0:00

This is an L.A. Times

0:02

Studios podcast. Daniel Ellsberg

0:04

had been a marine, a dedicated

0:06

cold warrior, and a Pentagon

0:09

consultant advising the architects of

0:11

the Vietnam War. He had

0:14

bought into the premises

0:16

of the American military effort

0:18

in Southeast Asia. He wanted

0:21

to stop the advance of

0:23

a Stalinist dictatorship. But

0:25

by October 1969... Ellesburg had become

0:27

bitterly disillusioned with the war effort,

0:30

and his conscience was eating at

0:32

him. He had helped to sell

0:34

a war that he now believed

0:36

was fueled by lies. President

0:38

Richard Nixon had taken office

0:41

that year, promising peace with honor

0:43

in Vietnam, but there was no

0:45

end in sight. Half a million

0:47

American troops were in Vietnam

0:49

that year. Tens of thousands of

0:51

Americans had died in the conflict,

0:54

and many more Vietnamese. Ellsberg

0:58

saw the war as a

1:00

hopeless stalemate which defense department

1:02

officials refused to level what

1:05

the American people about. Hopeless

1:07

and interminable, he would call it.

1:09

Ellsberg was 38 and living in Malibu.

1:11

He was working as an analyst

1:14

at the Rand Corporation in Santa

1:16

Monica, a think tank that advised

1:18

the government. His position gave him

1:21

access to top-secret documents. One day,

1:23

he opened the safe in his

1:25

office and slipped a big stack

1:28

of papers into his briefcase.

1:30

He knew there was a good chance that

1:32

what he was doing would land him

1:35

in prison. He walked past

1:37

the guards in the lobby,

1:39

waving casually. This was the

1:41

first batch of 7,000 pages

1:43

he would ultimately smuggle out.

1:45

A 47-volume secret government-sponsored study

1:48

of the war that would

1:50

become known as the Pentagon

1:52

Papers. He thought that the

1:54

American people would demand an end to the

1:56

war if they could only see them. And

1:59

he was intent on... finding a way

2:01

to get them in front

2:03

of the people, maybe through

2:05

Congress, maybe through the press.

2:07

But he had a more

2:10

immediate problem. This was October

2:12

1969, before Kinko's existed, before

2:14

Xerox Technology was in every

2:16

office building. Daniel Ellsberg, on

2:18

the brink of moving the

2:20

tectonic plates of history, needed

2:22

to find a copy machine.

2:25

From LA Times Studios, this

2:27

is Crimes of the Times.

2:29

I'm Christopher Gofford. When

2:31

Daniel Ellsberg went looking

2:33

for a machine to copy

2:36

the top secret papers that

2:38

he hoped would end the

2:40

Vietnam War, he turned to

2:43

his friend Anthony Russo, whose

2:45

girlfriend happened to own an

2:47

ad agency above a flower

2:50

shop at Melrose Avenue and

2:52

Crescent Heights. Her name was

2:54

Linda Sene. She was an entrepreneur

2:57

in her 20s, and like Ellsberg,

2:59

she wanted to see an end

3:01

to the war. She agreed to let

3:03

him use her Xerox machine after

3:05

hours, and it was there

3:08

that he began the laborious

3:10

work of photocopying the smuggled

3:12

documents. One by one, day

3:14

after day, for weeks. A lot has

3:16

been written about the Pentagon

3:18

papers, but this particular side

3:20

story is little known. Linda

3:23

Sene's name is not famous. But the

3:25

name she later took is Linda

3:27

Resnick. Soon after lending Ellsberg

3:30

the use of her copy

3:32

machine, she would marry Stewart

3:34

Resnick, now her business partner,

3:36

in a multi-billion dollar empire

3:38

that includes Fiji Water, Palm

3:40

Wonderful, and Wonderful Pistachios.

3:43

I visited Resnick at her home

3:45

in Beverly Hills. So tell me

3:47

about the circumstances of your life

3:49

in the late 1960s in Los

3:51

Angeles. Where were you at that

3:53

point in your life? I was

3:55

divorced. I had two

3:58

tiny children. I ran

4:00

an advertising agency that I

4:02

owned. I had about 13 employees.

4:04

She eventually met and began

4:06

dating Anthony Russo, a former Rand

4:08

employee, and a friend of Ellsberg's.

