The Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg
—Chrissie
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In the early years of the Cold War, there was a feeling that the United States could do no wrong, particularly as regarded its actions in opposition to communism. That feeling existed because that was how the US presented itself, and it papered over the many injustices that existed in the Postwar era. However, as the first cohort of the Postwar Baby Boom came of age, trust in the government eroded. The potential reasons for this are legion, but the Vietnam War was a major element and it was the publication of the Pentagon Papers that that validated that loss of trust.
American involvement in Vietnam was never entirely uncontroversial. It began with American military advisors ostensibly aiding the French to regain territory lost to Japan during World War II; then after France decided the fight wasn’t worth it in 1954, it became a proxy war between the US and China/the USSR. After the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, on 2 August 1964, the war escalated to involve tens of thousands of American soldiers over the next decade. On that date, American ships were approached off the coast by North Vietnamese ships, who were then fired on by the Americans. The American people (and the world) were then told that the North Vietnamese attacked another US ship two days later in a retaliatory action, which gave President Lynden Johnson the excuse to escalate the war. The second attack never happened. One of the reasons we know this is the Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, better known as the Pentagon Papers.
This, and other lies around Vietnam, were exposed by the actions of Pentagon staffer and RAND Corporation analysist Daniel Ellsberg. He came to work at the Pentagon in 1964, with a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard, three years in the Marine Corps, and work as an analyst for RAND, he had the perfect background for the Defense Department. As part of his work at the Pentagon, he spent two years as part of the State Department staff for General Edward Landsdale in South Vietnam. After this, he returned to RAND, but was still working with the DOD on a report narrating the history of American involvement in Vietnam since the end of World War II. Because the man who commissioned the report, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, wanted a full accounting, those working on the report had access to classified information. The resulting report, finished in 1968, was also classified.
Between the analysis of the reports and his own experience with the State Department, Ellsberg decided he could no longer support the war. At an antiwar demonstration in August 1969, he connected what was being said with his own (classified) knowledge, prompting an epiphany that left him in tears with the realization that the war could only continue and expand. He left RAND to work at MIT, but maintained his connections. Late in that year, he and Anthony Russo, a friend and RAND colleague, set about copying the documents and report that he had worked on the year previously.
Ellsberg’s first instinct was not to publicize the information but, instead, deliver it to senators whom he knew opposed the war, in hopes they would enter the information into the Senate Record, but none would. He shared some of the documents with academics he hoped would expose them, and finally, with Neil Sheehan of the New York Times in February 1971. After getting assurances from an in-house lawyer that the First Amendment gave them license to publish information pertinent to citizens’ understanding of government policy, the first story about what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers was published on 13 June 1971. Two weeks later, Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska entered into the record a 4100-page selection of the documents edited for this purpose by linguist and activist Noam Chomsky and historian Howard Zinn. Gravel’s actions were investigated, but subsequent legal issues regarding the papers and their release ended the investigation.
The Nixon Administration asked the Times to stop publishing the Paper, but they refused. Attorney General John Mitchell used an injunction to halt the publication, which the Times appealed in a case that ended up in front of the Supreme Court. Around the same time, the Washington Post also began to publish information about the papers and, they too, received an injunction. They also appealed and were included in the SCOTUS case. The right for news organizations to publish the documents was upheld in a 6-3 decision, on the basis that the government had not met the needed burden of proof for the injunction. This case allowed the press to cover and publish the papers, but it did not clear Ellsberg of wrongdoing.
Ellsberg admitted he had knowingly provided classified information to the press and so gave himself up to the US Attorney’s Office in Boston on 28 June 1971. He was indicted under the 1917 Espionage Act alongside Anthony Russo. Their trial began on 3 January 1973 in the District Court of Central California before Judge William Matthew Byrne. Ellsberg’s intended defense was that the document had been illegally classified to prevent the American public from knowing the information held within. He was told his reasoning was irrelevant, functionally preventing him from defending himself. Things turned to his favor when two pieces of information came to light: the first, that Judge Byrne had met with Nixon aide and White House Counsel John Ehrlichman during the trial and had been offered the directorship of the FBI, which he claimed he wouldn’t consider until the trial was over; the second was that the Nixon Administration was actively trying to discredit Ellsberg. It came to light at the end of April that a covert investigative team, known as the White House Plumbers, had been directed by Ehrlichman to break into the office of Lewis Fielding, Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, in hopes of finding information to embarrass and discredit Ellsberg, but they found nothing. A few days later, the defense learned the FBI had illegally wiretapped Ellsberg. These events were concurrent with the investigation into the Watergate break-ins, also conducted by the Plumbers, which caused Ehrlichman and others to be fired at the end of April. All of this together left no option but a declaration of mistrial, ending the proceedings against Ellsberg and Russo.
Daniel Ellsberg spent the rest of his life as a political activist and author. He supported the opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He co-founded the Freedom of the Press Foundation in 2012 and has supported many whistleblowers, including Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
Any time Ellsberg discussed his leak of the classified material, he made it clear that he did so for the good of the American people. He wanted to assure that the actions being taken by the government in the name of its citizens were legitimate and known to the public. His actions were not self-aggrandizing and the investigation around them also inadvertently helped to expose the illegal and anti-democratic actions of the Nixon administration.
Read the Pentagon Papers here: www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers