would release them directly to the public, under the legal protection of the speech and debate clause of Article I. When they declined to help him release the Papers, he went ahead to do it himself.

If Gladwell had talked to Ellsberg for the piece, he would have shot down every one of its arguments. Perhaps that is why the piece doesn't contain an interview of Ellsberg.
posted by grobstein at 8:45 PM on December 14, 2016 [15 favorites]


I will grant that Ellsberg was probably a better social scientist than Snowden (and I have noted before the minor tragedy that Ellsberg was diverted by war and prosecution from a very promising research career).

But this fact has no bearing on the political morality of leaking. In the context of the piece, it's purely prejudicial -- meant to establish Ellsberg as a high-class, respectable "insider" in contrast to dropout "hacker" Snowden.
posted by grobstein at 8:49 PM on December 14, 2016 [3 favorites]


Gladwell says:
“Oddly, when I think back on the meeting in the Moscow Ritz, the memory that flashes up first in my mind is an image of Daniel Ellsberg,” Roy writes. “Dan, after all those hours of talking, lying back on John’s bed, Christ-like, with his arms flung open, weeping for what the United States has turned into.” Oddly? Surely one obvious lesson of the Snowden affair is that Whistle-blower 2.0 does not really belong in the same room as Whistle-blower 1.0.


Surely?

How can it not phase him at all that Whistle-blower 1.0 and Whistle-blower 2.0 both disagree so completely with his judgment?

Ellsberg clearly does not need white knight Gladwell riding in to save him from the riff-raff. For Ellsberg, doing the right thing was more important than having a (future) Nobel laureate as his Doktorvater and "[giving] career advice to Henry Kissinger" (by the way, this is not really the takeaway from the passage Gladwell quotes from Ellsberg's book). But to Gladwell, this is apparently incomprehensible, so he has to rewrite the story to make it about the men's CVs.
posted by grobstein at 8:59 PM on December 14, 2016 [3 favorites]


Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers because he felt that the public needed to know about the secret war being carried on in their name in Southeast Asia.

Yes, but as suggested by Ellsberg (or incorrectly implied by Gladwell?) Ellsberg’s leak was intended to force the administration to play ball. It was intended to benefit the public interest, but only by forcing the government to take action in certain ways.

Almost everything Gladwell says about Ellsberg distorts his purpose. He withheld 4 volumes of the Papers, but he published the whole remaining 43 -- this is a dump, not a “carefully curated set of course materials.”

But the Ellsberg documents were forty-three volumes that were part of a cohesive whole, whose import came from understanding them as a unity. The Snowden documents, in contrast, were decidedly not a single unit but rather a whole bunch of disparate items gleaned from all over the place. It’s not necessarily “quantity” that makes up a dump to Gladwell but rather the eclectic nature of the haul.

But this fact has no bearing on the political morality of leaking. In the context of the piece, it's purely prejudicial -- meant to establish Ellsberg as a high-class, respectable "insider" in contrast to dropout "hacker" Snowden.

I’m not sure what we mean by “political morality” here - I certainly think that we can read it as establishing Ellsberg as respectable and Snowden as disreputable, but the other take is that it helped to define the methods that Ellsberg chose to use. It’s less a definer of morality and more a definer of methods. To Snowden, the mass cull was best. To Ellsberg, the single, damning report.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:00 PM on December 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


"[giving] career advice to Henry Kissinger" (by the way, this is not really the takeaway from the passage Gladwell quotes from Ellsberg's book)

It just really encapsulates Gladwell's failure of insight that he reads this passage, which is about the power of secrecy to close the mind, and uses it to make this tangential irrelevant point about Ellsberg being prestigious.
posted by grobstein at 9:02 PM on December 14, 2016 [3 favorites]


It just really encapsulates Gladwell's failure of insight that he reads this passage, which is about the power of secrecy to close the mind, and uses it to make this tangential irrelevant point about Ellsberg being prestigious.

But why is the point tangential? It wasn’t Ellsberg’s point, but it remains quite true: Ellsberg was of a class and status such that he had access to Kissinger. Snowden was not.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:09 PM on December 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


(Like, I don’t see why both points can’t be true: Ellsberg was making an astute point about the closure of the mind. He was also speaking to Henry Kissinger. )
posted by Going To Maine at 9:11 PM on December 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


though I wouldn’t concede that libertarians aren’t patriotic

no, I wouldn't at all - I think they often believe very strongly in a certain conception of America, if if it's one I think is bullshit in several critical ways
posted by atoxyl at 9:15 PM on December 14, 2016


Yes, but as suggested by Ellsberg (or incorrectly implied by Gladwell?) Ellsberg’s leak was intended to force the administration to play ball. It was intended to benefit the public interest, but only by forcing the government to take action in certain ways.

Not sure about that.

Ellsberg and Snowden shared the goal of affecting government action by changing the public debate, so in this respect they are similar.

Snowden also had the goal of encouraging people to protect themselves by self-help (e.g. encrypting communications). These anti-surveillance measures don't translate directly into the context of the Vietnam War, but Ellsberg favored and was inspired by direct action. He admired draft resisters, and in fact he says it was their direct action that inspired him to leak the Pentagon Papers:
[H]e said this very calmly. I hadn't known that he was about to be sentenced for draft resistance. It hit me as a total surprise and shock, because I heard his words in the midst of actually feeling proud of my country listening to him. And then I heard he was going to prison. It wasn't what he said exactly that changed my worldview. It was the example he was setting with his life. How his words in general showed that he was a stellar American, and that he was going to jail as a very deliberate choice—because he thought it was the right thing to do. There was no question in my mind that my government was involved in an unjust war that was going to continue and get larger. Thousands of young men were dying each year. I left the auditorium and found a deserted men's room. I sat on the floor and cried for over an hour, just sobbing. The only time in my life I've reacted to something like that.