4:11

He knew I had an A12

4:13

cop here. It was the size of

4:15

a Volkswagen, and you could put one

4:17

at a time. I mean, it was

4:19

horrible, you know, but it was my

4:21

pride and joy. Daniel Ellsberg

4:23

asked to see her at a

4:25

Belgian waffle restaurant. Anthony wasn't

4:27

with him. So we went, I couldn't

4:30

imagine why Dan wanted to see

4:32

me alone, and he basically said

4:34

that he wanted to do something

4:36

to end the war. And there

4:38

were these papers that he had

4:40

in his vault that ran, and

4:42

he and Tony had cooked up

4:44

a plan where they were going

4:46

to take them out, Xerox them

4:48

at night, and put them back

4:50

before anyone came to work the

4:52

next day. Could they use my

4:54

Xerox machine? Never mentioning.

4:57

that there were what, 43

4:59

volumes, how many thousands of

5:01

pages there were, and that

5:03

it took three weeks or

5:05

four weeks? They were labeled

5:07

top secret, eyes-only

5:09

security. Every level of

5:12

security you can think

5:14

of. So you must have

5:16

really trusted you, because he's

5:19

basically offering to bring you

5:21

in on a plan that could

5:23

land him in prison. And me.

5:25

And you. But he knew where

5:27

I stood because I was marching.

5:29

I was working to end the

5:32

war. I was putting up posters

5:34

and doing all sorts of things

5:36

to do what I could. And

5:38

he offered to pay me 10

5:41

cents a copy, which I don't

5:43

know if he ever did or not.

5:45

We made a deal. Her business

5:47

was going seven days a

5:49

week, and her employees often

5:51

worked late. And they didn't know

5:54

why I wanted them to go

5:56

home at 7 o'clock every night.

5:58

So we would start. as soon

6:00

as the office closed. And I

6:02

can't tell you how many times

6:04

they figured the alarm because I

6:07

never knew how to work it. Dan said,

6:09

you have no security clearance,

6:11

you may not read this, but you

6:13

may cut and staple. Yes, you may.

6:16

I never read a word. Were you

6:18

ever fearful? What were your emotions?

6:20

I was not fearful. I was

6:22

so excited to do something. We

6:25

were going to end the war.

6:27

I think about the personal risk

6:29

that you were courting by doing

6:31

this. I was so naive.

6:34

I really didn't. I endangered

6:36

my children. I endangered myself.

6:38

But it turned into a

6:40

nightmare, you know. And then I got

6:43

very, very frightened. After

6:45

the photocopying, she broke

6:47

up with Anthony Russo and

6:50

met Stuart Resnick. Daniel Ellsberg

6:52

moved to the East Coast.

6:55

and Linda Resnick more or

6:57

less forgot about what he

7:00

had done in her ad agency

7:02

office. Until I got

7:04

up one morning and

7:06

opened the LA Times

7:08

and saw Pentagon Papers.

7:10

We didn't call them

7:12

the Pentagon Papers and there

7:15

was a picture of Dan.

7:17

And I went, geez, I

7:19

am toast. And the FBI

7:21

came to the house. At

7:24

5.30 I think it was like

7:26

a weeknight because they wanted me

7:28

to appear before the grand jury

7:31

at 9.30 the next morning.

7:33

She appeared repeatedly before

7:35

the grand jury. Dan said, look

7:38

I've been on the Decavate Show,

7:40

you're not protecting me, just say

7:42

whatever you know. And I did.

7:44

I didn't know much. There

7:54

was surveillance every time I went to a

7:56

restaurant there was a buzz cut behind me

7:58

or in front of me I'd been

8:00

in business since I was

8:02

19. So by the time I was

8:05

25, 26, I had had a

8:07

lot of freelancers and full-time employees.

8:10

Everyone was interviewed that

8:12

had anything to do with

8:15

Linda Seney, advertising

8:17

agency. I was in therapy

8:19

and I told my doctor that

8:22

they were going to come and

8:24

go through her files, and she

8:26

said I was paranoid. And

8:29

do you know where her office was?

