Word: ellsbergs
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...White House pressure to portray the Watergate break-in as a CIA plot. In exchange for corroborating that story, McCord would have received executive clemency, John J. Caulfield, former White House staff testified. The CIA had previously been linked to a 1971 break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist...
Valid Changes? All of these sensations-following the disclosures that the CIA had helped the Watergate raiders to break in to the offices of Ellsberg's former psychiatrist-took the trial far from its original purpose. The Government had been determined to prosecute Ellsberg and Russo as criminals. The defense was equally determined to raise the broadest legal and constitutional issues. Was a charge of espionage valid when the defendants had given no information to a foreign power? (Ellsberg had returned the actual papers to the Rand Corp. files.) Could theft be alleged when the culprits had stolen nothing...
...charges against Ellsberg and Russo raised "serious factual and legal issues," and Byrne said he would have liked these to go the full course-meaning a jury verdict and possibly appeals to higher courts. But, he concluded, "the conduct of the Government precludes the fair, dispassionate resolution of these issues by a jury. The totality of the circumstances of this case offends a 'sense of justice.' " Hence he ordered a mistrial and dismissed the indictments...
When the courtroom applause died, there remained the unresolved questions about the legality of the Government's charges-and of Ellsberg's actions in taking and releasing the documents. In the corridors, an ugly suspicion was voiced by defense counsel: perhaps the Administration had deliberately flunked its last assignment from Byrne, about the Halperin wiretap, because it was being increasingly embarrassed by the disclosures that Byrne was forcing. By failing to meet Byrne's demands, the Administration had given him good reason for dismissing the case and had thus forestalled any further investigation that he might order...
...Ellsberg and Russo plan to sue Government officials for $2,000,000 in damages and expenses (their legal costs already total $900,000). For this process, they threaten to subpoena the President himself. In that, they are not likely to succeed, but the Pentagon papers trial, in another guise, may be in the courts and the headlines for months or years to come...