Pentagon Papers' Ellsberg Says Snowden Saves Us From The "United Stasi Of America"

It is perhaps too early to judge the impact of Edward Snowden's confirmation of conspiracy fact, but in Pentagon Papers' Daniel Ellsberg opinion in today's Guardian, there has not been a more important leak in American history. The "executive coup" against the US constitution that has, at first sercretly but increasingly openly, been under way since 9/11 could finally be stalled by the Whistleblower's efforts. Ellsberg notes Senator Frank Church's 1975 comments on the NSA warning of the dangerous prospect that America's intelligence gathering capability "at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left," noting 'that has now happened'. That is what Snowden has exposed, with official, secret documents. The NSA, FBI and CIA have, with the new digital technology, surveillance powers over our own citizens that the Stasi – the secret police in the former "democratic republic" of East Germany – could scarcely have dreamed of.

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