8:31

It turned out her

8:33

therapist's office was

8:35

downstairs from Ellesburg

8:37

psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis

8:39

Fielding, whose office

8:41

Nixon's men actually did

8:44

later break into. So maybe

8:46

she thought I was just, you

8:48

know, acting out or whatever.

8:50

The stress was extreme.

8:53

I lost my voice for six

8:55

months. I lost my voice for

8:57

six months. and rather

8:59

a metaphor wouldn't you say? She

9:02

was an unindicted co-conspirator

9:04

in the case and facing

9:06

a possible charge of perjury

9:08

a prosecutor named David Nissin

9:11

entered the picture and he was

9:13

out for blood and I remember

9:15

one time he grabbed me by the nap

9:17

at the neck and drew my face up

9:20

to his and he said I'm going

9:22

to get you I'm going to ruin your

9:24

life. She says he threw her in jail

9:26

in jail in the drunk tank. There

9:28

were drunks all around and I was

9:30

in a cage. And that's where they

9:33

chose to fingerprint me, but it

9:35

wasn't just fingerprints, it was pawnprints,

9:37

it was in between each finger.

9:39

It was all the way up

9:41

my arm and I was wearing

9:43

a white summer dress. It was

9:46

that kind of abuse, you know. It

9:48

took me years to get over

9:50

the post-traumatic stress syndrome of

9:52

living this terror for two

9:54

years. Her

9:57

lawyer told her that her situation was

9:59

bleak. He said to me, Linda,

10:01

I'm just telling you, you're going to go

10:03

to jail for the rest of your life.

10:05

You're going to lose your children. Nobody can

10:08

get you out of this. You're done. So

10:10

that kind of set a pall over my

10:12

life, I must say. You know, I had

10:14

another year and a half or whatever for

10:16

the trial to finally come. It was a

10:18

horrible time. Hi,

10:34

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13:07

When Daniel Ellsberg smuggled 7,000

13:09

pages of top secret documents

13:11

out of his office at

13:14

the Rand Corporation, he knew

13:16

the stakes. In his 2002

13:18

book, Secrets, a memoir of

13:21

Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers,

13:23

he wrote, I took it

13:25

for granted that what I

13:27

was doing violated some law.

13:30

The so-called Pentagon Papers documented

13:32

American military decisions across two

13:34

decades. The paper showed that

13:37

the Defense Department's optimistic speeches

13:39

about the war masked much

13:41

grimmer behind-the-scenes assessments. They showed

13:44

that keeping American presidents from

13:46

the stigma of humiliating defeat

13:48

was a dominant aim of

13:51

continuing the war. Ellsberg called

13:53

it, quote, repetitive patterns of

13:55

internal pessimism and of desperate

13:58

escalation and deception of the

14:00

public in the face of

14:02

what was realistically, hopeless stalemate.

14:05

Ellsberg made copies after hours

14:07

at Linda Resnick's ad agency

14:09

office, sometimes bringing his 13-year-old

14:12

son to help. If the

14:14

government locked him up, as

14:16

seemed plausible, he would be

14:18

unable to support his kids,

14:21

but he viewed the stakes

14:23

as, quote, larger than me

14:25

or even my own family.

14:30

Ellsberg tried to slip the papers

14:32

to anti-war lawmakers, but they balked.

