This Is How A Police State Protects “Secrets” - Marcy Wheeler/Salon

[JonLP24]

43. We have far less than we did then as evidenced by this thread

and the President using the Epsionage Act than every President combined.

Those signing include Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the top-secret “Pentagon Papers” — a pivotal event in public awareness and reaction to the war, but barely a footnote in the history the Pentagon is telling. The Pentagon also leaves out the illegal measures the Nixon administration took to prevent their publication, or how Ellsberg and another leaker were tried on espionage charges.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/28/the-pentagon-s-pathetic-vietnam-whitewash.html

He and Russo faced charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 and other charges including theft and conspiracy, carrying a total maximum sentence of 115 years for Ellsberg, 35 years for Russo. Their trial commenced in Los Angeles on January 3, 1973, presided over by U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr. Ellsberg tried to claim that the documents were illegally classified to keep them not from an enemy but from the American public. However, that argument was ruled "irrelevant". Ellsberg was silenced before he could begin. His "lawyer, exasperated, said he 'had never heard of a case where a defendant was not permitted to tell the jury why he did what he did.' The judge responded: well, you're hearing one now. And so it has been with every subsequent whistleblower under indictment".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg