The Mysteries of History (June 13 Edition)
Pentagon Papers Published
1971 — Pentagon Papers Published
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Defense Department Analyst Daniel Ellsberg first tried to turn over the incendiary document he discovered titled The History of the U.S. Decision Making Process on Vietnam (colloquially known as “The Pentagon Papers”) to politicians who he thought would help expose the wrongdoing described therein, but all of them were too cowardly to do so. It took the “Fourth Estate,” the Press, to break the story.
The government as a whole (Nixon and his minions) wanted to suppress the report, realizing it would undermine the (Vietnam) war effort, but the Supreme Court ruled the bombshell could continue to be published.
The following is what I wrote about the Pentagon Papers in my book Still Casting Shadows: A Shared Mosaic of U.S. History — Volume 2: 1914-2006:
On June 13th, The New York Times published a series of articles on a secret government study popularly known as “The Pentagon Papers,” a 47-volume document compiled between 1967 and 1969 by Defense Department analysts. These “papers” revealed how the government had systematically deceived the public about what was really going on in Vietnam. The documents revealed how the CIA conspired to overthrow and assassinate South Vietnamese President Diem (a U.S. ally, and like President Kennedy, a Catholic), and the fact that the Tonkin Gulf Resolution had been drafted months before the supposed attack on U.S. vessels by North Vietnamese forces there—in other words, it was a setup and a pretext for a war the United States wanted to wage. In the end, the Pentagon Papers helped prove the alleged attack by the North Vietnamese on the American vessels never took place.
Daniel Ellsberg, an MIT professor and government consultant who was one of the authors of the papers, leaked them to the press after becoming dis gusted and disillusioned over the government’s actions. The Nixon administration went after the newspapers (such as the New York Times and the Washington Post) for publishing the documents, and the principle two whistle blowers, Ellsberg and Tony Russo. The two, in fact, were (unsuccessfully) prosecuted for treason by the U.S. government.
Others saw their act in a completely different light. Mel Gurtov, who was one of the many government employees and consultants who worked on the Pentagon Papers, is quoted in the book “Inside the Pentagon Papers” as saying:
When I learned what Ellsberg had done, I quickly realized that his was not only an act of great courage, but also a necessary step to ensure that the papers—which is to say, the record of government deceitfulness—would become part of the national debate. Without that step, I feel certain we would have nothing to celebrate today.
Making the Pentagon Papers public showed the world how duplicitous the American government had been in its involvement in Vietnam. Faith in lead ers, especially political leaders, to be honest and act in good faith, was mightily shaken as a result. Not even the likes of an Evel Knievel, straddling the hottest rocket he’d dare mount, could hope to jump the credibility crevasse that yawned opened with that revelation. It was a social earthquake that ripped open a fissure between the leaders and the led on a Grand Canyon-sized scale.
Pulitzer-prize winning author Thomas Powers puts it this way:
The release of the papers broke a kind of spell in this country, a notion that the people and the government had to always be in consensus on all the major issues. It trained newspapers not to take the government at its word. At the beginning of that episode, no one could really know if any newspaper would summon the courage to publish the papers.
That courage was short-lived, though. Just a few decades later, this could be said of the press (by Murray Marder, also quoted in “Inside the Pentagon Papers”):
The coverage of the Gulf War…was abominable. The press showed none of the skepticism that they should have learned in the years since the end of Vietnam. There was no sign there, visible, that the people were even conscious of the Pentagon Papers. They were making all the same mistakes over gain. They were the most gullible group…the Pentagon Papers have had on a positive side of the ledger, some very encouraging effects. The government is much more cautious now. But it has learned much more, how to circumvent the press than it ever did before.
The apparently mathematically-challenged Anthony Russo, Jr., who played almost as large a role as Ellsberg in the “outing” of the Pentagon Papers, wrote of the significance of the revelations:
The Ellsberg-Russo Pentagon Papers trial is said by scholars to be 66 percent of the reason Nixon fell; Watergate, the other 33 percent—that was stimulated by the Pentagon Papers, too.
The question may arise, then: If these papers were so volatile, and so damning to the government, why did the administration commission them in the first place? Bill Crandall sheds some light on this:
Like all other historical analysis, the Pentagon Papers were meant, not simply as a dispassionate discourse on the random facts of an era, but as, how did we get into this mess. Such histories are meant as weapons for winning a battle. The battle of the day was over whether to continue the Vietnam War or end it. The Pentagon Papers hit the streets like a sack full of grenades, which the government wanted to keep out of the hands of the rebels and failed.
The original Pentagon Papers are still contained in top-secret government vaults, and four of the forty-seven volumes (over 7,000 pages in all) have still not been made public.
Questions: If you were alive during the publication of “The Pentagon Papers,” do you recall what your reaction was? Did you consider Ellsberg a traitor, or a hero, or were you uninterested in the matter? How does Ellsberg compare to Snowden and Assange? When, if ever, does muckraking cross the line from helping to hurting society? What do you think about the following statement: “Every day you go to work, you should be prepared to quit or be fired”?