14:35

So he gave the papers to

14:37

the New York Times, which began

14:39

publishing them in June 1971. The

14:41

Nixon administration was furious, and it

14:43

tried to stop the series, but

14:46

other newspapers jumped in with their

14:48

own stories, and the US Supreme

14:50

Court decision affirming the media's right

14:52

to publish became a First Amendment

14:54

landmark. Stephen Spielberg made a movie

14:56

about it called The Post. What

14:59

is much less remembered

15:02

is the criminal prosecution

15:04

in Los Angeles of

15:07

Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony

15:09

Russo. The Nixon White

15:11

House was in a

15:14

panic. Nixon's advisors considered

15:16

Ellsberg a traitor responsible

15:18

for, quote, an attack

15:21

on the whole integrity

15:23

of government and a

15:26

devastating security breach of

15:28

the greatest magnitude. This

15:30

was captured in Oval

15:33

Office recordings. Nixon vowed

15:35

to destroy Ellsberg. The

15:38

tool he used was

15:40

the Espionage Act. Ellsberg

15:42

faced a possible 115

15:45

years in prison, if

15:47

convicted of conspiracy, espionage,

15:49

and theft of government

15:52

property. When

16:01

he and his co-defendant Rusa

16:03

went on trial in downtown

16:06

Los Angeles in 1972, the

16:08

basic facts of the case

16:10

were not in dispute. Ellsberg

16:12

had taken the top secret

16:15

documents from his safe at

16:17

Rand and leaked them to

16:19

the press. But there were

16:22

large questions looming over the

16:24

trial. Had the disclosures jeopardized

16:26

national security? Were there circumstances

16:28

in which the government's zeal

16:31

for secrecy could be overridden?

16:33

in the public interest. What

16:35

was the gist of the

16:38

defense that you mounted in

16:40

Los Angeles during the criminal

16:42

case? I'm talking to Charles

16:45

Nesson who was one of

16:47

Ellsburg's defense attorneys. There were

16:49

two legal defenses in particular.

16:51

One was that everything that

16:54

we was being charged with

16:56

was of significance was in

16:58

the public domain already. They

17:01

couldn't really point to anything

17:03

of any significance that wasn't

17:05

some place in the public

17:07

domain. The second defense was

17:10

that he had not actually

17:12

stolen the documents in legal

17:14

terms. They were claiming that

17:17

the information in the Pentagon

17:19

papers belonged to the United

17:21

States government, but the fact

17:23

is that the government doesn't

17:26

own information. He's eroxed on

17:28

Lindus and A's. machine and

17:30

returned the original document to

17:33

the place from which he

17:35

gutted at Rand. They put

17:37

historians such as Howard's in

17:40

on the stand to give

17:42

jurors a sense of how

17:44

the Vietnam conflict evolved as

17:46

documented by the more than

17:49

30 volumes of the Pentagon

17:51

Papers. And the first one

17:53

was 1945 Hoichi Min in

17:56

the Hills. took the stand

17:58

and turned to the jury

18:00

and told them, whoa. was

18:02

in that first volume, describing

18:05

Ho Chi Min and the

18:07

hills and begging Truman to

18:09

come and assist. He's telling

18:12

it the jury is totally

18:14

fascinated, listening to it. We

18:16

told the story of the

18:18

Pentagon papers in a way

18:21

that the jury had the

18:23

feeling that they learned something

18:25

from it. Other people deserve

18:28

to hear this story and

18:30

the idea that he was

18:32

being punished for releasing this

18:34

story to the American public

18:37

just didn't make sense. That

18:39

was our case. I asked

18:41

Nesson why the release of

18:44

the Pentagon Papers was such

18:46

a big deal if the

18:48

information they contained was already

18:51

public. the aggregation of the

18:53

story that was new, little

18:55

details that are in the

18:57

public domain, what does that

19:00

mean? That doesn't mean that

19:02

a whole lot of the

19:04

public knows it. That just

19:07

means you can find it

19:09

in some public document. But

19:11

the fact that the Defense

19:13

Department had commissioned this immense

19:16

study internally, secretly, that put

19:18

it all together. in a

19:20

way that said this government

19:23

fully well knows and is

19:25

aware of the shit that's

19:27

going down and is keeping

19:29

it secret from us. That's

19:32

different than the facts showing

19:34

up in one newspaper or

19:36

another somewhere in the archive

19:39

of the world. In other

19:41

words... The achievement of the

19:43

Pentagon Papers was to put

19:46

the Vietnam War into a

19:48

coherent narrative form as its

19:50

own planners conceived it. This

19:52

wasn't somebody telling... a story

19:55

against the Defense Department. This

19:57

was the Defense Department's understanding

19:59

of its own story. Mark

20:02

Rosenbaum was a Harvard Law

20:04

School student when he took

20:06

a leave of absence to

20:08

assist the defense team. He

20:11

told me that this was

20:13

the first trial in the

20:15

country to really examine how

20:18

the government lied to its

20:20

people. He said the defense

20:22

showed that when the government

20:24

classified material is top secret,

20:27

it was often an attempt

20:29

just to suppress politically embarrassing

20:31

material. What was so startling

20:34

about the case was that

20:36

it did mark the first

20:38

time that there was a

20:41

criminal trial. which disclosed that

20:43

the government had lied to

20:45

which people and the truth

20:47

was put on trial and

20:50

was the first time in

20:52

the history of the nation

20:54

that a criminal trial went

20:57

forward and the defense was

20:59

America, your government lied to

21:01

you. The

21:03

defense team believed that Nixon's

21:06

Department of Justice wanted the

21:08

trial to take place on

21:10

the West Coast, where it

21:12

could find favorable jurors from

21:14

the aerospace industry, which was

21:16

heavily dependent on the Pentagon.

