MAY 8, 2005 --

A "No Nukes! No War!" rally was held in Central Park May 1 on the Heckscher softball fields, drawing several thousand people, including survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs. Speakers included Daniel Ellsberg.

LPR joined a few other reporters and met
with Mr. Ellsberg after he addressed the rally. He asserted that the administration apparently supports nuclear arms proliferation for friendly governments and suggested that it is understandable that Iran, facing enemies, is pursuing nuclear arms.

He also said that the administration attacked Iraq because it did not have nuclear weapons. LPR asked Mr. Ellsberg if he had any comment on Jonathan Pollard, now in his 20th year in prison. Mr.
Ellsberg said that he had made an unathorized disclosure -- leaking the Pentagon Papers to the press, indicating that unlike Mr. Pollard, he had not spied.

Mr. Ellsberg recently returned frm Israel where he has been following the case of Mordechai Vanunu, released from an Israeli prison last year, after serving 18
years for giving a British newspaper information about his country's nuclear arms program. Mr. Ellsberg said that Mr. Vanunu cannot leave Israel and may face
additional charges. LPR would note that if Mr. Ellsberg understands why Iran, facing enemies, is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, he might equally understand that Israel, since its establishment in 1948, has been surrounded by belligerent states.

LPR asked Mr. Ellsberg about Jonathan Pollard because it heard Rabbi Avi Weiss, earlier on May 1, at the conclusion of the Passover morning service, express the hope that Pollard, after twenty years, be given time served, and released from prison.