Two of us, Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky, testified for Assange at his extradition hearing last year. In Ellsberg’s words then, the WikiLeaks publications that Assange is being charged for are “amongst the most important truthful revelations of hidden criminal state behavior that have been made public in U.S. history.” The American public “needed urgently to know what was being done routinely in their name, and there was no other way for them to learn it than by unauthorized disclosure.”
The information Felt released wasn’t just something only he knew. It’s simply that it wasn’t enough on its own and no one was chasing down the proper leads due to the coverup in play. The White House is the government. The administration partook in the coverup. Its just fewer people in the government being part of a coverup. Anything that’s illegal is still illegal. The government is behind both, it’s simply a matter of how much and what parts of the government.