21:18

Rosenbaum recalled that the jury

21:20

was picked from, quote, a

21:23

lot of retired government employees,

21:25

who seemed hell-bent on conviction.

21:27

But appellate arguments caused a

21:29

months-long delay, and a new

21:31

jury was picked that seemed

21:33

friendlier to Ellsberg's side. In

21:35

late April 1973, deep into

21:37

the trial, U.S. District Judge

21:39

Matt Byrne handed Daniel Ellsberg's

21:42

attorneys startling reports he had

21:44

received from the Justice Department.

21:46

The White House-directed team of

21:48

operatives known as the Plumbers

21:50

had broken into the Beverly

21:52

Hills Office of Ellsberg psychiatrist,

21:54

looking for compromising material. When

21:56

the defense team learned about

21:59

the burglary, Rosenbaum and another

22:01

young lawyer got the... name

22:03

of a woman who cleaned

22:05

the psychiatrist's office and went

22:07

to her home in East

22:09

Los Angeles, hoping she could

22:11

identify the burglars. Rosenbaum brought

22:13

along a Time magazine with

22:15

a photo of Nixon operative

22:18

G. Gordon Liddy. We met

22:20

with this woman who was

22:22

incredibly gracious to us, these

22:24

two strangers coming into her

22:26

home at, I don't know,

22:28

12, one in the morning,

22:30

and we showed her the

22:32

picture. Her eyes wide and

22:34

then she pointed to the

22:37

picture of Lydia and said,

22:39

yeah, that too was there.

22:41

And we obtained a declaration

22:43

from her statement that that

22:45

in fact had happened. That

22:47

really broke things open in

22:49

terms of how the government

22:51

was attempting to get Dan's

22:54

conviction by anything possible, including

22:56

that sort of illegal action.

22:58

It was a moment on

23:00

never forget going into her

23:02

home. and showing her this

23:04

fiction time magazine. There were

23:06

other revelations damning to the

23:08

government. The FBI admitted it

23:10

had captured Ellsberg's voice on

23:13

wiretap surveillance years earlier and

23:15

that the transcripts had vanished.

23:17

But the judge allowed the

23:19

case to continue. What finally

23:21

derailed the case was the

23:23

Nixon administration's unseemly overtures to

23:25

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listening now to be among the

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first to listen. Deep

25:38

into the Pentagon Papers trial,

25:41

Daniel Ellsberg's defense team learned

25:43

that the judge presiding over

25:46

it had recently visited the

25:48

president's San Clemente home and

25:50

that Richard Nixon had offered

25:53

him the job of running

25:55

the FBI. Judge Matt Byrne

25:57

acknowledged the San Clemente meeting

26:00

but said he rejected the

26:02

FBI job. Shortly afterward, Ellsberg

26:04

defense attorney Charles Nesson said

26:07

he got a call that

26:09

the judge had been spotted

26:12

in a park with Nixon

26:14

A. John Ehrlichman. Nesson said

26:16

he knew the judge was

26:19

finally cornered. He told me

26:21

he saw it as, quote,

26:23

a kind of capstone to

26:26

the misbehavior that Ellsberg was

26:28

disclosing. I mean, this is

26:31

like an undercover as far

26:33

as I'm concerned totally illicit.

26:35

kind of deal at the

26:38

highest level that was being

26:40

explored to undercut the justice

26:42

of the trial and the

26:45

trial process itself somehow by

26:47

influencing the judge. It's like

26:49

Nixon bribed the judge where

26:52

it was at least trying

26:54

hard to bribe the judge

26:57

to somehow get a conviction.

