This is No Pentagon Papers

So last night I was tearing into a juicy mango when the phone rang.

"I know why they're doing it!" shouted my friend, practically blasting it out of my hand- the mango, not the phone.   

"They're going for the Pentagon Papers defense!"

He was talking about the Mason email grab resolution, which had survived to live for another City Council meeting after being tabled 2 weeks ago; amazing considering the ongoing F.B.I. wire-fraud conspiracy investigation and the fact that emails were no longer under the control of  City Hall but in F.B.I. custody. Seized as evidence. Requiring the City of Hoboken to subpeona the F.B.I. for their return.

Fat chance of that happening.

What about the Pentagon Papers?  In a nutshell, they were thousands of pages of secret government documents leaked to the New York Times in 1971 (by military analyst Daniel Ellsberg) on the conduct of the Vietnam War, acknowledging that the government knew all along it was a lost cause:

Working again at Rand, Ellsberg managed to procure, photocopy, then return a large number of classified or top-secret papers regarding the conduct of the war. They revealed the knowledge, early on, that the war would not likely be won and that continuing the war would lead to many times more casualties than was admitted publicly. Further, the papers showed a deep cynicism by the military towards the public and a disregard for the loss of life and injury suffered by soldiers and civilians.

 How did it end? 

Because of the gross governmental misconduct, all charges against Ellsberg were eventually dropped, a president eventually resigned, and a large segment of the American populace became disenfranchised and alienated from their government at all levels.

In a nutshell, the leakers were vindicated in part by exposing the gross misdeeds of our own government.

So what the hell does THIS have to do with Beth Mason's email-jihad on City Hall staff  Dan Bryan, Juan Melli and a trio of pro-reform bloggers?   

ZIP.

 Unless you ask Home of the Leak, Hoboken411:
 

There's Hoboken411 ghostwriter Lane Bajardi condescendingly schooling us on The Pentagon Papers, striking a line (he hopes) between what he calls 'public documents'- emails between his enemies list and his enemies in Hoboken City Hall- comparing those 'government operations' to the hidden agenda of the John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon administrations when they continued to prosecute the Vietnam War in spite of conceding it was lost.  

You get the comparison? Vietnam and Juan Melli?  Body bags and banana muffins?

That makes none of us.

I don't think Bajardi has a clue what he's talking about.  But that's the lie and he's sticking to it. Because he NEEDS that resolution to pass so he can dump the emails he's already illegally obtained on cyber-toilet Hoboken411.

Bajardi says "the FBI could care less about who releases public documents to the credentialed press". 

Oh, then he should TELL THEM THAT.  In fact, why doesn't he give them a call?  Only first, swap out the word 'releases' for 'leaks' and he's looking at serious jail time.  Because the F.B.I. cares.  About YOU, Bajardi.  I really think it behooves you to call them.  Tell them what you know.  About those emails.  The ones you're not supposed to have.

Then, along comes Al Sullivan who made the highly-coincidental Watergate-era comparison, not surprising since the operatives that fill his ear regularly are Bajardi allies:

But whatever they contain, the emails harkens back to Watergate, where the cover-up tended to be worse than the events themselves.

So here's where GA calls in the big guns, my Legal Department headed by superstar attorney Not-Stempler... well, actually he's the only one in GA's Legal Department.  Not-Stempler's been following the shenanigans here, so needed little background explanation.  I simply asked for his legal opinion of the 'Pentagon Papers defense' as it applies to the Mason email-grab resolution.

Not-Stempler's response:

You asked me to comment on some material that you forwarded to me which purportedly invoked the “Pentagon Papers” as a defense against a charge of hacking a municipal website, ostensibly by someone working on behalf of the legislative body of the municipality, to obtain email and other documents.  

Setting aside the breach of privilege and confidentiality issues that scream from the facts which you present, I don’t have time to write a detailed explanation of the myriad reasons why invocation of the Pentagon Papers as a defense to the unauthorized access is legally deficient and evidences a fundamental lack of understanding of the issues surrounding the Pentagon Papers and the prosecution of Daniel Ellsberg. 

Setting also aside that the PP case was decided well before the internet and the use of email and electronic storage. 

The PP revealed that President Johnson had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance. Frankly, trying to compare the allegation that a sitting Mayor may have used the city website for partisan purposes not only pales in comparison to the underlying issues in the PP case, but the mere suggestion of an analogy makes a mockery of the significance of the matter, both as  a matter of national security and our country’s legal jurisprudence. My colleagues who I ran this question by keep asking me if you make this stuff up. 

No lawyer can seriously justify the illegal trespass and obtaining documents off of a municipal website by trying to switch up the inevitable discovery doctrines and use them to shield their illegal activity.  

The federal statutes about hacking are very serious and the federal government law enforcement agencies take these breaches seriously.  I remind you of the fate which befell the young gentlemen from Tennessee who hacked in to Sarah Palin’s Yahoo mail account.  

I hope that this short answer is sufficient.   

Sufficient, and then some. Thank you, Not-Stempler.

I wonder what his long answer would have looked like.