Randy Kehler never thought his going to prison would end the war. If I hadn't met Randy Kehler it wouldn't have occurred to me to copy [the Pentagon Papers]. His actions spoke to me as no mere words would have done. He put the right question in my mind at the right time.
This -- Ellsberg's own words -- paints a very different picture from the one conjured by Gladwell.

I think it's pretty obvious who we should believe.
posted by grobstein at 9:15 PM on December 14, 2016 [5 favorites]


But why is the point tangential? It wasn’t Ellsberg’s point, but it remains quite true: Ellsberg was of a class and status such that he had access to Kissinger. Snowden was not.

Totally true. But the piece is using this kind of true detail to paint a deceptive picture, and I think this small example is emblematic of that.

Ellsberg is telling the Kissinger anecdote to warn against the whole system of government secrecy. Gladwell uses the story in a piece that paints Ellsberg as an "insider" who, via the Pozen argument, is a friend of the overall secrecy system.

Ellsberg's supposed mindset is explicitly contrasted with thoughts like the following from Snowden: "The élites, Snowden once said, 'know everything about us and we know nothing about them—because they are secret, they are privileged, and they are a separate class.'" But Ellsberg, in the quoted passage, is making a very similar point to Snowden's.
posted by grobstein at 9:19 PM on December 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


Snowden isn’t elite, and failed to qualify as a member.

I think this may really illustrate the difference between what "elite" means in Snowden's line of work versus in Ellsberg's. Insofar as this piece discusses the difference between "intelligence" culture and "hacker" culture that is relevant, but it's not as if we need somebody to tell us that those are traditionally very different things. If there's something interesting about that contrast, it's the fact that people from the hacker culture are now being hired by the intelligence services. (I think that fact, and what it means for each of those cultures, is interesting and I would like to read something that gets much deeper into it.)
posted by atoxyl at 9:22 PM on December 14, 2016


I remember when the Snowden stuff came out the NSA was trying to downplay the importance of his position while he comparatively played it up. I guess I never did figure out exactly how high up he was. Also in retrospect it's kind of strange that they would try to downplay his importance, because isn't that more embarrassing?
posted by atoxyl at 9:29 PM on December 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Wow, what a story I have imagined Malcolm Gladwell writing!
In the case of Checkers v. Nixon, Daniel Ellsberg knew none of the facts before arriving at the scene of the crime. That is the way Daniel prefers it. His job was to reconcile Richard and Thelma Catherine "Pat" Nixon, of Yorba Linda, California, with their dog, Checkers. Ellsberg is built like a soccer player. He is in his mid-30s, and has large, wide eyes, olive skin, and white teeth. He crawled across the border from Mexico fourteen years ago. He began to ask questions. Did Checkers urinate in the house? What about discipline or physical touch? Daniel Ellsberg is host of the Dog Whisperer, on the National Geographic television channel.
Some day I will read the actual essay, but until then it is more fun to imagine how Daniel Ellsberg could appear in Malcolm Gladwell's 2006 New Yorker profile of Cesar Millan. Obviously there are a lot of problems with my fake essay; it doesn't even talk about how proud Ellsberg was of Ed Snowden for winning the Iditarod with his pet AIBO, the robot companion dog made by Sony. (Snowden achieved victory when he reached his tipping point and hacked the AIBO's igon value 10,000 times to become an extreme outlier.) Of course I am sure that the real essay spends considerable time discussing Ellsberg's respect for Snowden; Gladwell is a professional writer best known for his ability to include relevant facts.
posted by compartment at 10:29 PM on December 14, 2016 [4 favorites]


On a more serious note, I want to second the HOPE X Snowden / Ellsberg recommendation. I listened to a recording of the conversation about a year ago and thought it was very good.
posted by compartment at 10:37 PM on December 14, 2016


The best igon values!
posted by grobstein at 10:41 PM on December 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


Gladwell is a professional writer best known for his ability to include relevant facts

I thought Gladwell was best known for his ability to cherry-pick facts.
posted by grounded at 4:59 AM on December 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh look new Gladwell! I was missing being misinformed by him.
posted by spitbull at 5:26 AM on December 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Daniel Ellsberg or Julius Rosenberg?
posted by acb at 6:51 AM on December 15, 2016


Also in retrospect it's kind of strange that they would try to downplay his importance, because isn't that more embarrassing?

It is a no-win situation for them.

If Snowden was a glorified data janitor, then how did he walk out with the family jewels?

If he had much greater responsibilities and access (which, let's be honest, he obviously did) then why didn't their background checks and internal controls prevent him from doing what he was doing?
posted by turntraitor at 7:14 AM on December 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


Daniel Ellsberg or Julius Rosenberg?

nice
posted by grobstein at 9:05 AM on December 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Malcom Gladwell has gone from annoying to detestable. That could have been an interesting essay if it had been only been about the history, philosophy, and function of leaks in a modern democracy, but the whole point of it was just to build up a pseudo framework for discrediting Snowden. All Gladwell really has are spurious distinctions such as hacker vs. whistleblower and insider vs. outsider. Disgraceful, disgusting, and disingenuous. Grobstein sums up exactly that what is missing from the discussion is the central issue of public good.
posted by blue shadows at 2:08 AM on December 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


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