Signed up to? He didn’t intend to get caught

He absolutely did. He was talking with US Senators about what he was about to do, trying to get them involved in the process of leaking the documents to the public. He already had his legal team assembled. He was not hiding, except insofar as he needed to to be able to remain free for long enough to get it done.

Excerpts from “Secrets”:

I told him my background and of my work on the McNamara study, which I described in some detail. I explained how the history related to Nixon’s policy as I understood it, why it was important for Congress and the public to know it, what I had done so far, and what was in progress. But I hadn’t gotten very far in that last part before he suddenly held up his hand and said, “I have to stop you right now. I’m afraid I can’t take part in this discussion any further.”

“Pardon me?”

“You seem to be describing plans to commit a crime. I don’t want to hear any more about it. As a lawyer I can’t be a party to it.”

The top of my head blew off. I got up out of my chair and said in a low, tense voice, getting faster as I went along, looking down at him: “I’ve been talking to you about seven thousand pages of documentation of crimes: war crimes, crimes against the peace, mass murder. Twenty years of crime under four presidents. And every one of those presidents had a Harvard professor at his side, telling him how to do it and how to get away with it. Thank you, good night.”

I wasn’t tempted to give the confirmation that they wanted at this point. As yet there had been no indication that the Justice Department had decided to seek criminal indictments in addition to the injunction. I wasn’t surprised that Newsweek had been led to me as the probable source so quickly — the last line of its story on the interview was that I had said with a smile, “I am flattered to be suspected of having leaked it” — and I was sure that Justice was in little doubt by this point. But I was determined not to goad the administration into an unprecedented criminal prosecution by taunting it publicly, if it had any inhibitions about indicting me.

He didn’t out himself to the press early because he didn’t want the story about him to distract from the papers themselves, and he stayed in hiding until it was all done so they wouldn’t be able to stop the leaking process itself. It took a long time, there were many volumes and this was in the pre-computer days where it was actually hard to get a mass of documents into the public’s hands irrevocably.

Then once the stuff was all published, his lawyers got in touch with the DOJ and he turned himself in (they had figured it out by then, as he obviously knew they would). They ordered him to surrender by a certain date, he refused and told them he would be in on Monday, his lawyer told him that might cause additional charges, he said “oh well.”

I would really recommend reading “Secrets.” I looked some stuff up in it to type this message, and I had forgotten how fantastic it is.

You are correct that he wasn’t expecting to go free. I had misremembered. He expected to probably go to prison, and was as surprised as anybody when things started going his way.

and being lucky enough to get a judge who was sufficiently offended by that misconduct declare a mistrial

It’s not just one judge. The Supreme Court struck down the injunction against publishing the things in the first place, the papers published them, people went after the people who had tried to abuse Ellsberg to the point that they had to resign. My point in saying all of this is that American public society stood up for justice in a way that the “establishment” part of has not in the current crisis. That’s why I think we are so fucked currently.

Huh? Are you actually trying to downplay the persecution of Daniel Ellsberg (which also included an aborted plot to neutralize him with LSD) by dropping a non-sequitur “but Russia”? 😂

My point is that American society used to protect people who did good things against persecution. Like I say, the government (Nixon) tried to persecute him, and they failed, and today he’s a hero and Nixon went down in infamy. That stuff doesn’t happen in the US anymore. I also feel like it is worth noting that modern Russian society and government also do not attempt to protect against persecution people who do good things, as far as I can tell, they are far worse than Nixon’s DOJ which you seem to have no problem criticizing. It makes it weird that lemmy.ml makes such a business about stumping for the Russian system and pretending they are playing a good role. Maybe you are right that it was a totally odd irrelevant thing for me to throw in there. I do feel like it’s relevant, though, if lemmy.ml in general wants to say that the US is this boogeyman (I mean, they are) and so therefore we need to adopt the USSR’s system (or whatever). I do feel like it’s worth looking at how different systems define and treat their public heroes and villains.