26:59

It seems obvious. Nobody else

27:01

was. You know, well, listen,

27:04

definitely, yes. I mean, the

27:06

fact is, the story of

27:08

the Pentagon Papers is the

27:11

story of recklessness. Defense attorneys

27:13

debated whether to spring the

27:16

information on the judge in

27:18

court or inform him privately.

27:20

One of the attorneys Leonard

27:23

Wine Glass wanted to spring

27:25

it. Butnesson opted to call

27:27

the judge's chambers. I called

27:30

his chambers and told him

27:32

that when we got to

27:34

court, I got to court,

27:37

we would be putting this

27:39

information out and moving for

27:42

him to dismiss. And that's

27:44

what we did. And Lenny

27:46

Wine Glass, I think, was

27:49

pissed off that I had...

27:52

eliminated the opportunity to

27:54

jump him with the

27:56

information. But I think

27:58

it came out basically

28:00

the same way either

28:03

way and I've never

28:05

really regretted the kind

28:07

of I don't know

28:09

to me professional courtesy

28:11

involved in putting him

28:13

on notice that he

28:15

was about to get

28:17

killed effectively. He dismissed

28:19

the case at that

28:21

point again very reluctantly.

28:23

but dismissed it with

28:26

prejudice, which is what

28:28

we were insisting about.

28:30

He was trying to

28:32

persuade us to take

28:34

a redo, but no

28:36

wing refused and insisted

28:38

that he dismissed the

28:40

case with prejudice, and

28:42

he did. and dismissed

28:44

all charges against Ellsberg

28:46

and Russo on the

28:48

basis of government misconduct.

28:51

The judge said, quote,

28:53

the bizarre events have

28:55

incurably infected the prosecution

28:57

of this case. Jurors

28:59

came by the downtown

29:01

LA office that defense

29:03

attorneys had established. It

29:05

was clear that many

29:07

had been in favor

29:09

of acquittal. As a

29:11

reporter, we all learn

29:14

about the Pentagon Papers

29:16

decision. from the Supreme

29:18

Court is affirming our

29:20

right to publish. It's

29:22

one of the bedrock

29:24

of our profession, but

29:26

I wonder if the

29:28

criminal case has maybe

29:30

faded in memory somewhat

29:32

because the big issues

29:34

were not resolved. You

29:36

never had a jury

29:39

make its finding, right?

29:41

There was no verdict.

29:43

The story is one

29:45

of misbehavior at a

29:47

prosecutorial level. That's bad

29:49

enough so that the

29:51

case gets dismissed. Did

29:53

Ellesburg end the Vietnam

29:55

war as he had

29:57

hoped? A historian I

29:59

spoke to Timothy Neftali

30:02

said no because the

30:04

U.S. was out of

30:06

of the war as

30:08

of January 1973. What

30:10

is clear is Ellsberg's

30:12

role in the implosion

30:14

of President Richard Nixon.

30:16

The leak of the

30:18

Pentagon Papers prompted the

30:20

President's men to break

30:22

into the psychiatrist's office,

30:24

a crime Nixon was

30:27

attempting to cover up

30:29

when the Watergate burglary

30:31

became public, which led

30:33

to his disgrace and

30:35

resignation. And as Ellsberg

30:37

argued in his book,

30:39

Nixon's preoccupation with the

30:41

Watergate scandal, prevented him

30:43

from blocking a congressional

30:45

resolution to halt further

30:47

bombing. Ellesburg stood up

30:50

to him and toe-to-toe

30:52

went up against him

30:54

and Nixon fell down

30:56

in the end. Nixon

30:58

comes down in the

31:00

end. Ellesburg died in

31:02

2023 at age 92.

31:04

The main thing that

31:06

sticks in memory is

31:08

just what an incredibly

31:10

brave character. Ellesburg actually

31:12

was and continued to

31:15

be as he. lived

31:17

on after the trial.

31:19

He was a remarkable

31:21

man. Linda Resnick told

31:23

me that she testified

31:25

at the trial and

31:27

was allowed to leave

31:29

the country. She said

31:31

she and her husband

31:33

were in Paris when

31:35

they got word the

31:38

trial was over. We

31:40

turned on the TV

31:42

like in the middle

31:44

of the night or

31:46

something and there was

31:48

everyone screaming and carrying

31:50

on. Stuart ran out

31:52

and got the first

31:54

edition of the Herald

31:56

Tribune. And it was

31:58

on the cover and

32:00

then we knew the

32:03

nightmare. was over. It

32:05

started a domino action

32:07

that continued until Nixon

32:09

resigned. I didn't even

32:11

vote for another, I

32:13

don't know, 10 or

32:15

12 for 15 years.

