"I still do have some hope, but much less confidence"

SusanG at DailyKOS just finished up a six-part interview with Daniel Ellsberg, the Defense Department analyist who leaked the 7,000-page Pentagon Papers to the press, moving from safe house to safe house as one newspaper would publish several sections of the Papers until the Nixon administration obtained an injuction, then other newspapers would continue publication until they were hit with an injunction, and so on. (The White House, searching for information to use against Ellsberg, authorized the infamous "plumbers" team to break into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist.)

You really need to read the whole series, but this segment is damned good by itself--if by "good" we mean "smart and articulate but scary and depressing as hell."

How can we prevent this country being turned into a police state by this administration in the next three years? That's what I think is facing us and I have not talked in those terms at any other time in my life. We've already seen that the hope for tying up this administration in various ways prior to another 9/11 has been given us essentially by leaks. The Abu Ghraib leak, the secret prisons, NSA. Plus a demonstration of incompetence and corruption in Katrina. That's a major factor there.

I would say that with actually existing democracy, as it is right now, if there's a big terrorist attack, our actually existing democracy will not protect us against a transition to a police state. I don't believe we will be able to avoid that. I hope I'm wrong. even when I'm certain about something, I'm often wrong. Right now, I'm working with others in hopes of making that prediction wrong.

I think before a police state happens we do have enough to work with that we can have some effect on these other things. Really, I'm a hell of a lot more hopeful than I was four months ago. And the crucial aspect of that has been determined by leaks, and the public's response to them, limited and inconclusive as that has been so far.

Read his chilling list of what we get if another 9/11 happens while Bush is still in office.

From the segment quoted above, you can link to the earlier parts of the interview:

• Part I, January 20, 2006 - The Pentagon Papers and the Overlooked 1968 Leaks
• Part 2, January 21, 2006 - Judith Miller, the New York Times and Government-Controlled Press
• Part 3, January 22, 2006 - The Cult of Secrecy in Government and Its Undermining of Democracy
• Part 4, January 27, 2006 - Whistleblowing and Effective Activism
• Part 5, January 28, 2006 - Iraq/Vietnam Parallels and Other Foreign Policy Fiascos
• Part 6, January 29, 2006 - Bush, the Next 9/11 and the Approaching Police State