Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department official who leaked the Pentagon Papers exposing the Vietnam War lies, is alarmed at the many parallels between Vietnam and President Obama’s new military campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, as Barbara Koeppel reports.

At a recent talk at the National Press Club in Washington DC, Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971, says he believes there’s not one person in the Pentagon who would agree that President Obama can achieve his aim of destroying ISIS in Iraq and Syria with air strikes, along with training and arming local military forces.

Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers Whistleblower, Sees Bradley Manning's Conviction As The Beginning Of Police State

The NSA surveillance of millions of emails and phone calls. The dogged pursuit of whistleblower Edward Snowden across the globe, regardless of the diplomatic fallout. And the sentencing of Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for giving a cache of government files to the website WikiLeaks. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg sees these events as signs that the United States is becoming a police state.

"We have not only the capability of a police state, but certain beginnings of it right now," Ellsberg told HuffPost Live Wednesday. "And I absolutely agree with Edward Snowden. It's worth a person's life, prospect of assassination, or life in prison or life in exile -- it's worth that to try to restore our liberties and make this a democratic country."

Daniel Ellsberg: Edward Snowden Was Right To Leave The U.S.

Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, said on Monday that he supports Edward Snowden's decision to flee the United States.

Ellsberg has sometimes been held up as an example of everything Snowden is not. Former Obama administration speechwriter Jon Favreau, for instance, called Ellsberg a "true whistleblower," unlike Snowden.

Daniel Ellsberg On NSA Spying: 'We're A Turnkey Away From A Police State'

BERKELEY, Calif. -- Famed Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg had harsh words for the Obama Administration during an event here Tuesday evening, charging that the rapid expansion of government surveillance since 9/11 has left the country "a turnkey away from a police state."

"We're not a police state yet, but the foundation has been set," he continued. "It could happen overnight."

Daniel Ellsberg: NDAA Indefinite Detention Provision is Part of "Systematic Assault on Constitution"

A lawsuit challenging a law that gives the government the power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens is back in federal court this week. On Wednesday, a group of academics, journalists and activists will present oral arguments in court against a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, authorizing the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world without charge or trial. In a landmark ruling last September, Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York struck down the indefinite detention provision, saying it likely violates the First and Fifth Amendments of U.S. citizens. We’re joined by Daniel Ellsberg, a plaintiff in the case and perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

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Daniel Ellsberg: I Congratulate Ecuador for Standing Up to British Empire to Protect Julian Assange

Daniel Ellsberg, the most famous whistleblower in the United States, praises Ecuador for granting political asylum to Julian Assange to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over sex crime accusations. "I congratulate Ecuador, of course, for standing up to the British Empire here, for insisting that they are not a British colony, and acting as a sovereign state ought to act," said Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. On Thursday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Assange would be arrested if he left the embassy, saying Britain is "under a binding obligation to extradite him to Sweden." Ellsberg adds, "[Assange] has every reason to be wary that the real intent here is to whisk him away to America, where it really hasn’t been made as clear what might be waiting for him."

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