32:17

I was so broken.

32:19

I was so disillusioned

32:21

with the government. I

32:23

realized the egos that

32:26

make these decisions. that

32:28

terrorized the world. But this

32:30

was an arena that I

32:33

couldn't. I really had to

32:35

walk away from. Resnick and

32:37

her husband are well-known donors

32:40

to the Democratic Party. After

32:42

Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance

32:44

against Donald Trump in June

32:46

2024, she got on the

32:49

phone and began calling top

32:51

Democrats around the country, pushing

32:53

for a new candidate at

32:55

the top of the ticket.

32:58

Some people were nervous about

33:00

calling for Biden to step

33:02

aside. They felt disloyal. They

33:05

feared consequences. And then I

33:07

started calling every senator I

33:09

knew and governor. Do you

33:11

invoke the Pentagon papers when

33:14

you have these conversations? I

33:16

had to with a friend

33:18

of mine who's in Congress

33:20

who said to me, Linda.

33:23

How can I do this?

33:25

These are my best friends

33:27

or my good friends. What

33:30

would you do in my

33:32

case? And I said, I

33:34

did. I did something when

33:36

I was 25 years old.

33:39

I never told anyone for

33:41

25 years. Okay? I never,

33:43

people were shocked when they

33:45

found out. I just was

33:48

scared. You know? Now at

33:50

81, what the hell? I'm

33:52

sure I'm going to get

33:54

hate mail from your podcast.

33:57

I won't read the comments.

33:59

But... I think

34:01

it's important to talk about. I

34:03

didn't talk about it because it

34:06

hurt so much. That's the reason,

34:08

not because I was afraid it

34:10

was going to hurt my business.

34:13

Because it hurt me. I mean,

34:15

I was roughed up and I

34:17

was scared. You know, we never

34:20

found out if what we did

34:22

was right or wrong because there

34:24

was no trial, no verdict. If

34:27

I write or wrong, you mean

34:29

a legal terms. Yes. In moral

34:31

terms, you're... I'm clear. Mark Rosenbaum,

34:34

who aided the defense team, told

34:36

me that now with stricter laws

34:38

about the release of government secrets,

34:40

the defendants would not stand much

34:43

of a chance in court if

34:45

the trial were to happen today.

34:47

Now, he said, the sole burden

34:50

of the government is to prove

34:52

the documents in question were classified.

34:54

classifications were correct at all, whether

34:57

or not they were being used

34:59

as a cover-up for governmental misconduct,

35:01

those laws have all been changed.

35:04

There would be no defense of

35:06

the sort of defense that would

35:08

be successful in our case. It

35:10

wouldn't be close. The chances of

35:13

being acquitted would be zero. From

35:29

L.A. Times Studios, this is Crimes of

35:31

the Times. To read more about these

35:33

cases, check out Crimes of the Times

35:35

at L.A. times.com. We also have a

35:37

link to our video episodes in the

35:39

show notes. This episode was written and

35:41

reported by me, your host, Christopher Gofford.

35:43

Our showrunner and senior producer is Jacqueline

35:45

Kim. Executive editor is Deborah Anderlew. Production

35:47

assistant is Jordan Patterson. Production services provided

35:49

by JTB studios. Our camera technicians and

35:51

operators are Jeff Amlot. Julian McCabe

35:53

Jason Newbert production support

35:55

from Andrew Gombert, Patrick

35:57

Stewart, and Anne -Marie

35:59

Patrick Stewart, and is our

36:01

studio manager. Ben

36:03

Church is our production

36:05

manager. Special thanks

36:07

to L our production manager. Special

36:09

thanks to L.A. and chief

36:11

operating officer of

36:13

the Los Angeles Times,

36:15

president and and executive

36:17

editor of the Los

36:19

Angeles Times, Times, Terry Tang.

36:21

Crimes of the is executive

36:23

produced and co -created

36:25

by Darius, by Darius Derek

36:27

and me, me Christopher

36:30

Gofford