Odd Timing: As State Department Condemns Wikileaks, It's Promoting A Movie Celebrating Daniel Ellsberg & The Pentagon Papers

from the mass-confusion dept

Last month, we noted the hilarious timing in which the State Department announced it was hosting world press freedom day, at the same time it was screaming about the evils of the press in revealing the leaked State Department cables. It appears that the State Department still hasn’t quite figured out how to be consistent on these issues. As it continues to slam Wikileaks… it’s also promoting a new documentary celebrating Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers:

Amid its struggle to contain damage from the WikiLeaks revelations, the State Department announced Saturday that “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” has been selected as one of 18 films that will tour the world this year as part of its “American Documentary Showcase” program.

Ellsberg, whom the film portrays as a whistleblower of conscience, has been a champion of Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the alleged leaker of the documents who is currently jailed. He has also spoken in defence of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who may also face charges for publishing classified information.

I’d argue that the left-hand at the State Department isn’t talking to the right-hand very much, but perhaps that’s just because of the new policies put in place to keep all State Department communications more secret to avoid future leaks.

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Companies: wikileaks

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Comments on “Odd Timing: As State Department Condemns Wikileaks, It's Promoting A Movie Celebrating Daniel Ellsberg & The Pentagon Papers”

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14 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

yes folks right this way

we have in this corner a leaked buch of pentagon papers that changed a war, and in this other corner we have the man that exposed the continuation of said corruption pissing off the powers that be.

DING DING DING.
haha….
the referee will be president obama ( and hollywood )
and the coaches respectfully are the corpses of Nixon and mister Kennedy. TWO fine examples of American politics.

NO ONE trusts YOU EVER AGAIN and now YOU CANT even pretend like you can be.

Rose M. Welch (profile) says:

Re:

Perhaps that Ellsberg’s situation was focuses…

So far as we can tell, this leak has been focused, as well. Specifically, on government corruption and censorship.

…rather than just being a massive dump of data…

As I pointed out to someone else yesterday, the Pentagon Papers consist of 47 volumes, all of which are still classified. The size of the leak doesn’t invalidate it.

…out of frustration?

Right now, we don’t even have confirmation of who leaked those documents, so how do you know what their intent was?

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