We need a leaker

In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked to the New York Times part of a 7,000-report he’d worked on earlier called the “Pentagon Papers.” The official title was "Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force."

The document chronicled U.S. involvement in Indochina from the end of World War II to 1968. The report was commissioned by then-Sec. of Defense Robert McNamara. The papers showed that, as the Freedom of the Press Foundation says, “lies were the foundation of U.S. policy in Vietnam.”

Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act, but those charges were dropped because of government misconduct.

That leak helped solidify U.S. distaste for a forever war in Vietnam.

Right now, we have seen only a portion of the Trumpstein Files, which chronicle the behaviors of powerful people who rape girls for sport. With Todd Blanche as Attorney General, we haven’t a shot in hell of the government doing the right thing, so we need a Daniel Ellsberg to take it upon him/her/them selves to share the files widely.

As Judge Emmet Sullivan of the DC District Court recently said, “the public has a right to know what the hell is going on.”

But the courts are moving slowly, as they often do. Congress does, as well, though efforts like this:

are welcome, but have mostly proven ineffective. The guardrails ain’t guard-railing.

Give us a leaker. The country demands and needs someone with the intestinal fortitude and iron-solid backbone to do the right thing.